Arrow, Season 7, Episode 21: Living Proof
It took me sitting down and writing this episode before I realized that this is the penultimate episode for this season. And... wow, what a strange decision for the writers to basically have a huge, huge chunk of the two episodes leading to the season finale basically be bottle episodes. Like, this episode is mainly taken up by the Tommy Merlyn hallucination-conversation. Last episode was almost entirely taken up by the Rashomon-style detective "whodunnit" drama, and the previous three episodes were episodes that mainly focused on John Diggle, Laurel Lance II and the future cast, in reverse chronological order. And honestly, while Emiko Adachi is certainly a villain that's been built-up and developed a bit more than some other CW season-main-villains, it's surprising that Emiko's main plot in the season finale is going to basically amount to something-something-doomsday-weapon and also defame Team Arrow while she's at it. I'm genuinely curious to see how they're going to handle that particular twist.
And honestly, as much as I adore the performance between Stephen Amell and guest star Colin Donnell (who finally has time to show up for a full episode because Chicago Med is over), the episode's themes are... not as thrilling as they should probably be. A lot of the tension like Archer being stolen and abused is something that's a foregone conclusion thanks to the flash-forwards, and as I mentioned above, Emiko's huge plan is honestly quite simple, and Tommy and Oliver's discussion essentially makes this a "kill her slash don't kill her" debate, something that we've honestly covered in Arrow a bit too many times for me to really be super-invested in this. Sure, Ghost/Hallucination Tommy gives us the interesting character analysis that Oliver is guilt-ridden and has been refusing to kill because said killing indirectly led to Tommy's death, but... eh?
Honestly, it's an argument that doesn't really work, as charismatic as Tommy Merlyn is. Tommy frames Oliver as not taking into consideration the fact that it's the Queen family that fucked over Emiko and caused her to become evil, but honestly, it's not as sympathetic as the episode makes it out to be. Oliver has been giving Emiko the benefit of the doubt arguably too many times, and unlike characters like the madness-driven Slade or whoever, Emiko is an adult that is in full control of what she is doing. Sure, maybe don't kill her, but she is still a villain with a huge stack of crimes, and they definitely have to stop her before reconciling or anything.
Basically, after getting his ass trapped under rubble during the beginning mission by a building bomb, Ghost!Tommy shows up and basically helps Oliver work out his inner conflict on whether Emiko could be redeemed or not, and it's definitely a very, very stimulating conversation. It's just that after her little masquerade as the New Green Arrow and the huge revelation that Emiko is a villain, the show itself never really found its footing on what to do with Emiko-the-Villain, and it sort of hurt this part of the episode. The fact that everything is revealed to be an illusion is neat to explain where Tommy came from, but I do find the decision to have Hallucination!Emiko threaten Felicity and Baby Mia when Oliver shouldn't know that Emiko had discovered that in this episode while he's knocked out is... it's kind of weird.
While Oliver works through the whole Tommy-hallucination sequence, the rest of Team Arrow go through some action scenes to rescue him, while the real Emiko shows up at Felicity's house and very nearly kills both her and Elena, until Felicity blurts out that she is pregnant, a fact that causes Emiko to spare her because that's a weapon she can use against Oliver. Oh, and she stole Archer as well.
And then Team Arrow gets free from the collapsing building... and then they arrive at the SCPD to realize that Emiko, as the Green Arrow, is going around killing random policemen in the SCPD, and combined with them covering up Roy's murder, the SCPD has yet again lost faith in Team Arrow. Also, Oliver has the chance to kill Emiko, but unlike his dream-self, he doesn't do it. It's... it's hard to blame them, really, Team Arrow did cover up Roy clubbing those two poor security guards to death, Lazarus influence or not. Also, Felicity sort of attacked a bunch of the policemen who was there to arrest her with a modified version of the Black Canary sonic scream thing, so... yeah, this might be the reason why the vigilantes are so frowned upon in the future.
Speaking of the future... I'm still not the biggest fan of the future storyline and honsetly it's hard to say if I really care, but we basically find out that "Galaxy One" is planning to turn the Glades into a police state or what ever. William and Felicity have an argument, and to show that he is a big adult man now William goes off to infiltrate Galaxy One, but we mostly know he's just a wee bit too excited at the prospect of flirting with Kevin Dale. William and Rene get captured by the bad guys, while Felicity brings in Elena in the future to help out in destroying Archer, giving the audience the HUGE revelation that Elena is the one who used the copy of Archer and sold it to evil hands. Which is, honestly, pretty fucking obvious to anyone who's been paying attention.
Overall... it's definitely an... interesting set-up for the season finale. Or rather, an interesting lack of set-up. Emiko's not quite as bad as Cicada, but she's definitely a huge, huge missed opportunity. We've got a fair amount of questions to ask and what needs to be resolved, and since it seems like we're going to have your standard Arrow "present and past future climaxes play out at the same time in the episode" I'm curious just how much we're getting to wrap up, and how much we're leaving out for the new final season.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Tommy calls Team Arrow as a "Justice League" at one point.
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