Arrow, Season 7, Episode 11: Past Sins
It's an all right episode, but I'm not sure how much of that stems from me really liking the continuity nods and geeking out at the past villains showing up in the Suicide Squad (I'm going to keep calling it that) segment. There's also a nice lack of flash-forward scenes in this episode, and at this point I can probably say that Arrow's flash-forwards do nothing for me.
Let's talk about the Oliver storyline first, where his conversation with Emiko went over really, really badly -- although in Oliver's case, he was being insistent and kind of a dick. Which... which honestly feels a bit weird to me, considering Oliver was all wishy-washy on whether he even has the right to meet Emiko after all the crap his shitty parents pulled. And that's the theme of the episode, I guess -- the Queen parents are kind of shitty people, as Emiko's not the only 'past sin' from Oliver's parents to come back and haunt him.
The villain of the week is a dude called Sam Hackett, the son of Hackett the bodyguard that Robert Queen shot and killed in the very first episode of the series, which... which is an honestly pretty great call-back! This was something that was brought up to our attention during that prison psychologist scene, which is neat-o, and apparently all of the supposedly-censored records ended up being discovered by Sam Hackett, who's out of revenge.
We get a pretty standard but well-executed 'go and track down the villain before he kills the hostage' sequence for the first two-thirds of the episode, with Oliver angsting on just how much his family's fucked up and that his family destroys everything it touches. Although, as Oliver himself rightly points out, never giving Hackett's family any closure is kind of an oversight on his part. Even if Oliver had wanted to hide Robert's murder for selfish reasons, at least tell Hackett's family that, yeah, he totally died of starvation or something, I dunno. And Dinah is kind of a character that's honestly been pretty bland to me after the whole Vigilante situation was over with, but she's being a pretty great, supporting friend in this season. I liked that.
The final act of this storyline ends up with Sam Hackett taking the SCPD building hostage with some electrical-charged trap, which is a pretty fun minor supervillain thing to do, and I do like the pretty cheesy scene with Oliver basically letting his fate in the hands of Star City's good policemen, having faith that they'll do the right thing. He then denounces his father's murder of Hackett senior in a television interview, and this ends up earning some tsundere "maybe you aren't that bad" moment with Emiko. It's neat.
The episode's actually pretty focused on Oliver, but we do have two B-plots. The Felicity/Laurel one was... it was a lot shorter, but I feel like it has a fair amount of emotional content. Laurel-2 freaks out over meeting some dude called Brett Collins, which we discover through brief flashbacks (thus meeting the flashback quota of this episode) was her first kill back in Earth-2. Brett Collins, as we find out later, was the drunk driver that killed Earth-2 Quentin Lance (after an anime-esque argument between parent and child, too!), which brings a sad but well-done context to just why Laurel-2 was so vulnerable around our Quentin. It plays to the whole 'past sins' theme as much as Oliver's does, and it's pretty neat! And considering how much Laurel freaks out and really wants to get rid of Brett, it's actually a pretty great scene! I kind of like Laurel-2 a lot more now. That scene with "but the wine!" with Felicity is also a fun, hilarious moment.
The Suicide Squad side of the episode is... I find it kind of fun, actually. The recruits for the Ghost Suicide Patrol Squad, in addition to Ricardo Diaz himself, include China White, Cupid and Joe Wilson (who I legitimately forgot existed, and couldn't recognize out of costume). We get some pretty fun dialogue exchanges between Diggle and the Suicide Squad nominees, we get a fun little jibe on the inability to use the Suicide Squad name... and some general arguments between Diggle and Curtis about the ethics of putting bombs in criminals' heads.
We then get a pretty hilarious line from Ricardo Diaz about how "you think it's a good idea to give me drugs?" as Curtis explains some technobabble that means he's going to shut down the Suicide Squad's bombs in order to make sure they work. And then Diaz escapes, naturally, and breaks out the other Suicide Squad nominees. And it's... it's actually pretty believable considering the plot armour Ricardo Diaz has had throughout the past two seasons, but at the point when he snaps Curtis's neck, it's kind of obvious that this is a hallucination of some sort.
And it turns out that the whole thing is a virtual reality simulation that Curtis does in order to prevent the Suicide Squad from being implemented at all, but a way in order to get the Dante information out of Diaz without actually having to make a deal with him. It is very cathartic to see Diaz screaming, angry at being played, and it's honestly a pretty badass moment for Curtis. Unfortunately, Diggle is still pretty intent on continuing on with the Suicide Squad, which pisses off Curtis a lot. I'm... I'm not sure where we're going with the Diggle stuff? Like, I like the Suicide Squad as a concept and am happy to see them back, but Diggle as the Amanda Waller replacement seems odd.
Ultimately, though, it's a pretty great episode. I will keep saying it, but Arrow has always been pretty poor at long-term planning, and is always best when it takes things slow and focuses on its individual episodes. This is definitely a great example of it, helping to further the Suicide Squad and Emiko storylines while still remaining pretty satisfyingly self-contained with its three plotlines. I only knew later on that this is the directional debut of David Ramsey (John Diggle's actor), which just makes me all happy inside.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Curtis was about to lampshade the Ghost Initiative's original name, Suicide Squad, before he gets cut off by Diggle.
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