Arrow S07E12 Review: The Hunter of the Hunters

Arrow, Season 7, Episode 12: Emerald Archer

One of the most powerful episodes in the TV series Babylon Five is an episode that is a documentary being shot by reporters on the space station, which is such an interesting format change from what we usually see, and remains one of my favourite episodes because it also helps to showcase just how powerful and how easy it is to twist the scenes shot in a documentary.

Arrow's 150th anniversary episode... tries to do that, but it really falls short. Don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate the amount of cameos we get in the first leg of the episode. We get the unexpected return of Quentin Lance and Thea Queen, recording bits in an interview, which is pretty damn cool that the actors are actually happy to shoot small cameos despite their huge departures from the Arrow series. We get unexpected ones too, like Rory "Ragman" Reagan, and Sin, neither of whom are characters that I honestly remember about, but it's nice to have them back.

And I do love the brief callbacks to earlier seasons, as well to the various different people's perspectives about vigilantism in Star City. But then after that, around 8 or 10 minutes into the episode, we just cut away to a third-person viewing as the shooting of the documentary gets interrupted when William and Felicity arrives and interrupt the shooting, and we just do a bizarre back-and-forth between "this is a faux-documentary" and "this is a regular episode, but there are cameraman in the background until we don't need them". It's pretty weird that they don't even play ball with the concept of a documentary being shot, with the cameramen walking behind Team Arrow as they go around town hunting a vigilante-hunter called Chimera. There's honestly nothing that significantl changes other than brief cutaways to guest stars being interviewed, and I am utterly baffled.

Anyway, this episode basically has a pretty bland plotline of Chimera abducting Emiko Queen off-screen, and the asshole mayor demanding that Oliver and Dinah show up at some sort of town hall talk instead of hunting Chimera. And it's... it's bizarre, and doesn't really mesh particularly well with the whole documentary main plot, which, as much as I do love the documentary segments (especially when we get people like Barry or Curtis's POV on Oliver's psyche), also makes it kind of weird why they choose to do this format while also ignoring it for the most part.

The only real relevance is that the cameramen and the documentary catch New Team Arrow on-camera as they save the mayor and all the people from Chimera when he inevitably crashes the party to get Green Arrow's hood, and it's... it's honestly kind of bland, y'know? We're supposed to get this triumphant return of Team Arrow as Spartan, Wild Dog and Mr. Terrific suit up to take down Chimera, and Dinah even shows off her black canary cry in public, but it's honestly kind of messily done, and I genuinely never bought into the fact that Chimera was so powerful that he needed the entire Arrow Team to show up for the party. It's a bit bizarre, and while, yes, the episode ends up having Pollard deputizing everyone for the SCPD, it is genuinely bizarre and it seems utterly forced. Especially with Diggle, who is already a leadership figure in a government organization.

Also, despite being shown off as this vigilante-hunter that apparently took down Huntress and Ragman, apparently Chimera just... steals their equipment like a fucked-up collector? Eh.

The other B-plot running through this episode, and, again, something that doesn't mesh with the documentary thing, is William having a shouting contest with Oliver, and then hanging out with Zoe because he hates his parents' ignoring him and everything. And apparently he faked the school website to hide the fact from Felicity and Oliver that he got expelled and... the actor for William is great, but I've honestly had my fill of William/Oliver angry parenting drama from season six, so no thank you to this sub-plot, please.

We then cut to the future segment, where Blackstar (whose real name is Mia) and Connor Hawke (Diggle's kid, which we see in Legends of Tomorrow) are watching the documentary and are talking shit about this pro-vigilantism stuff. And it's... I honestly don't get what the whole point of it was. There's no real point to them doing a format-breaking story since it doesn't even really tell us anything, there's no real tie in with Mia and Connor's storyline, and... and as fun as the cameos were, I honestly feel like this ended up like one of the weakest episodes of Arrow's seventh season. It's so muddled.  

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• Chimera, a.k.a. Kevin Meltzer, is loosely based on a minor villain for the Checkmate comics, Chimera (named Adam Sharp in those comics), who is also a hero-hunter. 
• Blackstar's real name is apparently "Mia", which is a reference to Mia Dearden, a.k.a. Speedy, the comic-book character that Thea Queen is based on. 
• The title of the episode, "Emerald Archer", is a reference to Green Arrow's comic-book moniker, sort of like how Man of Steel is for Superman. 
• Among the returning characters for the interview include: Quentin Lance, Thea Queen, Sara Lance, Barry Allen, Rory Reagan and Sin. Rory hasn't been seen since season 4, Sin since... season 3, I think? Sara and Barry are busy on sister shows, whereas both Quentin and Thea's actors have had pretty huge "exit" episodes. Connor Hawke also returns in the future segments, not seen since a season one Legends of Tomorrow episode. Huntress's mask, at least, makes a brief appearance. 
• Wayne Enterprise and Gotham City are brought up once more.