Arrow, Season 3, Episode 22: This is Your Sword
Let’s
talk about season three for a bit, shall we? There are definitely good moments
in season three – Thea Queen as an actual character going through development
being the uncontested highlight of the season – but as a whole it’s kind of a
mess. Again, like Arrow’s relatively
shaky start, it’s a rather messy show with great actors that make it work… but
there are so many things running along each other, so many random gambits and
unexplained agendas, and none of them really lead to any significant payoff.
The completely ridiculously boring Hong Kong flashback plot that really has
been dragged along like a rotting corpse far past its expiry date, Ra’s Al Ghul
ambiguous motivations for making Oliver his heir, Malcolm Merlyn’s insanely
convoluted plans involving manipulating everyone, Laurel’s weird
secret-keeping, Sara’s death ending up being redundant…
Yeah,
it’s not the strongest season, mostly because it’s so messy. That’s not to say
that it doesn’t have great moments, of course, but it’s certainly not quite as
good as I hoped it would be, and this episode is yet another in a series of
episodes that’s going through the motions of this uninteresting
Oliver-becomes-evil-but-not-really arc. Which really feels like a rehash of the
Oliver-dies-but-not-really arc, except in that one we actually get some
character development for the other members of Team Arrow instead of Diggle
being (rightfully) angry and Felicity just being a big bag of angstiness.
So
the big reveal here is that Oliver Queen has apparently been working with
Malcolm Merlyn to infiltrate and take down the league, which is not that
surprising, because come on. If it was Laurel or Thea or Roy that ‘turned
evil’, it would be one thing, but the main lead? Nah. Apparently Oliver’s been
working with Malcolm. And only Malcolm. And he waves around the flimsy excuse
of ‘keeping the circle of trust as small as possible’, which is as moronic as
Laurel’s ‘so as not to hurt him’ and Joe West’s ‘to protect Iris’ excuses.
But
let’s recap Oliver’s plan, shall we? So Oliver cooks this big master plan,
which I assume was cooked up by the two of them while ferrying Thea’s
half-dead-comatose body to Nanda Parbat because there is no reason for Oliver
to contemplate accepting the offer before Ra’s forced Oliver’s hand by mortally
wounding Thea (but not quite killing
her because apparently Ra’s knows how efficient Oliver can get Thea to the
paramedics). Oliver recruits Malcolm – who, lest we forget, in addition to
being the big evil mastermind in season one, is also the one who engineered
Sara’s death at the hands of a brainwashed Thea (in itself a phenomenally
idiotic decision) – to help him infiltrate the League of Assassins and stop
Ra’s when he tries to launch the Alpha-Omega virus on Starling City… instead
of, y’know, stopping Ra’s from the get-go. Yes, Ra’s can match Oliver in
hand-to-hand combat, but they could’ve gone through a whole other way than this
super-convoluted plan that involves earning Ra’s trust so Oliver has to
basically fuck his relationship with everyone else that matters to him. Just
like there isn’t any reason for Ra’s to be so
fixated on Oliver as his heir, there is also no real reason for Oliver to
be all mysterious and so obsessed about being all needing to maintain the act
so he’ll keep everyone in the quiet.
Granted,
both Oliver and Malcolm apparently thought it’ll take Ra’s months before
properly trusting Oliver to become the new Ra’s, and Oliver does like to keep his secrets, but
still, it’s kind of an idiot ball for Oliver in particular not to tell at least
Diggle and Felicity, and at least the show makes it a point to have them call
Oliver out every single chance they can. No excuse for Ra’s, y’know, actually
trusting Oliver that quickly, though, because really, he isn’t the least bit
suspicious? Even with the whole someone-leaked-information-out thing? When the
army that came to foil him is 100% made up of Oliver’s buddies, and Oliver
already has a track record of saying ‘fuck you’ to Ra’s before?
Diggle
is completely pissed off at Oliver, rightfully so, because not only did Oliver
take his wife hostage, he also chose to trust Malcolm over him and Felicity. It
seems to be kind of a big development if Diggle should walk out on Oliver
Queen’s big cause, and his anger is truly palpable in this episode and the previous.
He’s just a ball of rage this episode and he basically tells Oliver to fuck off
because he’s lost all respect for him.
There’s
also Felicity, of course, who has been nothing short of annoying in this season
despite being the best thing in the show throughout the first two seasons. I
mean, Laurel and especially Thea has been exponentially less annoying, and
Felicity seems to have picked up the quota for ‘annoying female character’. Her
just being an emotional trainwreck and the show just wasting so much screentime
devoted to Felicity and Oliver’s romance robs valuable screentime from the
already-stunted main plot. I’m not saying to do away with the romance because
it’s a crucial point for both their characterizations, but really it could’ve
been trimmed down with an even stronger emotional impact instead of the
dragged-on affair that it is now. Really, Felicity, you and your friends are
about to be killed by a killer virus and what you’re reacting to is Oliver and
Nyssa’s obviously-fake wedding? And that line from Tatsu about how Oliver’s
thought while near-death was Felicity was kind of too on-the-nose, even for
this show.
Felicity
using her iPad as a boomerang that took out one of the mooks, only for it to be
really taken out by Malcolm, was
comedy gold, though.
Malcolm’s
random flip-flop of allegiances in this episode, especially the last one where
he tries to rat out Oliver once more to Ra’s, is starting to get annoying as
well. Yes, it’s plausible that he joins forces with Oliver to get at Ra’s, but
the end when he’s all like “Oliver is the real traitor!” is kind of eyeball
rolling. All he got for his bullshit was a cloud of killer virus… which I’m
sure won’t kill them.
Also,
tangentially about the virus, let’s talk about the stupid Hong Kong plot – the
promise that Amanda Waller is going to have a large role in the Hong Kong plot
ends up being thrown out of the window for the bullshit plot with Oliver, Maseo
and Tatsu that no one cares about, and really what happened to Maseo and Tatsu
to make them what they are in the present day is so blindingly transparent that
it’s a frank insult that the flashbacks ran so long. In addition to the
Alpha-Omega virus being a plot point, Tatsu finally rejoins the present-day
cast in order to inject some relevance to the flashbacks… and, again, as I keep
repeating, all this would probably be more interesting if the whole Hong Kong
plot had been a two-parter episode or something along those lines earlier in
the season instead of spoiling the ending of the flashbacks for those who
didn’t already extrapolate it already.
Anyway,
Akio dies in this episode. Don’t care. Would be sad if I didn’t see it coming
twenty episodes ago. Shrieve also gets beaten down. Really there’s no excuse to
have this continue on to the finale, but it will because we need some
resolution. And I really wished they could’ve done all of that before this
episode. Jeez.
The
present-day scenes for Maseo and Tatsu is, at least, relatively sensible and
gives a nice finality to the whole Hong Kong flashback sequences, being set
back-to-back with Akio’s death and Tatsu singing the same sad song to both of
them. Maseo’s character has really been weird throughout this season, but it’s
implied that he’s became somewhat of a death seeker after Akio’s death. Doesn’t
really explain why he chose to help out Ra’s Al Ghul and be fully loyal to him
instead of switching sides to help Oliver bring down Ra’s from the inside, but
I guess Ra’s brainwashing worked.
Both
Yamashiros are kind of m’eh characters if I have to be honest, both in the
flashbacks and the present. I would really warm up to them if their flashbacks
weren’t so predictably and mind-numbingly boring, and if Maseo and especially
Tatsu had more screentime in the present day, but as it is Tatsu (in full
modern-age Katana outfit, which is cool) fights Maseo and mercy-kills him.
It’s… not a bad scene, actually, with Tatsu being so sad and angry and all as
Maseo talks about being freed from his freedom. I really wished they spent less
time on the flashbacks and more on the present day characters. Not just in this
episode, but in the season as a whole.
Also,
Shrieve is really a very dull villain. His whole motivations to release the
Alpha-Omega virus to kill the population of Hong Kong seems to be some stupid
logic about how China’s economy is going to destroy the USA and no real reason
beyond that silly logic. All those time wasted in the Hong Kong plots, and we
can’t even get a decent villain? He just comes off like a truly dense
motherfucker than a threatening villain.
Among
Team Arrow, Laurel and the Atom are basically just along for the ride. Atom’s
around for some nice CGI plane combat before being taken out… dude’s been
absent for quite some time. He does show up to stealthily get Felicity to sign
the papers to the transferring of the ownership of Palmer industries, a little
reversal of the Isabel Rochev gambit from season two… for no real reason,
really, but okay. Laurel’s just around to kick ass alongside Malcolm and
Diggle, but otherwise I don’t think she really does anything significant.
Nyssa
is also kind of shafted, and with all the screentime that all the needlessly
long Hong Kong and Olicity plot threads clogging up this episode, it’s kind of
a shame since Nyssa has all the bearings of a great plot. Being dragged to
Nanda Parbat against her will, and now forced to marry Oliver… but other than
the token assassination attempt – she relents quickly after that, and the
little interaction over her mother’s necklace with her father Nyssa has been
treated as nothing more than a plot device. Poor Nyssa.
Roy
and Thea’s scene was kind of a distraction as well, but at least their scene is
a great breath of fresh air as we see both of them develop as characters. We
get some resolution to Roy and Thea’s romance and I thought that it was kind of
stupid not to have Roy say goodbye to Thea when he leaves Starling City. I’m
really sad to see Roy Harper go because I really like him as a character both
in the comics and in the show, and he is undoubtedly the most underused member
of Team Arrow throughout all three seasons. But it’s a nice, beautiful sendoff
as he heads off to parts unknown to let Thea live her life without being on the
run, and said on-the-run excuse is a nice part on the show-writers part to
realistically write out Roy Harper because his actor wants to leave the show.
Roy leaves his Arsenal costume behind for Thea, and while she probably needs to
adjust some things to make the costume form-fitting to her more feminine body,
I guess we’re going to see Speedy in full costume next episode.
Overall
the main plot is really just going through the motions. The big war between
Team Arrow and the League mooks is great and awesome, and there are great small
moments all throughout the episode. Seeing Katana in full costume is also
great. But really this finale is bogged down with too many subplots that aren’t
resolved satisfactorily, way too many gambits that don’t make sense
realistically and again too much time spent on the flashbacks. It's really not that bad of an episode, with the solid parts being relatively solid, but all the little problems bog it down quite a fair bit.
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