Arrow S06E16 Review: Good-Bye Speedy

Arrow, Season 6, Episode 16: The Thanatos Guild

So we say good-bye, at least for now, to one of the original cast members of Arrow. Willa Holland's Thea Queen isn't the most consistently-written character, but I've definitely enjoyed the moments where she's been allowed to shine, particularly in the third and fourth seasons where she ends up being an actual major part of the cast as opposed to 'that bratty kid sister'. This episode ends up as one last final hurrah for her... in theory.

In practice, there's a laughably weirdly campy quality to the plotline presented by "the Thanatos Guild" that makes it feel like a weird side-quest in a long-running video game. Yes, all this huge Ricardo Diaz, Black Siren, Outsiders stuff? Let's put all of that on hold as an NPC shows up to give huge exposition dumps about the plot device that you need to recover and the incoming apocalypse that you must totally prevent. I thought that it was particularly video-game-y at the points when Nyssa was just going on and on about Merlyn's secret plan.

Which, let us recap -- before his death, Malcolm Merlyn (a) founded the Thanatos Guild, a group of assassins he never mentions even when Thea was in danger last season, and (b) discovered the existence of the Ley-Lines all over the world. And from those Ley-Lines Malcolm Merlyn mapped out the existence of three more Lazarus Pits, and then put them in a map with bacteria that will only respond to Thea Queen's blood, and then put that map in a weird-ass Hellraiser Cube, and then put that cube inside some mysterious metal inside a trapped building in Star City which somehow survived throughout two entire season's worth of abuse. Didn't Damien Darhk collapse half of the city in season four?

Yeah, all the storylines leading around the Thanatos Guild really doesn't make that much sense to really think about it. It's a plotline created solely in service of Thea Queen's character and to make her farewell be action-packed and also revolve around a "Sins of the Father"  parallel between her, Oliver and the very welcome return of Nyssa al-Ghul. It's an interesting choice to have Thea, after initially rejecting the call to all this madness and adventure, decide to stop running away and try to sort of get the best of both worlds. She feels the responsibility to right Malcolm's wrongs, and she also feels the need to just get out of vigilantism and go ride off to the sunset with Roy. So she has both. At the end of the episode, Thea goes off with Roy and Nyssa as the Lazarus Pit Busting Team or something, with a neat and upbeat farewell for one of the show's original members.

There's definitely a disconnect considering a good chunk of Thea's season four personality growth is trying to control her post-Lazarus-Pit bloodlust, but here it's portrayed as her finding a purpose in destroying Malcolm's evils, as much as Oliver finds purpose in wearing the hood and being the Green Arrow. Notably, in several conversations with Diggle and Thea, Oliver notes how he's subconsciously delaying handing the hood over back to Diggle after more than two months because, well, he's feeling really comfortable in the hood. That's actually a question I do have for the show -- why bother with all the ceremony of "John Diggle is the Green Arrow!" and then have that last for all of four episodes? I'm not sure if Diggle will go "s'cool man" or if we'll have a bigger fallout... but it's a neat enough thing to explore.

The titular Thanatos Guild and its leader, Athena, are... serviceable. They're not particularly memorable, but they serve as a neat little antagonist for this story arc. Which, yes, is rushed as all hell, and should've probably run the course of a season or two instead of an episode, but it's sort of a necessary evil, I guess, considering the fact that apparently Willa Holland had wanted out all the way since the conclusion of season four.

One thing, though, that really kind of pisses me off is how Roy is definitely just a secondary character in this episode, just there to make jokes, exchange some bro-hugs and exchange lovey-dovey platitudes with Thea. The scenes between Thea and Roy feel insanely rushed and I wished we had cut out some of the more extraneous Thanatos Guild stuff like Tigressa and spent more time with Thea and Roy.

Have a bit of a complaint for the action scenes in this episode, too, which rely way too much on shaky-cam that makes a lot of the mid-episode fight scenes feel somewhat incomprehensible. The fact that Arsenal, Speedy and Nyssa are dressed in similar colours with the Thanatos Guild dudes (albeit in different permutations) makes it worse...  although Roy's silly hat makes it pretty clear when it's him.

All and all, it definitely could've been worse. And the episode was a lot of fun! Nyssa continually trolling Felicty by enforcing her status as Oliver's wife with the most deadpan expression on her face, Roy with that dumbass cap noting how he's totally over all this superhero shit. And Curtis being a happy Curtis palling around with Dinah and Zoe and some handsome cop is a fun if unmemorable B-plot. And... yeah, it does feel way too rushed, but at least it's a relatively okay conclusion to Thea Queen's story as she rides off to the sunset after a tearful goodbye with Oliver. It's not the best episode, but it definitely could've been worse. Trust me, I watched episode 14.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Thanatos Guild and Athena are original to the show. While there is a minor League of Assassins member in the comics called Tigris, none are called Tigressa. 
• Throughout the episode, Roy wears a hat when going into the field, a reference to how Roy Harper in the New 52 comics wears a costume with a hat. 
• Magical Leylines are part of many of DC's magical storylines, most notably the Hellblazer series starring Constantine. Nyssa notes that where the Leylines intersect is where a Lazarus Pit is formed, and I think some versions of Batman stories confirms this.
• Lots of callback to previous episodes, among them: 
• Vertigo was a drug introduced in the first season of Arrow, pushed by the Count, and was briefly revisited in the third season, pushed by a second incarnation of Count Vertigo. 
• Nyssa and Oliver got married in the third season, something that Nyssa uses to troll Felicity throughout the episode. 
• Roy makes a reference to freezing a bomb, a reference to the third season's first episode, where Roy does exactly that. 
• Oliver and Thea's final parting words are an inversion of a line of dialogue they had in the original episode.