Last night’s episode of Arrow, which continued the rise of Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) as the new Black Canary while Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) dealt with his own resurrection, was a heavily mixed episode in this critic’s eye, for both positive and negative reasons.
Let’s start with the positive which was Laurel’s arc as she is continuing to work on being the new Black Canary. I have said this multiple times that, even though this is a character that still needs both physical and mental training before she can become her comic counterpart, this is one of my favorite arcs of the entire season, if not THE favorite. As annoying as Roy and Diggle were with their comments, I do think it’s fair to, in a way, have them represent the part of the audience that is having some issues with this arc, because realistically speaking, Laurel is absolutely nowhere near of being what her sister was. But the thing that does start to bug me a lot is that none of these characters can embrace the idea of Laurel at least wanting to try.
Instead of rejecting her and telling her not to risk her life — although I don’t blame them because they do it because they care — why doesn’t anyone of them offer to train and help her? It’s admirable that they are trying to protect her, but they need to see past that, and it was nice to see towards the second half of the episode that they did let her in, albeit cautiously. While I never want to see a character suffer or get hurt, I do think that Laurel’s missteps are a part of her character development. She learns from it and takes those lessons for her next fight. If we are looking at just Laurel as Laurel (and not as the Black Canary), her scenes with her father in this episode were heartbreaking. The part that really killed me was when she had to call him and act as Sara because Captain Lance still doesn’t know that his daughter is dead.
I’m still having a hard time processing Oliver’s “resurrection” and maybe it was just me, but did anyone feel that Tatsu and Maseo were saying that Oliver actually didn’t die and was just unconscious? If that is the case and he is now depending oj Tatsu’s mysterious herbal tea to get better, then this is when I really need to put my foot down, and this is both for the writers as well as fans of the show. Is it meant to be believed that it’s more difficult to process Laurel becoming Black Canary than Oliver surviving a sword pierced through his body, a major fall of a very high cliff, and lying there for hours, freezing ?
First of all we need to set something incredibly straight here: Oliver 100% died that day. Also, is it really believable that whether he died or not, that he is going to come back from his experience through herbal tea and natural healing? If putting him in a Lazarus Pit is so incredibly unrealistic, then what does that make this whole tea situation? For a show that has always been so grounded in reality, it would have felt a lot more believable to have put Oliver in the Lazarus Pit (which does exist out there somewhere) than have what we are getting right now. Maybe there is something the writers aren’t showing us just yet and maybe it will all be revealed when Oliver does return to Starling, so fingers crossed.
A few quick points that I didn’t talk a lot about:
– DJ No-Personality is a member of League of Assassins? That’s just laughable and that’s not only because I never liked the character from the start. I just don’t see it in this character.
– Brick is continuing to be one of the funniest villains of all time on this show because of Vinnie Jones’ portrayal of the character.
– The flashbacks in Hong Kong in this episode was one of my favorites thus far, and it’s always fun to see China White (Kelly Hu) back. The flashbacks are now becoming more imperative with what is going on with Maseo and Tatsu in the present.
– Thea and Malcolm continue to have some of the best scenes together this season, and while she didn’t get the whole truth from him, at least now she knows of Ra’s al Ghul. With Thea’s determination to not flee anymore, it looks Ra’s will have two Merlyns to deal with.
Overall, this was an incredibly mixed episode of Arrow, it had a lot of good moments especially through Laurel, but it also made this viewer confused about Oliver’s status and what the next step is. Hopefully, these next few episodes will give us answers that will make things clearer.
Arrow airs on Wednesday nights, 8/7c on The CW.
[Photo via The CW]
Follow Us
