Arrow S03E18 Review: Shado's Twin Sister

Arrow, Season 3, Episode 18: Public Enemy

Well, that was a tense episode all right. There is a lot of action in this episode as the police start to fully crack down on Team Arrow with helicopters and cars and shit, with Ra’s Al Ghul flat-out telling Quentin about the Arrow’s secret identity and that Sara washed up on Lian Yu. And it’s definitely a tense one as Team Arrow is continually held at gunpoint by the policemen, but at the same time… it still kind of felt like something we’ve seen before. Not to mention that, y’know, Ra’s Al Ghul’s big master plan still doesn’t really make sense. Why does Ra’s want Oliver to accept his offer so badly that he’ll go to such lengths to fuck up his city and life?

But it’s still a pretty tense and rather awesome episode, with Quentin taking center stage. He’s kidnapped by Maseo and kind of told those information, and still fuelled by the grief and rage over, y’know, Sara, he tells the entire city about Oliver Queen’s identity. We’ve got some nice continuity nods to when Oliver Queen was last accused of being the Arrow, and some acknowledgement that it won’t work again. And Laurel does confront Quentin several times throughout this episode and the previous one, asking Quentin what exactly drives him – actual desire for justice, or his own personal justice regarding Sara’s death?

I also find it rather interesting that despite all his ‘shoot to kill’ stuff, he’s definitely perverting justice to prevent Laurel from being shot, telling the officers to hold their fire when Laurel is in the scene. And he seemed too happy to grant the rest of Team Arrow legal immunity so long as Oliver is captured, so it’s clear that all he’s gunning for is Oliver, someone who he can blame for Sara’s death. And through his rants to Laurel about being responsible for causing Sara to be lost twice, well, you see where Quentin is going with here.

So, uh, after a brief fight with Maseo (who in this episode and the previous one is really taking on the villainous role pretty nicely) and a bunch of other fake Arrows, they realize that they can’t kill Ra’s Al Ghul without repercussion, which is a nice little development. Ra’s has too much resources that will go wild in revenge if he doesn’t control them, and Oliver has very few choices left, so he hands himself over to Quentin.

Roy also gets a nice little moment here. He’s been the underdog throughout nearly the entire season after the whole ‘I killed a cop’ thing was ended, with his role basically amounting to standing around in his swanky costume and looking cool. Last episode didn’t even bother to acknowledge the poor bastard’s fate after Atom blasted him with lightning bolts. But this episode he actually gets some action scenes shooting policemen and this brings up all the repressed memories about killing that policeman and wanting to be arrested, and this leads him to become the atoner near the end of the episode, hopping down with the Arrow costume and going all ‘you got the wrong man, because I’m the Arrow’ in front of all the policemen transferring Oliver to prison or something.

Nyssa also gets some moments, being pissed off with her father to tell Oliver about some information regarding where to find the League, but also being loyal enough to the League not to actually assist them beyond pulling Laurel’s fat out of the fire later in the episode.

We get some nice little call-backs to a lot of previous events, with Quentin rattling off the names of people who died (who the fuck is Hilton) and all the masked people that showed up (hey, the show remembers Huntress existed) and they bring up some old ways of saving Oliver's identity. I mean, Quentin's point that Oliver was the start of it all kind of fall flat because it came out the same week that Flash showcased the Trickster, a mask active from 25 years ago, but still...

We’ve got a B-plot revolving Ray getting shot through the chest during the attack by the League after the cliffhanger of last episode, and apparently a thrombus went up to his brain which will cause brain damage if operated on. And Felicity is caught between a moral dilemma of whether to take the risk to save Ray with some experimental nano-bots (yay for some actual references to Atom’s powers in the comics). Felicity’s annoying mom comes in with some sage distraction tactics and some relationship advice, basically telling Felicity she has to make a choice. Ray loves Felicity, but Felicity’s heart is with Oliver and I’m just kind of shrugging because all this is pretty messy.

Two episodes ago the cliffhanger in the Hong Kong flashback was that OMG SHADO IS ALIVE. But no, it’s her previously unheard-of twin sister Mei. Which proves to contribute jack shit to the plot because all she delivers is just the fact that Oliver should’ve been honest about Shado’s death in the first place and blah blah and why did we have to have that Shado-is-alive cliffhanger? That was stupid. Maseo and Tatsu come in, kill the bad guys and save Akio. Why did we have to drag it on for so long? Jeez. Kill Akio off, or don’t. The flashbacks this time around was so distracting from the plot since it isn’t even really relevant.

Overall, though, still a pretty solid episode. It’s not the greatest after I thought about it for a while, but it’s still a pretty great development and a pretty action-packed one. I just fear they don’t really do anything interesting with the Big Twist™ in this episode like so many times Arrow has failed to deliver on big twists before.