Arrow S07E19 Review: STEWART

Arrow, Season 7, Episode 19: Spartan

This episode is pretty great, and it's not just because Ernie Hudson guest-stars as General Roy Stewart, John Diggle's step-father and main star of this episode. It's a Diggle-centric episode, and, honestly, those are always great. Honestly, with Flash and Supergirl sort of meandering around their supposed main plots, Arrow seems content to basically have it run in the background while they tell individual standalone episodes for the bulk of the season... which is nice, because I genuinely don't give much of a shit about the Ninth Circle at this point. It's honestly a shame that this season has been so inconsistent in terms of storytelling and quality, although Arrow is certainly not alone among the CW superhero shows in that regard. 

One of the Arrowverse's often-criticized flaws is how often they like to bring in random family members just to add random drama into the season, but John's attitude and genuine scorn towards General Roy Stewart, a harsh upbringing and John seeing Roy Stewart as a man who left his biological father to die in the war has driven a huge wedge between the two of them, and it certainly is a plausible explanation to why John never really mentioned this step-father. 

And as the Ninth Circle are about to steal some sort of mysterious government weapon or other (I genuinely forgot what their objective was), they also steal the Archer program from Felicity and Alena, and both Team Arrow and the DIA end up having to team up in order to apprehend the Ninth Circle. John is angry at his stepfather for keeping information out of their hands, but everyone else basically realizes that Stewart is honestly doing what protocol demands of him, and they can't really fault him all that much. Hell, he's not even being a dick about it and is genuinely a nice guy! 

It's a relatively great and solid arc, and both David Ramsey and Ernie Hudson have some real great chemistry that sell the hell that the two are an estranged child-and-parent pair, and as Oliver and Felicity look into Roy Stewart's background, they learn that not only did John's father actually fucked up during the mission, Roy Stewart was the one who ended up basically taking the fall in order to preserve the good name of John's father, and had allowed John to hate him all this time. It's a relatively simple storyline, but the acting really the sell out of the drama between the two characters, from John's spite, to his disbelief that Stewart is cooperating, to his eventual acceptance. 

There's a B-plot with Felicity finally realizing how dangerous Archer is, and it's... it's neat? One dr. Will Magnus (of Metal Men fame) offers to partner up with Smoak Technologies, but when Archer gets stolen and weaponized by the Ninth Circle, Felicity goes through a pretty great -- if rushed -- character moment as she elects to destroy Archer, despite all of the talk about leaving behind a legacy that isn't just Overwatch, something she doesn't piggyback on other vigilantes for but is something that's truly her own. Of course, we all know Archer ends up in the wrong hands in the future, and the fact that Alena apparently keeps a copy and seems pretty intent on getting that Magnus money seems to be the reason why. A bit too simple, but all right. 

Oh, and there's a minimal-effort plot twist as Oliver reveals the conspiracy behind the death of Emiko's mother to her, telling her that Dante arranged for her mother to be killed... which honestly felt like it fell flat. Both actors give their all, but the revelation and the lead-up to said revelation is honestly done with such a lackluster oomph that it honestly just sort of happens, and when Emiko kills Dante, the latter has been such a cipher that I can't bring myself to care. Hopefully future episodes would give Emiko more interesting things to do and properly develop her more as a person, since we honestly never really got to see the 'real' Emiko all that much. 

While I've been relatively apathetic with the future storyline, the random, out-of-nowhere revelation a while back that Connor Hawke is actually Bronze Tiger's biological son who is adopted by John Diggle throws in a very, very interesting wrench into how John ends up being a good adoptive father like Roy Stewart... particularly with the revelation in the future that John Junior is actually a pretty nasty member of the Deathstroke Gang and hates Connor enough to send assassins after him. I don't think there's much else of interest in the future storyline, it's just Connor and Mia trying to do things but not really succeeding because it's just episode 19.

Overall, an episode with slightly weak B-plots, but a pretty solid, er... mission-of-the-week? Action-plot-of-the-week? It's an all right episode. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The character of "Roy Stewart" is original to the Arrowverse, but the surname "Stewart" certainly isn't, since it's the surname of John Stewart, the fourth Green Lantern, and a character that the Arrowverse fandom has theorized as John Diggle's true identity -- and the show itself has had nods to John Diggle in Earth-90 as a Green Lantern during the Elseworlds crossover. 
• Dr. Will Magnus, the super-scientist mogul that is noted to dabble in artificial intelligence and seeks to purchase Smoak Technologies, is the creator of the superhero robot team the Metal Men in the comics. Presumably it's Magnus that ends up integrating the Archer program with robots, as seen in the future. 
• We last saw the Deathstroke Gang all the way back in Connor Hawke's first appearance in the first season of Legends of Tomorrow.