Arrow S05E07 Review: The Vigilante Argument

Arrow, Season 5, Episode 7: Vigilante

Those goggles, they actually do something!

I mis-counted the episode numbers when I did my big chunk of superhero episode reviews because I wanted to leave the Invasion four-parter crossover in one go as one of the big things I do in January, but apparently I have one episode of Arrow outstanding... and holy shit, it's a very good episode, too! After losing Tobias two episodes prior, Arrow seems to be building up this Prometheus fellow as the new big baddie... but honestly, do we even really need Prometheus? Vigilante makes his proper debut in this episode and holy shit, it's a very well-done character. There's the obvious similarities and comparisons with Marvel comics' Punisher, who made his debut earlier this year in Daredevil's second season, but Vigilante carves out his own niche in that he's less an agent of vengeance and more of a self-styled justice-dealer. Also, unlike Punisher, who only shoots the guilty, Vigilante seems to think that some wounded citizens are acceptable collateral damage.

Yes, Vigilante's first introduction in the episode is a very brutal gunning down of what seems to be a sex-slave trafficking cartel, and those are the kind of horrible people no one will be sad to see gunned down to death, but as the episode goes it's clear that Vigilante is a different class of, well, vigilante compared to Green Arrow, or even the Hood. Hell, at one point he even nearly kills Oliver's sidekicks to try and make him a better hero.

The thing is, the comparison between the various levels of vigilantism is made so much clearer in Arrow, who's dabbled with vigilantism for five and a half seasons now, whereas with Daredevil it's just, well, Daredevil (no killing at all) and Punisher (kill them all). Here we have various shades, Vigilante being more or less similar to Punisher's kill-them-all stance, Green Arrow being somewhere in between (kill only when necessary), and Oliver's allies being closer to the slightly more idealistic and naive do not kill at all stance. It also forces Oliver to question his own harsher past, especially his season one persona as the Hood (and at one point, 'the Vigilante', appropriately enough) where his methods of operation is basically identical to that of Vigilante. It's a criticism that has been lobbied at Arrow's earliest season by many detractors, including myself, and it's very fitting that they chose to tackle this particularly harder topic in what may be Arrow's last season.

And Vigilante is just so compelling both visually and in-story. His look keeps the iconic parts of his comic-book counterpart, right down to the wacky ski goggles. The brighter highlights of Vigilante's comic-book costume are still there, just muted. He is very impressive, with his hand-to-hand combat against Green Arrow a definite highlight of the show, and him generally being one step in front of Team Arrow in every encounter and just being, well, a legitimate threat. Unlike the more cryptic Prometheus, Vigilante's a far more defined character and that's only from a single episode. The only reason he hasn't taken out Green Arrow or any of his sidekicks is that he sees them as possible allies and at least trying to help out the city... and yeah, they just simply don't do enough, not willing to go all the way.

And Vigilante's questions actually do make sense. While it is unfair to say that Oliver hasn't been effective in preventing crime in the city -- he did stop so many villains like Ra's al Ghul, Deathstroke, Merlyn and Damien Darhk from destroying the city -- how many more deaths and destruction could he have prevented if he had actually gone and went for the kill? Darhk is an excellent (and recent) example, because if Oliver had taken the first chance he got to go for the throat with Darhk, a lot of the nastiness in the final legs of season four -- Havenrock being destroyed, Laurel's death -- could probably have been avoided. And with Oliver Queen himself resorting to killing when necessary... will he still be able to hold high moral ground without losing sight of objectivity? Will he regress to the murder-everyone Hood? Oliver himself is questioning his own gentler, less murderous methods because if it worked, well, then Vigilante wouldn't have appeared at all. Hell, even the Neo-Team-Arrow members are actually okay with Vigilante's methods until Oliver reminded them how disgusted they were with his own older outings as the Hood. Vigilante doesn't just prove to be a terrific antagonist to Green Arrow, he's also a very well-written and well-presented foil.

Certainly far better than Prometheus's weird cryptic agenda and killing random people based on the Oliver's old hit-list.

We didn't get any particular hints or revelations on Vigilante's identity, which is surprising because this is Arrow... normally the audience gets the big reveal way, way before the main cast realizes who the bad guy is. But no. There are clues, of course, but those are very subtle and honestly not out there, and I appreciate the show for at least keeping Vigilante's identity under wraps for a bit longer.

The main villain of this episode, one Eric Dunn, is actually very sympathizable. He's not an angel, because he actually does commit the crimes that Vigilante is hunting him down, but his very first crime was one that he did not commit, and being put into jail was what drove him angry and led him down the path of crime. Yes, someone like Eric Dunn does deserve to be jailed, but not necessarily gunned down without a trial.

Oliver himself manages to show a fair amount of acting chops by alternating between being a weary mayor who throws himself to hot reporter lady Susan (really, this plotline annoys me, but might be the only thing I dislike from the episode) and the troubled crime-fighter. Oliver's own ambiguity with his own stance on vigilantism is very well-told, and when questioned by his team he doesn't really have a clean answer.

There's a little continued subplot about Quentin's alcholism and Thea helping her... uncle-figure, I guess? Thea trying to talk Quentin out of it, noting that they all miss Laurel and generally dealing with Quentin's relapse (well, never-left-at-all) into alcoholism. I really want Thea to suit up as Speedy again, but it's clear that keeping her out of it is actually giving her a lot more autonomy and agency as a character. Granted, Thea isn't guilty of being boring at all for the past two seasons -- dealing with Merlyn and generally doing a 180 from her old 'spoiled teen bitch' persona is the best thing that has happened to her.

Diggle himself has got a pretty cool and touching little subplot. It might be overplayed a little, that's for sure, but him getting increasingly antsy and angry about missing his child's birthday party is probably a very human response that a father under lots of stress would have. And seeing him play 'bad cop' is hilarious. We get a very, very charming and d'awww scene when Wild Dog arranges for Lyla and John Junior to show up in the HIVE base and it's a nice little subplot. I like it.

What I don't particularly like (but don't particularly hate) is the big reveal that Artemis is actually working together with Prometheus as his inside woman. It does explain why Artemis has very little character work put into her other than that one episode with the trains, and as far as being faithful to the comics go, Artemis is the one with ties to supervillainy (though she usually is one who rejects it instead of being a good guy who gets corrupted) but this little twist felt kind of under-developed. I dunno. I'll have to see where this goes before really voicing my opinion, because at this point it just felt like it came almost out of nowhere.

The flashback plotline is still very entertaining, simply because, y'know, Dolph Lundgren is playing the main bad guy. Konstantin Kovar might just be a random Russian mobster, but man, just seeing Lundgren being this huge brawny tough guy who's also actually really smart (which, incidentally, is 100% how the actor really is in real life) and the very dirty brawl between Kovar and Oliver is very well done, and a very far cry from the more martial-artsy fights common in Arrow. Kovar is a very interesting villain in how he just has Oliver around his fingers, putting doubts in his head that the Bratva actually need him, playing all sorts of mind games, noting that Tatiana's mother is actually in his employ... and surprise, surprise, Kovar isn't actually lying, and the non-Anatoly members of the Bratva actually did sell Oliver out. The flashbacks have easily been the weakest parts of Arrow throughout the series's run thanks to shitty pacing and relatively boring villains... neither General Shrieve nor Baron Reiter from seasons 3 and 4 respectively really managed to be interesting.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• I'll save the long, long story about Vigilante's origins for when we actually get it in the show proper, but I think I did talk a bit about Vigilante during his short cameo on Felicity's screen in the season premier. Suffice to say that he's a pretty major DC character for a while.
• There's a bit of a drought on DC references -- you'd think Eric Dunn and his skull-masked crew is based on some obscure villain, but not even that. We've got Diggle name-dropping Slade Wilson, and someone mentions Hub City and Eric Dunn was imprisoned Iron Heights, but those are mostly internal references and not particularly noteworthy.