Arrow S05E16 Review: Hurt

Arrow, Season 5, Episode 16: Checkmate

Whoops, missed an episode. So yeah, a pretty strong episode of Arrow. Oliver Queen confronts Adrian Chase with the knowledge that he's Prometheus, and Chase's reaction is basically "good, I don't have to put up with this good guy act." He makes it clear to Ollie, Quentin and Rene that, yes, he is Prometheus, and there's nothing they can do about in since all of them are high-profile members of the city, and he's not going to go down easy if they decide to come after him the traditional way. Chase's definitely a very interesting villain.

Chase being Prometheus isn't the biggest twist out there, because there's always a shifty way about how Chase carries himself. And, yes, he's either going to be the Vigilante as his comic-book counterpart or he's going to be Prometheus, but either way the cat's out of the bag, and he's now playing an absolute thorn in Oliver's side -- in both his lives. We still don't quite know anything about Chase's master plan beyond "make Oliver hurt", and whether he truly is the son of Jason Claybourne, but we did discover that his real name isn't Adrian Chase but rather Simon Morrison, leaving it open for Vigilante to be an Adrian Chase whose identity was stolen. It's like the Zoom/Jay Garrick thing all over again, but done right.

Chase has kidnapped Susan, and this thing has prevented Oliver from really moving against him. And to make things worse, Oliver traveled to a knockoff of Nanda Parbat to meet his old buddy Talia... who reveals herself to not just have trained Chase, but actually helped him to become Prometheus. Talia reveals her true name of Talia Al Ghul, and while she's estranged from her father she's pissed that Oliver killed him. Nevermind that he's a huge terrorist, he's still Talia's father and she will have her revenge.

Which gets far more complicated when Talia actually shows up to help Prometheus take down Green Arrow in a fight, and actually kidnap him at the end of the episode.

Prometheus is constantly one step ahead of Oliver, really (or TEN STEPS AHEAD! as he keeps reminding us). Oliver wants to talk to Chase's wife? A SWAT team is ready to arrest the dangerous vigilante. Try and get inspector Pike to investigate? Hobo-mode Chase stabs him and leaves him in a coma. Hell, even kidnapping Oliver at the end ensures that none of his allies can reveal his identity to the public.

Susan being kidnapped drives a good chunk of the plot, and it's just a shame that I don't really care for her. It's understandable that Team Arrow wouldn't let Susan die, but she left as much of an impact as me as Thea's HIVE boyfriend from the last season, which is not at all. Still, she is a damsel in distress, and her kidnapping sets up some pretty great fight scenes between Oliver and Prometheus that honestly feels a lot more kung fu-y than the half of Iron Fist I've watched.

Chase's constant telling of Oliver how he's ten steps ahead gets a bit tiresome, but Oliver brings his wife into the mix. It's not the cruel "Imma blow her head off!" type of thing, of course, but she's brought out when Prometheus has unmasked himself and revealed himself to be Adrian Chase (or Simon Hurt Morrison) and his wife is something he didn't expect to show up. Of course, he's a villain so he stabs his wife and leaves her for dead, and there's a nice bit where he actually looks like he feels fucking sorry about all of it, but does so because putting an innocent woman's death at the hands of the Green Arrow vilifies the vigilante and makes him a sad man whose wife was killed by this dangerous fucker. And yes, Chase's wife is less of a person than Susan Williams, but the moment hits nonetheless, with Chase's anger and hatred being so consuming that he threw away his family to further that agenda a little bit is amazingly done.

The B-plots in the episode aren't as well done, I think, and sadly the Russian flashback has lost a lot of what made it so good earlier in the season. It's just Oliver Queen donning the hood and becoming a vigilante to murder the Gregor faction, before going back to fighting Kovar over... shit, the girl from last season's island plot? Gregor dies without much of an incident, but his "if you kill me you'll regret what you'll become" thing is absolutely weird and seems to have come out of nowhere. Boo. Still, we did get a great line from Anatoly: "What is thing you do with voice?"

Felicity's plotline is a lot nicer, as Helix asks some quid pro quo from her. Helix helps her out in locating Susan, but in exchange for Felicity redirecting some satellites. Curtis tries to get Felicity to, well, not do any of this morally ambiguous bullshit, but what choice does she have? She has a resource, a way to find this innocent woman, but at the same time it's also figuratively selling her soul to a very well-spoken devil. Kojo Sledgehammer (or, well, more likely K0J0513dG3h4|\/||\/|3R) is very nice and cheery, and as far as Felicity is knowing they're doing the right thing, if slightly outside the law... which isn't it the same thing that the Green Arrow is doing? Very curious where Helix will end up leading, and if we're going to get the Helix plot tied into the Prometheus one. 

Overall, a pretty strong episode. Smaller moments I didn't get to talk about include the very well-acted frustrated Oliver Queen, Curtis and Dinah's interactions while investigating, and the T-Spheres being even more useful.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Prometheus's real real name is revealed to be Simon Morrison, and a combination of his first name and his actions bring to mind Simon Hurt, a Batman villain whose first modern appearance involves him causing character assassinations of the Wayne family (similar to how Prometheus is fucking up Green Arrow's legacy) and having a personal connection to Batman. Of course, the similarities aren't that obvious, but Simon Hurt as the inspiration for Arrow's Prometheus makes a hell lot more sense compared to the actual DC character Prometheus.
• Anatoly and Oliver's talk about needing someone to pull data out of the bullet-ridden laptop is a callback (or call-forward depending on your perspective) to Oliver's first meeting with Felicity, where he recruits her to decipher data from a bullet-ridden laptop.
• Talia being romantically involved with Batman (or allied with Green Arrow, in this case) but ending up choosing her father when her loyalties are put to the test, is a common plotline in practically every single one of her appearances.