“My father may be the demon, but yours is the devil”- Nyssa
This week’s episode picks up right were last weeks left off: Nyssa is angry and looking for Sara. Ever notice how many people happen to know where the Foundry is and how to get into it with being detected. Team Arrow may want to invest in Comcast home protection or something like that.
The amount of people who know Arrow’s identity is actually quite ridiculous at this point. Maybe we will get luck and Dr. Strange will cast a spell to make people forget. Wait… Sorry, wrong universe.
This episode was a great follow up to the second episode of the season (“Sara”). Last weeks episode (Corto Malteese) was a bit of a departure from the main story arc of this season, which is clearly finding Sara’s killer. It will be interesting to see how the events in this episode will affect the characters moving forward.
Oliver has been suspicious of Thea since reuniting with her in the “Corto Malteese” episode. He is plagued by thoughts that she is somehow different. Oliver told Thea that he is going to be honest with her moving forward so once he is alerted that Malcolm Merlyn is in fact alive he feels obligated to tell her. Let’s try not to focus on the fact that he is still omitting the fact that he is the Arrow and so forth every time he rehashes to Thea that he promised no more secrets with her. Given the fact that Oliver lies thru his teeth every time he speaks to Thea, it wasn’t shocking that when Thea was presented with Merlyn still being alive she responded in kind; with a lie of her own.
The relationship between Thea and Oliver is headed towards a collision course. When the air gets totally cleared, don’t expect it to be pretty. Both sides have told too many lies at this point.
The maturation of Laurel’s character continued this week. Her anger is almost bubbling over at this point. Once Nyssa arrives Laurel does something that she would never have done last season when she pleaded for Nyssa to do what Oliver could not. Also, Laurel is still struggling with the idea of telling her father about Sara’s death. Her goal is to tell him once they have captured her killer but at this point who knows when or if the killer will be discovered.
In this weeks series of flashbacks Oliver actually manages to carry out a hit for Amanda Waller, but as always we find out everything isn’t what it seems. Thru a screwball series of events it is discovered that Waller was behind the militants on Lian Yu whose goal was to shoot down a plane over the ocean. It Turns out Waller was aiming for a specific passenger she wanted killed. It will be interesting to see where the b-story this season is going. We now know that Waller has been involved with/watching Oliver since he was first stranded on the island. To what end?
The best bit of acting/dialog had to come from John Barrowman tonight. His impassioned “plea” to Oliver that he didn’t kill Sara was heartfelt and made total sense. Why would someone who has a price on his head kill the love of the daughter of the person who wants him dead’s life? Makes no sense.
In the end, Merlyn says what this writer was thinking: It was most likely Ra’s al Ghoul. It’s hard to put it pass Ra’s to have the woman you don’t think is worthy of your daughter killed. That’s league of assassins 101.
All in this entire episode was fast paced and had tons of great action. It was cool to finally see Ra’s al Ghoul at the end of the episode, but he looks nothing like Ra’s al Ghoul. At this point we should just take what we can get.
Rating 8
