Arrow S3E19 Review: A Death in the Family

Arrow, Season 3, Episode 19: Broken Arrow

That was a pretty awesome episode! Coming off a ‘big event’ episode that was episode 18, this episode is a pretty solid one with two great plots running concurrently alongside each other. A good chunk of the plot focuses on Roy Harper taking the fall for Oliver and Oliver Queen having to ‘learn to let other people help him’, as is repeated multiple times throughout the episode, whereas the other chunk, while having the same moral going on throughout it, focuses on the Atom hunting down an ersatz metahuman who seems to have stumbled into this show from the Flash.

Oh, and the flashback scenes, of course, but they’re not quite that interesting.

Let’s talk about the Roy plot first. He’s just been kind of there, standing around in his kickass Arsenal costume and saying a couple of lines here and there and joining in some fights, but he never really got the same amount of screentime or development that Laurel, Thea or Felicity got. He did get a couple of moments earlier this season with his ‘what have I done’ moment when he realizes he killed somebody, and that scene where he fought Wildcat’s evil sidekick, but that’s about it.

Well that changes this episode. Roy not only proves himself enough of a mastermind to cook up this plan of pretending to be the Arrow, and then engineering his own ‘death’ by being stabbed by a cop friend of Diggle, he also manages to pull off a really convincing act of pretending to be an atoner and sort of a death-seeker when confronted by Captain Lance and the Queen siblings. And he’s got a really awesome fight scene, unarmed, against a couple of inmates which is awesome. And the buildup that Roy is going to bite the dust was really well done, too, and I actually bought it. After all, the Lazarus Pit is in play, and other than the fact that Roy Harper is a big comic-book character, he is kind of disposable – and Roy as a character himself knows it.

And I do really like the development going on for him. Roy going off on his own to atone for his sins is as much about Roy himself developing as a character, atoning for the sins of killing the policeman, as much as it was to help clear Oliver Queen’s name. He also leaves the show for the forseeable future, going off on the run… which kind of dwindles Oliver’s allies even more.

And, of course, the cliffhanger to this episode is pretty awesome too. With the subversion of Roy’s death, we also get an actual implied death as Ra’s Al Ghul finally makes his move, fights Thea (who, to her credit, does a pretty good job defending herself) before stabbing her straight through the chest. She may or may not get resurrected next episode – again, the Lazarus Pit is still in play and Thea hasn’t quite became Speedy yet – but either way this is going to be a gigantic blow to Oliver Queen, as much as Moira’s death would be.

Also just think about the ramifications this would be for Malcolm Merlyn, since all of this shit happening is his fault. Stupid failure of a chessmaster that he is.

Captain Lance is ramping up the asshole levels in this episode, just tearing apart Thea’s apartment and the Verdant just to find proof, being relatively cold when he tells Oliver that Roy’s death was his fault (why didn’t Lance move Roy to isolation or something?) and being kind of a dick to Roy… though he does try to get Roy to be truthful and not throw his life away for Oliver. And he’s not that much of a dick to Thea either. Still, I do like Lance just hamming it up here on his bloodhunt for Oliver Queen.

This episode also makes it clear that despite Roy’s efforts to clear Oliver’s name as the Arrow, Captain Lance has already broken down the Arrowcave. While Roy and the rest of the team did cause the entire cave to be draped only with Roy’s fingerprints, the episode makes it clear that Lance is still out for Oliver Queen’s blood and they can’t resume operations quite as easily – hence needing the Atom to fill in the superhero quota of the episode.

Which brings us to the second plot going on in here. The Atom is kind of an odd character – he always felt kind of like a guest star or a distraction in nearly every episode he shows up in, never really feeling like part of the main cast, not like how Firestorm felt in the Flash show… but his crazy bubbly energy is a welcome injection to this episode. It also kind of establishes that both this episode and the previous one (since they happen immediately after each other) happens after Ray and Felicity visit Central City in that Flash episode with the Bug-Eyed Bandit, since Felicity knows not to bring Barry into the fray because they’re dealing with Harrison Wells… not that it should be a problem, though… it’s just an out-there excuse so they can have the Atom beat up a villain that’s a threat to him.

Anyway the Atom fights the villain of the week, Jake Simmons a.k.a. Deathbolt, who is a generic angry metahuman with Cyclops eye-powers. Except he doesn’t just shoot eye lasers, he’s also able to absorb energy and create energy gauntlets to do battle with the Atom. It’s some standard superhero stuff. The Atom loses his first battle, and on the second uses the Chekov’s Gun of neural uplink so Oliver can help use his superior fighting skills to engage Deathbolt in combat with superior fighting skills. And, of course, there’s a bit of a too-cheesy ‘your true power comes from within your heart’ and ‘the clothes don’t make the man’ speech that lets Ray beat Deathbolt on his own. It’s an okay little distraction that makes Ray Palmer seem relevant, and having this little minimal crossover is a fun little thing without overexposing either show to the other. Which is fine.

Also, is it not refreshing to have Brandon Routh actually just act without any Superman jokes? Man. It is so refreshing.

We, of course, get a little Cisco scene at the end as Ray delivers Deathbolt to the Pipeline, and they bond as crazy science people. But they get a little unexpected discovery that leads to its own cliffhanger – despite hailing from Central City, Deathbolt was in Opal City (home of the Starman for DC comic book geeks) when the particle accelerator went boom. So there are in fact more ways than the particle accelerator for you to get crazy superpowers. Interesting! I’m not sure if this plot thread’s going to be explored in the Flash or Arrow, but when the Pipeline villains eventually break free (they’re going to – it’s a universal constant that every supervillain prison is going to have all its villains break free at least once) I just hope Deathbolt gets an explanation so people who don’t watch Arrow won’t go ‘WHO DAT?’

More importantly, Ray asks some pretty damning questions about both shows. The first question being just how many abandoned warehouses are there in Starling City, and the second being just how do the villains in the Pipeline eat and shit. None, of course, get answered. Dammit, show!

A nice little in-joke is Cisco mentioning that the particle accelerator exploded on 11^th December, 2013… which, after looking it up, is indeed the airdate of the Arrow episode ‘Three Ghosts’, where the particle accelerator explodes in the end and turns Barry Allen into the Flash.

Ray also seems to notice just how supportive Felicity has been to Oliver as of late, and the little arm-hug Felicity gave Oliver at the end of this episode doesn’t go unnoticed. Ray also goes all ‘I didn’t really  mean that I-love-you I said before’ which seems to be an abrupt backpedalling of the Ray-Felicity shipping, further showing just how tacked-on the whole Ray-Felicity thing is. They’re just trying to shove in some friction between the pre-established Oliver-Felicity romance and this just feels kind of annoying.

The flashback plot has Oliver and the Yamashiros discover that General Matthew Shrieve plans to unleash the Alpha Omega virus upon Hong Kong because of racist ‘we’re afraid China is going to be a superpower’ reason. Of course Amanda Waller isn’t completely evil, otherwise Oliver won’t be working with her in the present day. She’s just ambiguously so. There’s also some ‘trust your allies’ thing going on in the flashback plot, naturally, because the morals of the flashbacks by chronology just happen to fit the events of the present day. Honestly don’t particularly care anymore… it’s already blindingly obvious that they’re going to take down Shrieve but it won’t happen until the season finale, and somehow Akio will die in the ensuing firefight. Whatever.

Overall it’s a pretty great episode. Great stuff, especially with Roy Harper. Granted I did get a bit of Age of Ultron flashbacks regarding Roy Harper and the big foreshadowings leading to his death, but it’s well executed. We get some great stuff with Oliver and Ray. And, of course, that ending! Great stuff.