Arrow 2.13 Review: ”Heir To The Demon”

It can’t be stressed enough that this season of Arrow has been hitting bullseye as almost every episode has been better, week after week.

One of the reasons why “Heir To The Demon” will forever be one of the most memorable episodes of the series is because last night, Arrow (finally) introduced a LBGT-relationship. The introduction of Nyssa al Ghul (portrayed by the phenomenal guest star, Katrina Law) revealed that Sara and Nyssa had been in a relationship during Sara’s time in the League of Assassins.

The kiss was special for a lot of people last night, (Twitter was basically on fire, in a positive way, when it happened) especially for this reviewer who is openly bisexual himself. If anyone from the Arrow crew is reading this, thank you for making us in the LGBT community feel represented.

Nyssa’s introduction was incredibly well introduced to the show and it continues to expand more of the League of Assassin-arc. While it remains to be seen when or if we will see Ra’s al Ghul, having Nyssa around and representing the al Ghul family is something that we can get behind. The costume department deserves again a big hand for Nyssa’s costume and it was nice to see something that didn’t look too similar to what the male outfits look like. Law fitted right into the show and it looks like that we will see her pretty soon again.

“Heir To The Demon” was mostly a Lance family episode and this was imperative for all those characters and it was also great to finally see them all together, even though the circumstances were tragic. It looks like Alex Kingston is going to be around for a while which is greatly appreciated. This time she will be able to flesh out Dinah a lot more, compared to what she got to do in her two episodes in season 1.

It will definitely be interesting to see what will happen to the Lance family as the season progresses. Something that was a nice change was to see flashbacks completely dedicated to them instead of the island (as great as those are, it’s good to take a break sometimes).

The thing that we loved so much about it was to see this family being happy and what they were like before the tragic events happened. Because if we look from a bigger perspective, it can’t be denied that the Lance family has gone through a lot of pain ever since the pilot. In addition, we got to see their reactions when they learned that Sara and Oliver had died on the Queen Gambit.

It was especially a joy to see a happy Laurel and just like in “The Undertaking”, seeing Katie Cassidy getting to portray her character that way, is something that we hope she will get to do in the present eventually. Despite how harsh Laurel was towards Sara, that was one of Cassidy’s best performances and just like Oliver said, we just need to give her time.

Moira’s arc continued to progress a lot in this episode, but there was a twist that in a way was expected, although it happened a lot sooner that speculated. Felicity found out the truth about Malcolm being Thea’s kid and that lead to a powerful scene between Susanna Thompson and Emily Bett Richards.

It was a thrill to see Felicity being the way she was to Moira because it shows that she is definitely not afraid to confront people. We almost expected her to actually keep the secret from Oliver a little bit longer, but it was actually better that she told him right away. It was however emotional to see Oliver basically telling his mom that he has lost all respect for her.

The only issue that we found with this episode was the ending which was Sara and Oliver hooking up. Now let’s be clear here, Stephen Amell and Caity Lotz have a great dynamic (although, Amell has good chemistry with everyone on the show), but the issue here is that it came out of nowhere, which was probably what the writers were aiming for. But do we really need a Sara and Oliver relationship right now? It really doesn’t feel like the right time, after everything that happened in the episode. We will just have to wait and see where they will go with it when the show returns.

Aside from that single issue, “Heir To The Demon” was a powerful episode that had a strong script by writer Jake Coburn, great directing by Wendy Stanzler and as always, the cast was at their A-game. Several storylines progressed in a solid way and while it’s frustrating with another hiatus, the wait is going to be worth it because there are a lot of great things in store for the fans.

Arrow returns with new episodes on Wednesday February 26^th, 8/7c on The CW.