”Broken Arrow” may be the best and most suitable title to describe last night’s emotional roller coaster of an Arrow episode, as the show pulled off two major twists, while Oliver and Ray teamed up to take down DC Comics villain Deathbolt (guest star Doug Jones).
Going into this episode, I knew that a title like “Broken Arrow” could only mean that something incredibly tragic was going to take place here with either the death of a character or something just as horrible. Roy Harper has been not only one of my favorite characters on this show but in the overall Green Arrow mythology, so seeing what he was able to do in this episode made this fan very happy. As gut-wrenching as it was to see Roy get killed in prison only to find out that it was all a part of this big plan that Felicity, Diggle, and he had orchestrated, I couldn’t have been more grateful to see Roy still being alive. Unfortunately, it was announced that Colton Haynes has exited Arrow as a series regular. You can read Buzzfeed’s full exclusive interview with the Arrow showrunners about his exit, and while Haynes is set to appear in one more episode this season, it looks like Season 4 will be pretty Roy-less.
It really stings when you have an actor that is as talented and perfect in the role like Haynes has been for the past two years, but it’s also perfectly understandable, and as someone who appreciates the work this actor has done, I can do nothing but wish Haynes the best of luck. Even though he is coming back for one more hour, this was Roy’s strongest episode in the entire series, and as heartbreaking and teary as it was to see this being played out, Oliver is blessed to have such amazing people in his life. It will be interesting to see how this will affect Oliver moving forward, because you saw plenty of times in this episode where he almost broke down. And while this might sound cruel to say, I want this poor man to cry his eyes out, because this is literally hell for him.
Last night’s Arrow also introduced new DC Comics villain Jake Simmons, a.k.a. Deathbolt, played by the wickedly talented Doug Jones. I’m a sucker for any form of eyes that can blast energy, fire, or anything like that so it was a blast seeing Deathbolt in this episode. I liked how this got Oliver to turn to Ray for help (mostly because he couldn’t be the Arrow at this point) and how they teamed up in a different way than Barry and Ray did on The Flash this week. While I have been commenting a lot this season about how dark the show has become, every once in a while we get some great comedic moments thanks to characters like Ray.
The big revelation, though, when we see Ray drop Deathbolt off over at Star Labs, with a nice guest appearance by Cisco (Carlos Valdes), is that Deathbolt didn’t get his abilities through the particle accelerator. I’m going to put on my very DC Comics hat for a moment and speculate if this might be the introduction of superpowers being possible through other ways in this universe. We will most certainly get an answer in the Episode 22 of The Flash, which is when Deathbolt will be guest starring over on that show. Jones was terrific in the role and deliciously freaky, which is one of my favorite types of villains, so I’m very excited to see the trouble he will cause for the fastest man alive in a few weeks.
Last, but definitely not the least we had a second major twist in this episode, as Ra’s al Ghul pays Thea a terrifying visit. A battle takes place, and while Thea is able to hold up a bit against Ra’s (it was pretty sweet to see how far her training has taken her), he eventually takes her down and stabs a sword through her, hoping that her death will be the thing that finally makes Oliver take over for him in exchange for bringing her back to life. The promo for next week’s episode gives it away, but you could pretty much figure it out that this isn’t something permanent and that Thea will be back alive very soon. It was the perfect ending to this enormous episode, because my emotions were all over the place. However, despite my sadness that Haynes isn’t a series regular anymore, this was a powerful episode. Arrow is continuing to display the emotional journey Oliver Queen is going through, as even he states in this episode that he doesn’t know who he really is anymore.
Arrow airs on Wednesday nights, 8/7c on The CW.
[Photo via The CW]
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