Arrow, Season 6, Episode 18: Fundamentals

Still, the episode isn't all bad. By boiling things down to a single character and not ping-ponging the entire episode throughout multiple plot points like what we did during the worst of the Arrow Civil War bit, we just sit down with Oliver Queen, and his heightened anger and temper is easily excused (even by William and Felicity) by Vertigo amplifying the emotions that are already there. And, of course, Prometheus is an amazing foil for Oliver, by noting that, no, none of Oliver's past villains are his biggest fear. Oliver's biggest fear is that all the shit Prometheus said about him last season is actually right. And honestly? All evidence points to yes.
Ultimately the Vertigo-induced vision causes Oliver to choose his original season one fundamentals, which... which I'm not sure is what Oliver should be taking from his drug-induced hallucinations. Especially since the whole reason that Oliver nearly gets killed by walking into a police precinct as a one-man army is shut down by Felicity and Quentin arriving and telling him it's a bad idea... so if anything else, he should be taking in the lesson that, no, he isn't stronger alone.
Still, despite the flimsy premise of the episode, and the fact that there is no reason for Diaz to stand patiently in that room with an army while Oliver and Felicity were having their big moment of clarity outside, or that Oliver doesn't have a Vertigo antidote recipe somewhere in that base of his, it's still an amazingly acted episode with Stephen Ammell really flexing off some neat acting muscles. So despite it being a bad episode on paper, it's actually a very enjoyable watching experience nonetheless.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Oliver uses his old... season one? Two? An old costume, anyway, thanks to a hallucination of him using said suit to tell him to 'return to the mission'. Likewise, "you have failed this city", Oliver's season one catchphrase, returns.
- Earth-1 Laurel and Prometheus return in Oliver's hallucinations, obviously.
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