Last night’s Arrow marked the return of Thea Merlyn-Queen as Oliver decides to seek her down in Corto Maltese.
Ever since the season 2 finale and since the Arrow Press junket at San Diego Comic-Con, I have been excited to see the evolution of Willa Holland’s Thea and where she is going this year. She has been one of my top favorite characters on the show and after all the pain that she has gone through, it was cool to see how strong she has become. We meet her in Corto Maltese where she has been going by the name “Mia”, which is also another great nod to her Speedy future.
Another great aspect of “Corto Maltese” was getting to see John Barrowman back as Malcolm Merlyn who is now a series regular on the show. We have heard that Malcolm’s relationship with Thea is going to be one of the most dysfunctional father-daughter relationships we have ever seen. Boy, they were not kidding, were they? We got to see the scene in the limo between those two and what was said there, which was nice to see.
The scenes between them in the present were intense, especially at the end where they were fighting each other with swords which pretty awesome. As Thea takes off to go back to Starling City, you see that Malcolm has something in the making with her going back. Whatever he has in store for her and possibly the rest of the gang, it can’t be good. But overall, I was happy with the re-introduction of him and now that we have Barrowman as a series regular, I hope to see some really cool stories for his character.
“Corto Maltese” also features Oliver and Thea reuniting and it’s some of Holland’s and Amell’s best scenes on the show. It was good to see Oliver realize himself that the reason why Thea left was because of all the lies and that he would come nowhere with her if he didn’t start to be honest with her. Luckily, he didn’t reveal to her that he was the Arrow, but he did tell her about what really happened to Robert that day, years ago. I think this is the beginning of them repairing their relationship and that’s something to look forward to.
While all of that is taking place, a lot of stuff went down in Starling City as Laurel meets Ted Grant, played by J.R. Ramirez and I was immediately sold by his portrayal. I know that this is a different take on him as Ted/Wildcat has always been a bit older, but I’m fine with getting a young version on the show. This is also another piece to Laurel’s journey of becoming the Black Canary.
We see her at one point in the episode trying to take down a guy who had been assaulting his girlfriend many times, but sadly it ended with Laurel getting kicked down to the ground. Even though it was a horrifying sight, this was necessary as this was a good wake-up call that she has no training or experience in fighting like Oliver does. So it leads to her going back to Ted and asking him to train her. This is easily going to be one of my favorite parts of this season as I’m ready to see Laurel evolve into the hero that she was always meant to be.
Overall, “Corto Maltese” was a solid episode that gave us a more grown up version of Thea, an even more twisted Malcolm, a great introduction of Ted as well as a mysterious Ray who seems to be up something, but what is it? I’m very much looking forward to next week for the 50th episode of the series which will introduce the anticipated arrival of Ra’s al Ghul. You do not want to miss that one.
Arrow airs on Wednesday nights, 8/7c on The CW.
[Photo via The CW]
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