Arrow S05E10 Review: Many Canaries

Arrow, Season 5, Episode 10: Who Are You

Well, all of the post-break episodes for the CW shows have been pretty underwhelming, either just playing catch-up or having filler plots, but none moreso than Arrow, I think. The huge Laurel is alive reveal last episode turned out to just be, well, Black Siren, sprung out of STAR Labs for some vague 'break their spirit' plan by Prometheus, and it's a reversal of their usual dynamic where this time it's Felicity that's doing all the hard truths, spurring the Junior Arrow Squad to take out Black Siren and spiking her drink with DNA tests and nanite trackers while Oliver is being naively idiotic. Granted Oliver does have a blind spot when it comes to his loved ones, but he spends nearly every single scene right to the end being a total idiot and insisting that he can 'fix' this Laurel even after her status as the Earth-2 villain is revealed. 

While the crossover bit was definitely delightful in the face of a more grounded season of Arrow, it's still a twist that in my opinion didn't deliver enough emotional impact, and neither did it matter all that much in the end. Black Siren ended up being just another villain for Team Arrow to take down while Oliver mopes, all the while several other plotlines run in the background. The thing is, the Episode never really makes a compelling case for Black Siren being caught between good and evil -- she's definitely evil through and through and she's only pretending to be nice in front of Oliver. So there's really not much drama, and it seems to just be an attempt to segue in very awkwardly to 'we need a new Black Canary' now that Evelyn Sharp is evil.

Coincidentally, of course, a woman in Hub City also has sonic scream powers and a love of beating up sexist rapey thugs. It just felt poorly done and shoehorned in.

The Diggle, Curtis and Russia plotline all are far more interesting, though not by much. The Russia one had the jackass Bratva commander interrogating Oliver in the past get killed by an archer, who reveals herself to be... TALIA AL GHUL! Once the hype of me seeing Talia's unexpected appearance had worn off, though, the rest of the Bratva story this episode was procedural. It is nice to see more Batman-lore characters finally worming their way into the CW-verse after the jackass Warner Bros. ban has been lifted. 

Diggle had a moment where getting him out of the prison would mean certain death, and Oliver got Adrian Chase to help out, which leads to a very badass moment where Chase pulls all strings legal to try and buy time to get Diggle stuck in the prison while the jackass general tries to one-up Adrian by pulling bigger authorizations. It's a bit jarring, though, for Oliver "he is the brother I never had" Queen to literally ignore Diggle's plight after sending Chase to sort it out. 

Curtis's story is pretty good as he reflects on how often he gets his ass handed to him, and is just moping around for being useless as a superhero and a husband, and gets a nice bonding moment with Wild Dog, who notes that Curtis is the team's resident smart dude, a tinkerer to Felicity's hacker, and Curtis should really be proud in that. The scripting definitely needs a little work, but Curtis and Wild Dog are definitely the strongest scenes in this episode, and anything that leads to T-Spheres hovering around Mister Terrific is definitely fine by me. 

Overall, though, man, that Talia reveal! Definitely a lot more excited about seeing Talia in the Russian scenes more than any sight of Black Siren, Prometheus or New!Black Canary. Overall, though, not a particularly stand-out episode.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Talia al Ghul is the iconic daughter of Ra's al Ghul and one of Batman's most famous enemies. Recently she had a brief cameo as a child in Legends of Tomorrow's fist season. She's generally not an archer, but since Arrow upgraded her sister Nyssa into being one, well...
• Black Siren is one of Zoom's lieutenants during the climax of Flash's second season, and her capture happened in the penultimate episode of that season.
• Felicity refers to how they tracked down Darhk by injecting Anarky with nanites, which was the plan she used to tail Black Siren to Prometheus. 
• Hub City, home of the Question, appears again.