Arrow 3x19 Broken Arrow

Who doesn’t love a good double twist? I know I do.

Leading up to this week’s episode of Arrow, all the fans could talk about was which character was going to be the one to die, thanks to the promotional material for the episode as well as a couple of not subtle at all tweets by various cast members. The obvious candidates were Roy and Captain Lance, but nowadays where everyone is expecting twist endings and just twists in general, what kind of show would go for the obvious? Unless, of course, they have figured out which one the fans would think was the obvious choice, therefore knew we would be expecting them to surprise us, in which case doing the obvious would end up being the bigger surprise... Well, this is the kind of mental gymnastics that I usually do whenever a show announces that there is a big death coming up. For me, personally, at this point of the show I would have been cool with anyone dying except for Dig and Laurel, and given that one of them has just gotten her first major storyline in ages and the other is supposed to get one next season, I was actually fairly calm waiting to find out just who it is exactly that I’m supposed to say goodbye to. As it turns out, it was no one. Or at least I think it was. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? The writers somehow managed to do both the obvious AND the not-so-obvious at the same time, but the way the episode ended we just all know that it isn’t going to stick. Which wasn’t a very easy sentence to come up with without mentioning any names or what actually happened, and because by the time I’m posting this I know that everyone has most probably seen not only this but also the next episode, I think it’d be better for everyone if I just stopped rambling and got started on the actual review.

Alright, so the last episode ended with Roy taking the blame for Oliver and going to prison in his place, while Captain Lance was fully aware that they caught the wrong guy but he couldn’t really do anything about it after Roy’s public confession. Except apparently arresting Oliver nonetheless, because that’s how he started out this episode, in handcuffs at the police station. Until Laurel got there and freed him with some legal talk in what was yet another instance of Laurel being totally awesome. Oliver wasn’t so thankful though because he was still hell-bent on giving himself up instead of letting Roy suffer in prison. Instead he had to settle for planning how to bring him out, which became all the more urgent after Roy was attacked by a bunch or prisoners who I guess were put away by the Arrow, or knew someone who was put away by the Arrow, or just really really hated the Arrow simply for being who he is. Roy beat them up but ended up getting badly wounded in the process, which Oliver wasn’t happy about at all. Then he got even less happy when a metahuman started murdering people in Starling City instead of Central City for a change. Fucking metahumans, man. I don’t know about you guys but I’m getting really sick of them. Or is it only the word ’metahuman’ that annoys me so much, seeing as on the Flash someone seems to say it approximately every ten seconds? I understand that calling them ’supervillains’ would be kind of corny but I’m sure there’s a middle ground somewhere that would be less annoying. Anyway. Oliver obviously couldn’t go out to fight this dude and Dig and Laurel were apparently both ill-equipped to do so, which only left one person in Starling City available... sigh. Ray Palmer. If you’ve read my previous Flash review then you probably already know all my feelings about him and I don’t really feel like repeating them right now, but basically, I don’t like him. And nope, I still don’t like him, not even after this episode, especially with lines like "Normal people don't do that, heroes do that.", which are so obviously designed to MAKE people like him... no, sorry, still don’t care. There’s actually a line in my notes for this episode that just says FUCK OFF RAY in all caps, and I didn’t even remember what it was about so I had to go back and skim the first few minutes of the episode. Apparently it was about that scene where he takes back his love confession to Felicity because she didn’t say it back. Have I already mentioned how much I hate it when people do that on TV? Actually, I really hate the whole ’someone says I love you and the other doesn’t know what to say’ trope, but when the first someone takes it back it’s even worse, especially when the second someone actually DOES love them, just wasn’t prepared to say it, and then it brings all sorts of stupid conflicts that could be so easily avoided just by simply calming down and talking to each other. But yeah I honestly don’t give a crap about Ray’s feelings, this relationship is gonna be short-lived anyway because we already know Ray is leaving the show for his own spin-off next season and there’s no way they will let Felicity stay in a relationship with someone off-screen.

Anyway, there’s really not much else to say about the Villain of the Week part of the episode, I guess they caught him in the end or something, I honestly don’t remember. What was more important was Roy getting murdered in prison... only he didn’t, because really it was all part of an elaborate plan set up by him, Dig, and Felicity, so that he could get out of there and start a new life somewhere else, while simultaneously clearing Oliver’s name. This one last bit is not really clear to me to be honest, I mean I know they said „The Arrow is dead, and you’re innocent”, aka everyone BELIEVES the Arrow is dead and therefore no one will suspect Oliver again, buuut there are a number of things wrong with that idea. First off, Lance still knows his identity, and he’s not an idiot. He might believe that Roy died but he knows full well that he was never the real Arrow. Also, will Oliver just stop helping people now? Or how exactly does he plan to go about his vigilante business without people catching on that the Arrow is still out there? And even more importantly, isnt’t Laurel aka the Black Canary also wanted by the police? So basically Roy’s fake death and real disappearence don’t really solve anything, but I guess they needed a way to temporarily write Colton Haynes out of the show. I don’t really know why, it’s not like he has anything lined up for the future that we know about, and he seemed to genuinely love being a part of the show... in any case it’s a shame, really. Roy wasn’t exactly the most interesting character around but he had lots of potential as Oliver’s sidekick, and now all of that is pretty much wasted.

And about that double twist? Well, at the very end of the episode Ra’s al Ghul showed up and stabbed Thea in the stomach, leaving us with a last shot of her bleeding out on the floor. I’ve spent the entire episode waiting for the big shock, and credit where credit is due, I got it in the end, even if, as I’ve said, it’s pretty clear that Thea won’t actually die. Back when I thought Roy was dead, I was wondering whether Oliver will ask Ra’s to somehow bring him back in exchange for him accepting his offer, and now I’m not wondering, but am actually pretty sure that this is what’s going to happen to Thea. I don’t remember whether Ra’s ability to bring people back to life has actually been mentioned on the show or I only know about it because that was what everyone was talking about back when Oliver „died” in the midseason finale, but in any case I know that in the comics there’s this thing called the Lazarus Pit which is supposedly able to do just that. I’m really looking forward to an actual resurrection happening on this show after the sham that we had in Oliver’s case... I still can’t believe that we’re supposed to believe that he didn’t actually die but only almost (!) died after being stabbed through the lungs, falling from a twenty-story high cliff, and landing on a lump of sharp rocks, but whatever... now the writers get a second chance to do this right, and they better not disappoint.

Episode MVP: Colton Haynes as Roy Harper

Quote of the Episode:

"There's a decent chance that you and Palmer are related." – Oliver Queen

Random tidbits:

 - I didn’t say anthing about the flashbacks because they’ve been boring me since the beginning of the season, and it feels like nothing ever actually happens in them. This week’s parallel about Oliver needing to learn to let people help him felt especially forced.

 - I’m really really sad about what’s happening between Oliver and Lance right now. Two lines in particular ("I got you now, you son of a bitch" and "I'd say I'm sorry but I think we both know whose fault this is") were particularly painful. I adored their partnership back when Lance stil believed in the Arrow, and I’m hoping against hope that it can still be repaired somehow.

 - Apparently there are metahumans that were not created by the particle accelerator explosion, but by something else... I guess that’s something that is going to be explored either on The Flash or on the future spin-off, but right now I don’t really care about it.

 - One scene in particular bothered me to no end: when Felicity didn’t realize that the weird dude wearing sunglasses inside might just be the guy they’re looking for... you know, the one that shoots laser beams out of his freaking eyes and works in that very same building she was investigating? Come on, she’s not that dumb.

 - The Villain of the Week was played by Doug Jones, also known as one of the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or that creepy-ass hand-eyed monster from Pan’s Labyrinth. He’s seriously incredible.