Arrow S3E9 Review: Ra's al Ghul

Arrow, Season 3, Episode 9: the Climb

Pretty awesome episode. The episode mostly cuts back and forth between Oliver climbing a mountain and the events that led up to it, hence the title. It's a pretty eventful episode, too, with lots of revelations and things being told here.

First up, the true identity of the killer of Sara is revealed to be... Thea Queen! Malcolm has apparently drugged his own daughter with some kind of mind-controlling amnesia-inducing herb thing found in Corto Maltese, and brought Thea to Starling City for the express purpose of murdering Sara, the assassin sent after Malcolm. It's a massively insane gambit on Malcolm's part, but it's one that seems to somewhat pay off. Thea is someone who will catch Sara off-guard, as we saw in her death scene, and Malcolm even has a video proving Thea's identity, so it won't be another cop-out like how Roy-the-killer was.

Anyway, the DNA left behind in the arrow is a near-identical match to Oliver's DNA, and after a bit we learn that it's not Malcolm planting the DNA on the arrow, but rather it's because Thea is the one who shot them. We get a bit where Oliver has to confront Thea but not reveal too much -- still curious why Oliver doesn't just tell her everything, which I'm sure will get Thea on his side if not away from Merlyn's. But whatever the case, Oliver comes twice, first as Oliver and then as the Arrow, and Oliver sees that Thea at least is lying about some things, with her giving Oliver a bit of a nice, brief scuffle.

Then Malcolm confronts Oliver and delivers his ultimatum: either try and reveal Malcolm as the instigator and cause the League to kill both Malcolm and Thea, or go and hand himself in and face Ra's al Ghul in a trial of combat. Knowing that Oliver will not sacrifice Thea, Malcolm has basically made his two greatest enemies fight each other to the death. And, obviously, the victor in this matchup is pretty obvious. After disappearing in the second season and sitting in the sidelines for most of the third, Malcolm Merlyn is back, full with villainy and vengeance and awesomeness. You go, Malcolm.

Thea isn't half-bad herself, considering that I absolutely abhorred her during her emo phase. She's a lot more fun and interesting now. We get that last hug between Thea and Oliver, where she probably just is confused about all that's happening and refusing to believe that his father is evil. And those two little snowman-cookie things with 'Oliver' and 'Thea' written on it? Pretty sad, considering what happens. And how she manages to pretend to be a weak little girl before suddenly busting out moves and jumping off the railing, leading to the most hilarious 'what in the fuck' look from Oliver.

Also, all the respect to Oliver for braving through all this to protect his little sister.

And a lot of the puzzle pieces regarding Sara's murder is starting to get pieced together, how the whole 'trajectory' thing isn't because of Mirakuru strength but because of Thea's shorter height, and how Sara recognized the killer and everything. A mind-controlled Thea is a pretty fun twist, but it's not the only one here.

First up, the League is starting to move, which had instigated the massive manhunt for Thea's killer. Nyssa is basically threatening to scourge Starling City and kill a lot of people if Sara's killer isn't brought to justice, and we get to see a bunch of random League assassins just string Oliver up like it's no problem. We get some additional backstory about the League's history and methods and whatnot, and Oliver eventually submits himself to the League, claiming that he is Sara's murderer with the justification that Sara was the one who asked for it -- which is actually a pretty good reason considering Sara's past clash with Nyssa.

I like Nyssa. This show makes her so much likable than her comic counterpart. Nyssa is still doing her thing as Ra's daughter wanting vengeance and all that.

We also get some monologue from Ra's stating that the League of Assassins is cleaning the filth of the world, ridding of all the corruption and whatnot even if they, y'know, murder a lot of people. It's a nice adaptation of the comic book's version of Ra's al Ghul's goals, with the ultimate goal being a better world, and damn whoever has the misfortune to get in their way.

Ra's, on the other hand... if there is any doubt that this Ra's al Ghul is more faithful to the comics, there is certainly none by the end of this episode. We get oblique references to the Lazarus Pit, how Ra's calls Oliver a boy and how his last challenge is sixty-five years ago. Ra's al Ghul's fight against Oliver in the end? Absolutely beautiful. Ra's completely destroys Oliver bare-handed, stealing Oliver's sword from him and just absolutely parrying and having fun with Oliver, and I do like how Ra's al Ghul's threat isn't cheapened by having him spare Oliver or whatnot. After all, Oliver is no Batman. Ra's absolutely destroys Oliver in that battle, culminating in a stab through the chest and kicking him down a mountain. I do like how Oliver seems to suddenly get a second wind as they approach the edge of the cliff, seemingly playing weak to drive the obviously-playing Ra's down the mountain, but no. Throat chop. Ra's, you are awesome.

Ra's also knows that Oliver isn't the one responsible for Sara's murder, which is awesome and will probably clear the bad blood between Nyssa and Oliver. Do like the little prayer Ra's gives Oliver before sending him plummeting to his apparent death, which shows just how honorable Ra's really is.

Also, the shirtless battle of swords with Ra's al Ghul might or might not be based on a fairly old comic featuring a similar confrontation between Batman and Ra's, which is certainly welcome. Except unlike Batman, Oliver stands absolutely no chance. And considering how the big bad of season one, Merlyn, is absolutely pissing in his pants at the mention of Ra's al Ghul, and how Oliver is able to give the big bad of season two, Slade, a run for his money even with Mirakuru... Ra's is awesome.

Now, I don't buy for a second that Oliver will die from this fight... a stab through the right side of the chest is synonymous to 'near-fatal wound with a 100% survival rate' in manga, and falling down a chasm is synonymous to 'most likely survived the fall' in cartoons and TV shows. And the show's not going to rename itself 'Diggle' or 'Atom' next episode. But it is still a shocking twist and a big cliffhanger to leave the episode on. Absolutely excited to see how Oliver survives and what his master plan is.

Granted Oliver might just want to die and/or fake his death so Ra's comes to Starling City and kills Merlyn, who is no longer under his protection, but that is absolutely risky. How does he know Ra's will stab him in the right side of his chest instead of his heart, or his head?

Or maybe it's the simple matter of Ra's sticking Oliver in a Lazarus Pit. I dunno.

Also what is Malcolm Merlyn thinking, sending the only one who is putting him under his protection to fight Ra's al Ghul?

We also get the revelation that Maseo from the Hong Kong plot is actually a member of the League of Assassins as the Phantom. What happened in Hong Kong? Maseo himself doesn't do much in the present-day times other than hang around with Nyssa and showing that he's willing to kill people at random in Starling City. But in the flashback, we see some actual development and relevance to the Hong Kong stuff which has been pretty annoying as of late.

In the flashback sequence, China White apparently uses the same herb-drug thing that Malcolm uses in the present day (gee what a coincidence) and has obtained this super-virus O-Me-Ga (meaning Omega in English, which cracked me up) for whatever reason, and managed to beat Tatsu and kidnap her. Also, Oliver's torture methods are useless against someone brainwashed as such. I'm curious to see if Tatsu the Katana really dies -- since Katana's backstory involved her husband and son getting killed, so is Maseo taking up the mantle as a gender-reversed Katana? And why is China White such a big deal back then when she's kind of just a random triad villain in season one? Intriguing, but not quite as much as the whole League plot.

Diggle, Roy and Felicity don't really get to do much other than be those three guys who tell Oliver to not be blinded by the 'family' thing and later saying their touching goodbyes. Quentin only shows up at the beginning. Felicity gets that line of dialogue telling Oliver to kill Ra's because sparing him will only lead to even more revenge and whatnot... granted it's darkly funny how it seems to be built up to Oliver winning and having to choose a 'will you kill this one time' moment... but nope, Ra's just absolutely demolishes him.

There's a bit of Felicity-Palmer shipping bullshit going on, but thankfully that gets taken out of the picture quickly enough for Palmer to reveal his backstory... his fiancee, Anna, was killed by the Mirakuru soldiers which is why he feels guilty about kissing Felicity. It's unexpected, certainly. Also, Palmer reveals his own ideas for the future... the A.T.O.M. exosuit, previously known as OMAC. I do like how both the Atom and the Maseo plots takes up minimal screen time yet still manages to deliver quite an impact.

When he starts rattling off those letters that form OMAC instead of ATOM, I was pretty surprised. Interesting where this is going. Are we going to adapt the whole OMAC/Brother Eye plot from Infinite Crisis? Done well, that could be pretty interesting even if it'll feel a bit too similar to Slade's army of super-powered humans at the end of season two.

And running through all these interesting plot lines is... Laurel, who, uh, despite her absolutely selfish and barely-justified reasons for keeping Sara's death to herself, blabs about it not only to her mother, but also randomly to Thea. Brilliant, Laurel. After insisting Oliver and Nyssa keep it a secret, you blab about it to two people in the span of a day. Granted Laurel revealing this to Thea might lead to some kind of confrontation between Thea and Merlyn, so that's good for Thea, but it kind of makes Laurel relatively more annoying.

Also with Thea revealed as the killer and Laurel revealed as a single-minded idiot, Laurel and Thea's showdown in the future seems inevitable... and I do hope Thea wins. Not only would it make more sense -- Thea's been training for several months under an assassin with brutal training methods, whereas Laurel has... learned boxing for a month -- it would also be absolutely cathartic since Laurel has been nothing but annoying. Yes, it's justifiable that he lost his sister, but she's not the only one with dead people in her backstory. Also, she's selfish. Remember how absolutely pissed off she was when she discovered that her father was keeping Sara being alive from her? Yeah? Freaking hypocrite.