Arrow, Season 5, Episode 15: Fighting Fire with Fire
After the slight stumble that was 'Sin-Eater', this episode of Arrow really pulled off all the stops by lurching forwards in a pretty spectacular episode that advanced both the Prometheus, Vigilante and Mayor Queen storylines while tying them all together, and still delivering great stories for a good chunk of its side characters -- Curtis, Thea and to a lesser extent Felicity are standouts in this one.
Let's quickly cover the flashback sequence, because like last episode there's really not much to talk about -- Anatoly calls for a meeting of all the Bratva leaders, and Oliver exposes that Gregor has been swindling a huge chunk of the money from Kovar into his own pockets instead of to the Bratva account as a whole, causing a good chunk of the Bratva leadership (including Victor) to side with Anatoly and Oliver. Which, naturally, leads to a shoot-out. All of this could've been covered in a single episode with the previous episode's flashback, to be honest -- where are my Talia and Dolph Lundgren? Bah.
Anyway, the cliffhanger from last episode ended up spurring a good chunk of this episode's plotline, where the falsification of Billy Malone's death ends up being made known to the public, and Oliver Queen faces the destruction of both his mayoral and superhero careers. The episode shows off Oliver's conflict very well, as he's beset and overwhelmed by so much. He needs to be present as Mayor Queen, that's for sure, but at the same time Vigilante and Prometheus are tearing up the city (and fighting each other), including one awesome moment where Vigilante shows up to shoot up Oliver's limo. He also has to deal with Thea and Felicity pulling dirty tricks like blackmail and the Pandora information slug to pull strings in his favour, his angry ex-girlfriend Susan Williams... though that bit isn't something I particularly care about. Oh, and Adrian Chase keeps telling Mayor Queen to throw him as the one that engineered the whole fabrication thing.
It's a very well-paced episode, and Oliver ends up throwing his alter-ego Green Arrow under the bus, noting that he's dangerous until proven otherwise, making Green Arrow -- if not the entire team -- targets of the ACU. It's some pretty awesome planning by Prometheus, because whether it's Green Arrow that's discredited, or Mayor Queen being forced to step down, or even if Vigilante shoots Oliver in the head with a sniper rifle, Prometheus wins.
Oliver's struggle isn't whether he could find the villain and arrow him in the chest multiple times before the deadline (though it's a nice moment that he trusts Team Arrow to deal with Vigilante despite the threat of being sniper'd in the head), it's one that deals more with morality. There are many easy -- if illegal -- ways for him to get what he wants. Adrian Chase offered to take the fall. Felicity and especially Thea are very much willing to use information from Pandora to blackmail one of the councilors, which is a very effective way to show how the 'well it's only this one time' argument' for using Pandora fails. It's such a powerful resource, and such an easy way to get what they want. In the end, though, the two characters show different ways of dealing with this after Oliver calls them out on it. Between using Pandora and blackmailing Susan Williams last episode, Thea realizes she's gone too far, that it's an addiction similar to her bloodlust from last season, and she decides to bugger off and resign from her position instead of continuing to be corrupted by power, so to speak.
Felicity, on the other hand, decides to absolutely go all in. Even if she's not straight-up evil like her counterparts the Calculator or Brother Eye were, she's far, far more willing to 'fight fire with fire', and at the end of the episode she contacts MojoSledgeHammer of Helix to finally go all in. Whether Helix turns out to be evil or just kind of extremist in their methods will remain to be seen. It's definitely a far, far more interesting storyline for Felicity, one that makes a huge use of her independence from the OliCity shipping storyline.
Oh, and one of my favourite moments is the debut of Curtis's beautiful, beautiful balls. I mean, T-Spheres (of course Wild Dog and everyone jokes about them being Curtis's balls). It's a great, great moment, because Curtis being shown to not be the best fighter -- he did hold up against Cupid and China White for quite some time last episode, though -- he really needs something to augment his fighting style, and the T-Spheres is this. The moment when he chucks one at Vigilante, only for it to remotely circle around and blow up in Vigilante's face is absolutely awesome.
Sadly, Curtis's badassery and his episode-long cheerful 'omg Paul wants to meet me for dinner' ends up with one of the most heartbreaking moments in the episode. It's a moment that I saw coming from a mile away, of course, but it's still tragic to cut from Curtis interrupting Oliver's speech multiple times to say that he really really needs to go to that dinner, to his being so happy that Paul wants to finally sit down and talk... for Paul to serve him the divorce papers, and we just see Curtis's utterly broken face. That's absolutely heartwrenching.
Oh, of course, all of this pales to the battle between Vigilante and Prometheus. Everyone and their mother expects Vigilante to be Adrian Chase, mostly because, y'know, that's how it was in the comics. But despite the scene where Adrian asks the piece of visor back from Dinah, the fight between Prometheus and Vigilante ends with Vigilante being dropped down a building, and Prometheus unmasking himself to reveal that he's... Adrian Chase. Not quite sure who Vigilante is, and how he got back up in time to show up in the climax to sniper Mayor Queen and do battle against the rest of Team Arrow, but shit, this throws such a huge monkey wrench to Adrian's actions throughout the season. No, Prometheus wasn't Tommy Merlyn, Talia al Ghul, Nyssa al Ghul, Slade Wilson, Claybourne Junior, Zombie Robert Queen or Captain Boomerang (what? A man can theorize), but he's Adrian Chase. And that brings a lot of the manipulations that Adrian has done over the season, like being the one to suggest they cover up Billy Malone's cause of death in the first place, make so much more sense. He's a villain with far more subtlety in his manipulations, perhaps even moreso than Slade or Malcolm ever did.
Of course, that brings up just who Vigilante really is. Maybe one of the other popular options for Prometheus's identity is Vigilante? Maybe Adrian is Fight Clubbing himself?
Shit, whatever happens, it's a huge shake-up to the status quo, and possibly one of the best Arrow episodes we've had in a while.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- So, yeah, in the comics Adrian Chase is the alter-ego of the Vigilante, instead of Prometheus. Wihch was what the show's leading towards when we first had Chase ask for the piece of Vigilante's visor from Dinah, but then the big revelation came. Well, we'll see who Vigilante is, then.
- The T-Spheres are the iconic and signature weapons of the second Mr. Terrific in the comics. While in the comics they do far more than just explode, track objects and whizz around to smack Vigilantes in the face, they're just prototypes here. So.
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