Arrow S05E23 Review: Assumption is the Mother of All Failures

Arrow, Season 5, Episode 23: Lian Yu

Oh my god, it has been so, so long that I've watched a season finale and I felt so absolutely pumped and happy. Yes, a good part of it is because of the insane ten-way combat between all of Arrow's best fighters. A good part of it is because of the sheer mega-nostalgia factor of finally having the flashbacks end with a full-circle homage to the first episode. A good part of it is because of Deathstroke, motherfucking Slade himself, being a main character and a total badass. But even disregarding my inner Slade fanboy, it's a pretty amazing conclusion.

Sure, some dangling questions -- like Vigilante being dropped like halfway through the season for no real reason -- isn't even remotely touched by the finale, but the Adrian Chase story reaches a huge climax and it's easily one of the best season finales I've ever seen. And after how seasons three and four of Arrow absolutely fell apart in their respective finales, it's always a scary moment when I booted up this episode, dreading to see if the goodness of Arrow's fifth season will shatter. 

And, my god, it's an amazing conclusion. It's satisfying not as a conclusion to the season, but to the five-season-long arc in both the flashbacks and the present day sequences, and we're all back to the island where it all began. It's an epic show, as Oliver Queen strives to rescue all his friends and prove to Adrian Chase that he is no longer the killer he used to be, and while Lian Yu has transformed him into someone else, something else... his tenure as the Hood, the Arrow and the Green Arrow has likewise transformed him into yet something else.

But let's go through the episode bit by bit. The reunion between Slade and Oliver is amazingly well done. Slade is easily one of Arrow's best villains (though Malcolm and Chase do give Slade a hell of a run for his money) and seeing him talk to Oliver, having regained sanity after the three years that he's spent in the ARGUS prison, means that he's back to being badass mentor Slade again. It's a complicated history, because Slade clearly remembers killing Moira Queen, fucking up Oliver's life and lots of other stuff and he knows he deserved to be punished. He even questions Oliver the logic of even trusting him to be an ally. But Slade Wilson is truly on the side of the angels, as much as the episode makes two moments where it seemed that Slade has betrayed Oliver -- one quickly dispelled as him faking it before socking Boomerang in the face with the hilariously hammy yet still epic line "assumption is the MOTHER of all FAILURES!" and a second, slightly longer bit when he only pretends so tin order to get Oliver to free his friends. 

It's an amazing scene, and seeing the badass crew of Green Arrow, Deathstroke, Merlyn and Nyssa assembled together (Oliver also frees Captain Boomerang for god knows what reason) is suitably epic. And, well, yeah, as cool as it is to see Captain Boomerang show up again after being stuck in limbo... it felt like an odd bit for Oliver to set him free. Predictably, Boomerang betrays Oliver the first chance he gets, and unlike Malcolm or Slade, Oliver doesn't really have anything to lean back on for recruiting Boomerang. 

Still, as odd as Boomerang's return, it was definitely welcome as it added a huge, huge snarky voice to banter with Oliver and Nyssa, and another badass supervillain into the mix. The fight in front of the cages, with Green Arrow and Deathstroke taking on Talia, Evelyn and Captain Boomerang is amazingly well-done. Evelyn Sharp ends up getting taken out and stuffed in a cage relatively early, and isn't seen for the rest of the episode (and presumably died, because she's not with the huge group that ran around the island later). 

Also possibly dead are Malcolm Merlyn and Captain Boomerang. After that action bit and some heartfelt conversations as they walk through the forest, Thea accidentally steps on the landmine, and with Captain Boomerang and an army of Talia ninjas rushing in, Malcolm does the unexpected and pushes Thea away, taking her place and stepping on the landmine. No, he's not the nicest father out there, and he knows it, and Thea knows it. There's too much bad blood between the two of them to have a proper father-daughter relationship. But damn it, Thea is still his daughter, and Malcolm will be damned if he'll let his daughter get blown up by a landmine. It's an amazingly abrupt scene that works due to its abruptness. Yes, Malcolm definitely deserves a grander exit instead of what amounts to a brief moment in a jam-packed finale.

But damn if it isn't badass. No, he doesn't die as the Demon's Head or the leader of the League of Assassins or the Dark Archer or Oliver Queen's rival. He dies as Thea's father, participating in rescuing her, giving a brief farewell, before gloriously blowing up and taking Captain Boomerang and a lot of mooks with him. Mind you, this is a comic-book show, and as much as John Barrowman notes that he is leaving the Arrowverse... the writers do have a fair amount of leeway, what with making the death not explicit with Thea and the rest of the people with her only seeing the explosion happen with no indication as to whether Malcolm pulls out a last-minute escape with a grapple arrow or whatever.

It's still a badass moment, and also bring Thea's story to a nice bit of closure as she reminisces about the father that Malcolm could've been if things had gone differently, feeling sorrow and loss for a man she has hated for so long. Felicity bonding with her over her own supervillain daddy that took a bullet for her is also amazingly well done. 

Sadly, all the Malcolm stuff ends up feeling rushed, because we quickly get to the Team Arrow/Team Prometheus showdown, and with so many characters it's a little crowded yet still done very well. Deathstroke going around in full armour taking down people is amazing, but standout fight scenes has to be the sister battle between Talia and Nyssa, and Black Siren and Black Canary's sonic scream war. In a nice bit of acknowledging how Laurel was the OG, Black Siren actually overpowered Black Canary's sonic cry until Quentin comes in and wallops evil Laurel over the head. It's pretty epic, really, with even less-involved characters like John Diggle and Wild Dog having time to shine in the fighting.

All of this is juxtaposed with Oliver's final battle against Konstantin Kovar, which honestly felt like it should've been covered in the previous episode, or had its runtime reduced. Which is a little unfair, I know, but as much as I enjoy Dolph Lundgren the Kovar bit is already set in stone. Oliver defeats Kovar in a brutal melee, and gets back home, and his grief-stricken call with the unexpected appearance of Mommy Moira is some of the most well-acted scenes in Arrow. It's amazing to see that we've gone through five seasons to come full circle, and as much as it's just repeating the same old scenes we've seen all the way back in the first episode, seeing the full context of that scene, and having Oliver call Moira and just have both actors pour their hearts out is just... amazing.

Anyway, though, back to the present-day stuff, Adrian Chase's forces are no match for Oliver's. With Boomerang and Evelyn taken out of commission early on, it's honestly only Talia, Siren and Chase himself against Oliver's small army, and after a pretty brutal mano-a-mano slugfest between the two, Oliver still refuses to kill Adrian Chase. And even forced into a corner with the revelation that his son is already dead (which is a twist I can see the show pulling, actually), Oliver refuses to kill Chase. Which, of course, is a good thing since Thea and the geek squad found out that Lian Yu itself is a huge bomb and Chase's dead man switch is the trigger. 

And, well, as Oliver sends the rest of the cast to escape on Chase's jet (which turns out to be sabotaged), he chases Chase down to his boat, escaping onto the waters around Lian Yu as Chase forces Oliver to choose between his son and his friends, as Chase holds a gun on William's throat. Kill Chase, and his friends all die but his son lives, but don't kill Chase, and William goes bye-bye. Oliver, rather brilliantly (and hilariously), shoots Chase in the leg and rips William out of the maniac's hands, but the tension is easily at its peak as Oliver is just reduced to a desperate father. 

But in a pretty clever callback to season one's "I have two earthquake engines" plot twist, Chase doesn't leave anything to chance. The plane is sabotaged, and while the rest of the supporting characters make a break for the ARGUS supply boat (and I bet they make it, killing off all but one character won't make for a great season six) it still leaves enough tension and questions unanswered. Adrian Chase shoots himself in the head, showing that, shit, he has a way to end this in a way where he wins in one way or another, and blows up the entirety of Lian Yu.

The episode ends on a cliffhanger, with a dead psychopath, two armies of supervillains and superheroes having a go at each other, Oliver sticking to his guns despite everything, and it's an absolutely epic showdown, putting Flash's rather unfulfilling one to shame. No, I don't buy that the entire supporting cast just died, but at the same time it'll be one helluva epic season premiere and I wouldn't put it past the showmakers crippling or killing a couple of the supporting characters for drama reasons. 

Man, that was good. Let me go watch the fight scenes once more. 

Also, woo, we've finally, finally cleared all of this season's superhero seasons! Over the next week we'll power through Gotham's third season and maybe I'll touch Legion, but we'll take a break from superhero TV shows and talk about some older shows. I'm actually going to watch Walking Dead from where I left off, so we'll probably talk about that. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Captain Boomerang returns from limbo after he was arrested and impounded in season three's "the Brave and the Bold", being one of the many characters that CW was forbidden to use in 2016 and stuck in relative limbo because WB was going to use him in Suicide Squad.
• Oh, Samantha Clayton also returns, after last appearing in season four where William was kidnapped by Darhk.
• The final scenes of the flashback, with Oliver donning his fake beard and long hair, and shooting the pyre with a fire arrow, was the first scenes that happened in Arrow's first episode, bringing us full circle. 
• A reference to Slade's son, Jo (presumable a reference to Joseph Wilson, otherwise known as the Teen Titan Jericho) is made by Oliver, who has located him. The existence of Jo Wilson was alluded to several times across the first and second seasons of Arrow, though we never saw him.
• Adrian Chase notes that his death, shooting himself in the head with a revolver on a boat with Oliver in it, is similar to how Robert Queen shot himself (which kickstarted this whole thing in the first place). It's also a bit of a mythology nod to how the comic-book Adrian Chase/Vigilante died, although comics!Adrian Chase is a lot more heroic and his suicide was due to guilt over being, well, a violent vigilante.
• The land mines, which are relatively prominently featured in season two's Lian Yu flashbacks, make a deadly return.
• A bit of a hard easter egg, but the move that Oliver uses to disarm and take down Evelyn is one of the earlier techniques that Slade taught him all the way back in season one's "the Odyssey". Slade's line when he seems to give up and join the bad guys is also a callback to that same scene, which is why Oliver knew to attack.