Arrow S05E02 Review: Ragman!

Arrow, Season 5, Episode 2: The Recruits

It's a bit of a shaky episode, this one, and after the excitement of seeing a live-action adaptation of the mother-fucking Ragman of all DC characters that could've shown up had died down, the episode was... not quite there yet. It's not exactly bad, but it really was choppily written. A-plus for the effort of giving Oliver a character arc in the episode that both made sense, built up on the whole 'recruit a new team' arc, and worked well with the flashback (with some nods to how Bratva!Oliver eventually became SeasonOne!Oliver). Ragman's short appearance and very quick power explanation is decent, too, but most of the other happenings in the show is honestly underwhelming due to trying to stuff so many things inside an episode and none of them really amounting to much.

Let's talk about the bad first. Firstly, in addition to having a flashback B-plot, this episode features a John Diggle B-plot of him in the army, being betrayed by his superior officer that's stealing some plot device, killing the Like-Me-And-Be-Sad-When-I-Die-Five-Minutes-Later nervous army kid, and pinning the blame on Diggle... ends up feeling pointless, and moreso than the flashback plots (which ad least generally have some relevance in paralleling present-day events, and honestly I'd rather have one big John Diggle episode the way the Suicide Squad plots were structured in earlier seasons. I like John Diggle as a character and I really want him to show up more, but not like this.

The flashback plot tries to do the whole Naruto bell exercise thing by paralleling Green Arrow's present-day training with Neo Team Arrow and having the big twist that, oh, Anatoli's Bratva goes off and kills the other Bratva initiates because the lesson, in addition to working as a team, is to trust no one but yourself. It is very entertaining to see Anatoli be involved in such obviously gruesome villainy while still being a lovable teddy bear of a Russian mafia, though again the flashback didn't really made me care all that much, though at least it's sort of relevant.

Green Arrow quickly confronts Wild Dog, who's the main POV character among the newcomers to Neo Team Arrow, telling Wild Dog that he has to outgrow the 'angry guy in a hockey mask' and be 'someone else. Something else.' in a corny yet appropriate homage to the opening titles. And Oliver is... a huge, gigantic and utter douchebag to the three new members of Neo Team Arrow, which are Wild Dog, Curtis (when are they calling him Mr. Terrific?) and Evelyn Sharp (Black Canary II? Starling?). A huge, huge dick. Never mind the training-from-hell, and never mind refusing to reveal his identity to Wild Dog and Evelyn, he absolutely crossed the line with the verbal abuse he threw their way when Ragman escaped from them. Being angry with Wild Dog -- who jumped in to save a kid, despite his angry thuggish bluster -- telling Curtis that he's useless when he's not in front of a computer and telling Evelyn Sharp to fuck off and be a teenage girl is an absolutely assholish thing to do, and both Curtis and Felicity call him out for it. Oliver tries to hide behind multiple excuses, that he's afraid that if he's not hard enough the way that his five-years-in-hell had been hard to him, they would not take this seriously and will end up like Laurel. Later he tries to go through the excuse that in Bratva it's worse. Doesn't really excuse him being a dick to Curtis, though.

There's some words about how trust is what makes Oliver Queen, not Green Arrow, a good leader, and eventually we see a sign of this when Oliver manages to gain Ragman's trust and allegiance by telling the confused kid about his own father, who also sacrificed himself to save Oliver. Thea also recruits Quentin by trusting him that giving the drunk cop a reason to stay sober -- a job that honours his dead daughter. And apparently Oliver revealing his identity is enough to make Wild Dog, who's previously been "I'm an independent vigilante, you fuckers!" stay in line and be all "yeah I follow the lead of people I trust". Wild Dog's change of heart really felt forced, to be honest, and the fact that we know jack shit about either Wild Dog or Evelyn Sharpe makes me really hard to care abotu them. I'm invested in Curtis due to his season four scenes, but all we know of Evelyn Sharpe is her time as a one-dimensional villain, and Wild Dog is just a huge insubordinate hero... that suddenly decides to be a good follower? I'm not buying it.

Contrast this to Ragman. And I may be biased because I freakin' love the Ragman from the two or three times I've seen him in comics, but he gets introduced as a villain. When Oliver Queen tries to strike a deal with Janet Carol, CEO of Amertek, Ragman goes off with his awesome magical rag tendril powers to exact vengeance on Amertek bosses because Amertek was involved in creating the nuclear bomb that Damian Darhk launched and destroyed Havenrock. Ragman presents himself as this avatar of vengeance. "You have been judged and found wanting" isn't much different than Oliver's old "you have failed this city" catchphrases, and we learn that this Ragman was born when his father wrapped him in magical 2000-year-old clothing that saved him from the nuclear blast that destroyed Havenrock.

In addition to the nice little adaptation of both season four's climax (Felicity's angst at killing a city, if you remember, was one avenue I'm upset they didn't explore) and Ragman's traditional backstory, the short scene when Ragman meets Green Arrow after they drove away Tobias Church and Janet Carol is very touching. In a short exchange, Ragman made me care for him more than Wild Dog's blustering throughout the episode did. Despite seemingly being this strange hooded and masked angel of vengeance in previous scenes, Ragman takes off his mask and presents himself as this scared boy who's hurt and confused, trying to avenge his dead family, and Oliver takes him in due to their similar parental parallelisms, noting that Robert had wanted Oliver to become a better man, and Rory's father surely would, too. This, meanwhile, is interspaced with a short scene of Felicity looking abso-fucking-lutely guilty when she realizes that Havenrock is still haunting her, quite literally in this magical rag demon-man.

There are a couple of sub-plots regarding the other characters that I'll acknowledge but I don't really find interesting. There's Felicity subjecting her... new boyfriend? I think? to the 'superhero is awkwardly asking for a favour' that honestly just fell flat despite probably trying to mimic Oliver-Felicity's relationship in season one. There's Thea trying her best to hold her own as Oliver's assistant and just being adorable, as well as having a short awesome vigilante moment when she spies on Janet and Church.

Tobias Church, sadly, as gloriously hammy as his performance is... felt a bit forced. In a show where Green Arrow had taken down immortal leaders of cults of assassins and armies of metahumans, it's hard to buy that a glorified street thug with brass knuckles would put Green Arrow in such a spot of danger that he would need Ragman's intervention. And Church immediately gets shat upon by the mysterious black archer from last episode's stinger, who introduces himself as... Prometheus? Whuh what? That's just weird and kinda came out of nowhere.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the comics, while Ragman (Rory Reagan) also has some daddy issues in wanting to prove himself better for his father, the origin of his powers is a bit different, albeit still magical. The Ragman suit is created from patches of rags that contains the souls of the criminals that the Ragman had punished before, and Ragman is able to tap into these souls to channel their powers. In addition to general rag-tendril powers that he also displays here.
• There has been several characters calling themselves 'Prometheus' in the comics, but the most famous and iconic is a JLA villain that also menaced Batman. With his origin story being the reverse of Batman's -- his parents were career criminals that were killed by a policeman -- the nameless young boy who would became Prometheus went on a journey to be the very best human weapon. Armed with a helmet that allowed him to download the best martial artists and tacticians' knowledge into his mind, as well as free access to the 'Ghost Zone', Prometheus infiltrated the Justice League Watchtower and single-handedly took out the entire league, but was taken out eventually. Comics!Prometheus definitely didn't dress like a hooded archer, though.