“Oliver’s more like you than I thought,” the young woman (played by Sea Shimooka) said to her father’s headstone following an encounter with the OG GA. And regardless of whether you already sensed it was a woman, or had heard it was a half-sister of Oliver’s, seeing her train and then suit up, later capped by the visual of her standing beside Robert Queen’s grave, with the canonically torched family mansion in the distance, had to leave you stirred. Lastly, yet up first in the hour, you had the reveal of the new Green Arrow. But in speaking of Oliver, Dinah used words such as “the strength that made him a hero” and, “Your dad had this way….” Is Oliver, like Felicity, also dead at this point? Or is he simply very much out of the game? Next stop: Future Rene. The future timeline dropped other new breadcrumbs, as Dinah explained to William the “Mark of Four” symbol that represents the pillars of heroism - courage, compassion, selflessness and loyalty - and which was found inside Oliver’s bow buried in Lian Yu. (“Asking questions about Felicity Smoak will not end well for anyone”?)
Katherine McNamara’s character (aka Maya) made quite an entrance, semmmi-convincingly delivering a smackdown, before giving Future William, Dinah and Zoe (but not Roy, hmmm….) a minute of her time. What’s more, said club dovetailed with this week’s flash-forwards, where the glitzy establishment has decayed into a squalid street fighting arena and “BlackStar” is a main attraction.
The callback that no one anticipated not only offered up great parallels to the last time we saw him running a club, it figured into a major plot point. Now, let’s talk about how fun, fun, fun this episode was, in ways small and large. Oliver has a new lease on city-saving life, sanctioned SCPD muscle (take that, Pollard!) - but for how much longer with the ever-“ruthless” Felicity stay a part of it? And with the seven episodes that preceded this, the foundation for Felicity’s new temperament was soundly established. I just don’t know if what’s best for me right now is the same thing as what’s best for us.” “The old you… is the person I fell in love with.” Even more so as wife and husband got to putting their feelings into words. I ask, have you ever seen Oliver look at Felicity the way he did, with such a blend of disbelief and disapproval? Regardless of your agenda, it had to shake you. Arrow it turns out is going all in on this arc, as evidenced by Oliver’s reaction to his wife’s brandishing of a gun to fend off an imposter archer’s home invasion.
(Suggested campaign slogan: “Vote for me, Hoss!”)Īnd then there is Felicity, who had been pressed to redefine herself in Oliver’s absence, while still squarely in Diaz’s crosshairs. Mayor Pollard is a pint-sized pill, as Rene basically put it, but in that capacity she frames a new conflict for That Which Was Once Known as Team Arrow: How can Oliver continue to save his city, in a no-vigilante climate? Dinah in turn was cued to wonder if she should suit back up as well, or can she better serve justice as the SCPD captain? Even Rene was pointed down a new and unexpected path, when D suggested he might effect change as a politician.