Jessie Robertson reviews the season finale of Arrow season 2….
This is it. The Season two finale of Arrow; it’s all been leading up to this episode. To remind, there’s a list of perils looming over Ollie and team’s head as they head into this week: Who is Slade planning on killing to exact his revenge? Waller’s Drone Strike, did the Cure work on Roy, and the main question: Will Oliver kill Slade?
This is the big theme of the season is Oliver’s choice to move away from killing criminals to apprehending them, and he’s struggled the whole way with it. This episode does yet another good job of slamming that right in his face right from jump street when he finds out Slade has taken Laurel (believing her to be Oliver’s one true love- which he never confirms or denies.) Detective Lance straight tells him to his face, that was a failed effort and you need to kill him to save her. Then Sara shows up with her assassin squad led by her former lover Nyssa al Ghul. Again, she tells Oliver they kill and do not take orders from anyone else. Even he starts to believe he has no respite but to take Slade’s life but its’ one constant that keeps him on that track: Felicity. She comes through again for Oliver giving him an idea to keep Slade thinking he is smarter than Oliver, further solidifying the fact that Felicity is the heart of this team. More on them later.
We also get back to Thea, who did indeed shoot her father Malcolm Merlyn as was teased at the end of last weeks’ episode. Not only did it not kill him but he was proud that she did , as when Tommy had the chance to do it, he was “too weak” as Merlyn said. Thea hears from the newly awakened Roy (who was given a red mask similar to Oliver’s green one, another illusion to his “Red Arrow” moniker in DC Comics) for him to give his full apology. Merlyn warns her that he is like everyone else in her life, and can’t be trusted and these words stick with her. Roy even says “do you trust me?” and she says yes; then moments later she finds a bow and quiver of arrows (red, of course) under his bed and leaves him once and for all, into the waiting arms of Daddy Dearest Merlyn. Will she be going to train in the League of Assassins, or what other plans does Merlyn have for her? That will be a very interesting story in Season 3.
Diggle gets a little more to do here (although aside from the Suicide Squad stuff, he hasn’t had much going on this season) when Lyla shows up with a helicopter armed with a missile and blows the hell out of a bunch of Slade followers. She makes quite the entrance. Oliver puts them on Waller duty and they revel in getting to team up together. They break into ARGUS HQ and break out a few prisoners (including Floyd Lawton) to help take down Waller’s squad. She doesn’t relent easily and even reveals that Lyla is pregnant and Diggle will soon be a Daddy, another cool storyline I’m looking forward to.
Okay, back to the main story at hand, Oliver leads his team into battle armed with Mirakuru Cure-laced arrows to fight against Slade’s army. After Nyssa dispatches Isabel (who begs for death, happy she helped destroy Oliver’s life) he decrees no more killing tonight. Oliver had stashed Felicity in the abandoned Queen Mansion for safe keeping but she doesn’t want to be there. Oliver has to explain to her that Slade wants to kill the woman he loves and he won’t let that happen because he loves Felicity, so she must stay safe. It’s quite a moment and Felicity’s face and Oliver’s steady, soft delivery sell it huge.
Slade reveals, of course, that he’s doubled down and stayed one step ahead of Oliver again by capturing Felicity and Laurel both, which indicated he would make Oliver choose once again. But Slade has overplayed himself as Ollie set up Felicity as a decoy and she plunges a syringe full of the Cure into Slade’s neck. Then we have our final battle. It does a great job of mirroring their battle on the island, moving back and forth from the past to the present and it’s amazing how similarly they play out. Oliver is reminded that then, he had the chance to hit Slade with the cure but his anger overtook him and he put Slade’s eye out with an arrow, seemingly killing him. This time, he chooses the latter. Oliver seems to be twice the fighter Non-Mirakuru Slade is and successfully traps him against a stone pillar, spouting rhetoric, all of which Oliver is able to ignore. He tells Waller to call off the drone strike because Slade is captured once and for all.
The season ends with Oliver sort of slyly relishing in front of a beaten and broken (and noticeably more gray) Slade as he’s locked in a cell. Oliver has to climb a ladder and we see he’s imprisoned him back on their island in a bunker underground! Oliver, Felicity and Diggle all get ready to board their plane as Felicity laments that Oliver really had her going and he agreed, they all played their parts well, further delaying a romance or the admittance of feelings between them. She then asks, “Hey, when did Oliver learn how to fly a plane?” which takes us to the closing scene as when the Amazo burns down and sinks into the ocean (which showed Sara getting sucked into a whirlpool, ala the Queen’s Gambit) Oliver wakes up in a hotel in Hong Kong, with Amanda Waller in charge. So it looks like Oliver didn’t spend all five years on the island? Very interesting.
A few quick sidenotes: Sara goes back to the League in a very strange scene , the only one I didn’t care for at all in this closer. Her father kind of jokingly yells at Nyssa for taking his daughter away but everyone does realize she’s leaving to go be an assassin again right? They kill people and it’s played like this nice family moment. Giving Laurel her black leather jacket and her dad joking “Don’t get any ideas,” also came off flat for me. And the cliffhanger is Det. Lance starts feeling pain in his stomach and falls down bruised and spitting out blood. He’s one of the most solid characters on the show and it would hurt to lose him as a main character, so I don’t feel good about what’s going on there.
And we saw the Flash! It was a fun, goofy sort of one minute video of him and Oliver but it does set the tone for what his show will be like and I think it’s a good tone and counter balances Arrow (which I’d love to see as a double feature every week.)
Season 2 of Arrow topped Season 1 in terms of big story, numerous amount of characters being introduced, and even more people that know Oliver’s identity. The show looks to be going in even more directions for next season and I can’t wait.
Jessie Robertson
