Arrow S3E8 Review: Boomerang! Flash! Lyla! ARGUS!

Arrow, Season 3, Episode 8: The Brave and the Bold

This episode sort of picks up from the Flash crossover episode, except not really. Like I said before, both episodes are pretty standalone, and that difference is pretty inherent right down to the tone of both episodes, with Flash's episode focusing more on the general formula of Flash learning new things about being a superhero, and Arrow's episode having a distinct theme of darkness and Oliver's more brutal, kill-happy past. I'm also a big fan of how none of the characters feel needlessly out-of-character… though Oliver is a bit of a dick. But then we all know he's a bit of a control freak and Barry is sort of intruding in his thing.

Also, I'm a big fan about how they handled Captain Boomerang. Between Captain Boomerang and Rainbow Raider, they really are using the Flash's two least threatening and most ridiculous enemies, aren't they? Except that logically speaking, Captain Boomerang really does feel out of place as one of Flash's enemies and being someone trained with exotic weapons, he really does feel more of an opponent to Green Arrow. And it works this time around with Captain Boomerang actually facing off against his traditional opponent, the Flash, but the one that takes him down in a physical confrontation is Green Arrow while Flash is forced to use his superspeed to deal with the whole 'I placed a lot of bombs across the city set to go off at the same time' thing.

Also, we've got a lot of intrigue about ARGUS and just how dark it really is. But really, the main point of the episode is more about Barry and Oliver's interactions, which is nice because we didn't really get that much of those in Flash's episode. It was mostly just cool fight scenes GO! And here it's nice to see that getting properly explored.

There's a bit of a Batman-Superman vibe as Barry finally sees for the first time how Oliver does his torture tactics, and he's utterly horrified when he sees it in person, despite defending Oliver's tactics during the Flash episode. And I thought it was pretty well-done how they cut away from the more grimdark arrow torture scene back in the Flash crossover, yet they show the full ramifications here. And I do like Oliver Queen, control freak that he is, slightly explode at Barry when he starts questioning his methods. It may have been a bit overdone, but Oliver has done the same to Diggle and others before, so it's not completely out of character for him.

And Barry, with his more naïve wand upstanding worldview, manages to get Oliver get over his self-loathing, manages to get Oliver that he can inspire people as well and all that, which is nice. Again, while I'm not too big on the sudden 'Tommy died so suddenly I don't kill' excuse, this one works pretty naturally, and I am a big fan on the overall, gradual softening of Oliver throughout the three seasons… and with Barry going on about how the Arrow is a douche and how Oliver himself is admitting he's losing pieces of his soul to the mask, maybe it is time he adopts a different name? Something, like, oh, I dunno, Green Arrow? I mean, I would be absolutely happy about it. Also, Oliver takes the route that doesn't involve torturing Boomerang, which is nice too. I'm also a big fan on how they managed to solve the 'five bombs will detonate at the same time' conundrum, which is a lot simpler and much more of a mundane solution than what I would think.

Again, there's a distinct sense of a Batman-vs-Superman mentality going on, with Oliver going 'this is my city, this is my rules' and 'your city is a lot more sunshine and smiles and all compared to mine', while Team Flash (mostly Cisco and Caitlin) having to slightly deal with the reality that it's not just a big fun game anymore when they see someone actually lying there, bloodied and dying. It's a nice development for both parties, and it's given its own unique twist so it isn't a Batman-Superman rehash. For one, other than some harsh words being exchanged between the two and the whole enraged thing from the Flash episode, at no point does Flash and Arrow actually come to blows, verbally or physically. I mean, they have that friendly match in the end (which we don't see the result of, naturally) but other than that they really are good buddies and I really like that.

Also, as Barry claims, he's been taking Oliver's advice to heart and is visibly more concerned about getting the people away from safety. Like the moment preceding the confrontation with Boomerang (in a train station no less!) we get an awesome scene of Flash just zipping every single civilian out before a repeat of the Captain Cold incident appears. And like Oliver did in the Flash episode, Barry makes a pretty awesome dynamic entry catching those two boomerangs. Pretty awesome all around.

And, well, aside from Barry and Oliver, can we talk about Digger Harkness, our big bad villain for this episode? They made Captain Boomerang a legitimate, freaking threat and it was awesome. Boomerang's boomerangs actually look downright lethal, he uses explosive boomerangs (we get some neat explanation about just why they are awesome) and that scene where he mows down all the ARGUS agents by using boomerangs as daggers, and then the battle against Oliver and Roy where he was actually winning for a bit? Boomerang is awesome. Right up until the end where he goes on the one-on-one match against Oliver, Captain Boomerang is just going around kicking ass and taking names and it is simply brilliant.

We also get a bit of his backstory, that he's an agent for Task Force X (or Suicide Squad, as Diggle helpfully reminds us of its real, awesome name) who was actually attempted to be killed. Lyla was the one who wiped out Boomerang and his team -- presumably one that didn't include Deadshot or Bronze Tiger -- but failed to kill Boomerang because of a chip malfunction, leading to his vendetta against Lyla. Captain Boomerang is actually a thematically perfect villain for this whole angle, since his whole 'things can come back to haunt you' thing makes perfect sense with boomerangs.

Boomerang manages to out-gambit everyone from Team Arrow, ARGUS and Team Flash to infiltrate the Arrowcave and nearly kill Lyla, and would've succeeded if someone running around at superspeed hadn't been around. He's also pre-empted Flash's superspeed enough and planted all those bombs around the city.

Captain Boomerang's awesome. His fight scenes are awesome. What more can I say? They made freaking Captain Boomerang awesome and they didn't even have to change him as much as Rainbow Raider. I am so happy with all these faithful-yet-awesome adaptations of silly characters.

And tying into Boomerang, we get to see a fair bit of Lyla and Diggle, the former who's been pretty much nonexistent for the past few episodes. We get a bit of a fun moment between the two, especially Lyla's bafflement when Barry just zips in, nonchalantly eating sushi. Diggle and Lyla also have a bit of an argument going on about them keeping secrets from each other, but they're at least professional enough to let the other know about things when needed. Also, Barry is absolutely flabbergasted that Diggle didn't tell Lyla about his secret identity, when Diggle just shakes his head and goes 'no, man' which is funny. Diggle finally proposes to Lyla at the end of the episode, which is nice.

Less nice is the scene when Lyla gets boomerang'd in the side of the chest and for a moment everyone is going 'she's not breathing!' and everything, and for a moment I thought Lyla was really going to bite the dust. She seems to be the perfect candidate to be killed off too. She's a prominent enough character for the audience to care, she's morally ambiguous and her death could be something of an ironic, karmic justice thing, and considering how a lot of scenes have focused on Diggle really being lovey-dovey for his family, it seems like a pretty obvious, cruel thing to do. But thankfully the Flash's around.

Lyla also gets to talk to Oliver and they talk about extremes and stuff and how they need to be extreme to deal with maniacs like Boomerang, but that might or might not be just something Amanda Waller's drilled into both of them. I can't totally disagree with their point here, though, because Oliver doesn't have Barry hanging out in Starling City all the time.

Felicity doesn't really get much to do this time other than be the one that interacts the most with Team Flash due to being more acquainted with them and getting off some funny salmon ladder jokes (seeing Barry superspeed the salmon ladder is funny) but she's otherwise just doing her thing. There's the moment about how Felicity tries to get Cisco not to call their base the Arrowcave, and Roy immediately calls it exactly that in the next scene. Roy, having missed out on the Flash crossover episode, gets some funny scenes. We get a bit of a 'only sane man' going on between Roy and Diggle, and Roy does get a fun fight scene during the massive triple melee between him, Oliver and Boomerang. Boomerang knocks away his bow and he pulls out twin batons, which look awesome -- man, Roy needs to get more screentime. I really want to see him do a lot more other than just be Oliver's shadow.

Also, Roy initially goes 'who are these people I don't trust them' and immediately switches to 'man you guys are okay' the moment Cisco goes up to his costume and fangasms over it. And I do agree with Cisco… Arsenal's costume is awesome. Cisco and Caitlin make Oliver an updated costume that's supposed to improve his improvement by being lighter and more sturdy and everything, which is nice -- Oliver's costume really does need a bit of an upgrade, especially when he's running around next to Roy's super-awesome getup.

Caitlin and Cisco, like Felicity, do their thing with Cisco being the rowdier one that's constantly getting hyped and happy about every single thing. Caitlin mentions something about the Sara bit, but that isn't really explored. Cisco gets some fun jokes especially when Felicity and Roy immediately shots him down for ogling Thea. Cisco's fun. He's a bit of an idiot, but he's fun.

There's a fair amount of fun moments throughout the episode, which is nice -- just like how Oliver brought in a sense of reality to Team Flash, Barry also brings in a sense of fun to Team Arrow. There's the moment where Barry just sends paper flying all around in his wake, Barry just tying up an entire contingent of Bratva goons without them realizing what's happened, Ollie and Diggle trying their hardest not to get pissed at Cisco and Barry having fun… I like it loads.

The minor characters, unfortunately, get severely shafted, not helped by the normally-elusive Lyla showing up and taking up a fair chunk of screentime. Ray Palmer (Palmer Industries' logo shows up on the side of the building, though), Malcolm Merlyn, Ted Grant and Katana's family in the flashbacks are completely absent, Laurel shows up for around ten seconds saying that he needs to talk to Oliver -- but we don't find out what this is about. Quentin also only shows up to talk to Barry a bit and give him some information (no reason why Green Arrow can't just call him and ask directly). Thea shows up for two scenes, one just being shocked by a certain flash zipping past, and apparently trying to tell that dickwad Chase not to get the wrong idea, and then showing up serving drinks.

The flashback plot is a bit distracting, to be honest, and I would've wished for it to be done with entirely because this is a nice example of it breaking up the flow. Yes, we learn just why Oliver feels that it's necessary to torture people, because in the past someone blew up Hong Kong because he couldn't get the information on time. We get a nice little monologue on how killing and inflicting pain is different, and we get to see Amanda Waller being a massive masterminding bitch, which is always welcome, but other than that, though, did we really need to have these scenes? They're thematically interwoven into the episode, but I can't help but feel that it took a fair bit from the episode and just felt odd.

It does raise some questions about Oliver's true ties to Amanda Waller and indeed ARGUS in general, though. I am curious. What is Waller's agenda in Hong Kong, trying to groom him into an assassin and everything?

Captain Boomerang is apparently imprisoned in Lian Yu next to Slade Wilson… and I can't help but think that the two of them might show up in the future. After all, Boomerang is mentioned to be a former member of the ASIS or something, the same organization that Deathstroke was in. Also, they both know the location of the Arrowcave, at least… maybe we can get a dual breakout? As a sidenote, I never realized that Captain Boomerang's background has him be an Australian, which should be blindingly obvious but it never occurred to me before.

We get a couple of nice comic book nods. Lyla and Oliver briefly almost bring up the episode title, "the Brave and the Bold", which is fun. With the excuse of Barry being around, someone I think refers to Roy Harper as 'Speedy', which is a cool little nod to his original comic book codename, which looks like it's going to be assumed by Thea somewhere in the future. Quentin also calls Barry 'Bart Allen', more commonly known as Impulse and Barry's descendant from the future. Also, I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but Quentin jokes about him being put on a bus or something, which may or may not refer to Bart Allen's death in the comics which is succeeded soon by Barry's own coming to life? Or I might just be looking too much into things.

Overall, though, a pretty awesome, fun episode. I do hope for future team-ups (and Felicity making a costume rack for Barry seems to imply this is going to happen some more times in the future) and Captain Boomerang returning either in this show or in the Flash.

Next up, bring on Ra's al Ghul!