Last night’s ARROW launched Oliver’s mayoral campaign, despite his team’s reluctance to support the idea at first. I can’t say I blame them, really. Their reaction to the news pretty much mirrored mine when he told Felicity a couple of episodes ago that he was going to run for mayor. Okay, sure, he is the Green Arrow, but the general public doesn’t know that. As far as the Star City people go, Oliver Queen is a spoiled playboy brat that led his family’s company to its downfall and lost it in the end. He shouldn’t even have that much money anymore, he doesn’t have any political experience, but yet he is still going to do it. I am very curious about how they are going to handle this and where this new storyline is going to lead them.
We finally saw the lair 3.0 and it turns out that Oliver is using Sebastian Blood’s old campaign office, which conveniently had a secret lair in a top floor. The new place is huge and Felicity happily explains that Cisco and STAR Labs helped put it together. Every member of the team has their own display with finger print identification and everything is just pretty awesome. Also, even though we know THE FLASH and ARROW exist in the same universe and the crossover episodes seem to be a yearly thing now, I just really love the fact that both shows reference each other so much. It seems that Cisco and Felicity have a pretty solid partnership (and friendship) from what we have seen so far and I really love how both shows are so intertwined. It’s almost like watching one huge show, except on Tuesdays we focus a little bit more on Central City and on Wednesdays we focus on Team Arrow.
The villain of the week was a group of dirty cops, who were stealing drugs from drug dealers in order to resell them, which was just a very, very twisted notion of justice, if we can even call it that. This storyline served only as a foundation for Oliver to find out that Captain Lance is working with Damien Dahrk, which led to one of the very best scenes this show has ever had. The confrontation between Oliver and Lance has been a long time coming and it was just so great and satisfying to see Oliver standing up for himself. I know that he isn’t a saint – and, sure, Lance had his reasons to hate him back in season one with the history he had with the Captain’s daughters – but the guy despises his guts for no good reason. Maybe just on principle. And Oliver Queen – and we are not talking about his night gig as the city’s vigilante, but the man himself – has been a pretty decent guy since early season two. It was so great to see how the tables have turned and for Captain Lance to finally feel on his own skin that, sometimes, good people do bad things because they have no other choice.
So Dahrk is threatening Laurel. Big deal. Like Oliver said, she can take care of herself and – despite my reservations with her – she can kick some serious ass now, just like Sara. So it’s time for the good Captain to stop hiding behind his daughters and hold his own weight, which he seems willing to do, by the end of the episode, when he tells Oliver that he is going to turn himself in. This storyline established that, now that Oliver knows Lance is working with Damien Dahrk, they can have someone close to the villain to figure out what his game plan is. So instead of turning himself in, Oliver convinces him to continue working with Dahrk and be his eyes and ears inside the enemy’s turf. Also, acting wise, that scene was absolutely brilliant. Both Paul Blackthorne and Stephen Amell brought their A game to this moment and it was such a joy to watch.
Meanwhile, Laurel is keeping Sara hidden and in chains – because she is seriously like a wild, scared animal now – and tells Thea they cannot tell Oliver about this. As far as he is concerned, the two of them just spent a couple of days at a SPA and not in Nanda Parbat. But she decides to tell her father about her sister’s resurrection and nearly scares the guy to death when she just takes him to the place she is keeping Sara at and doesn’t even give him a heads up about what he is about to see. Your father has a heart condition, Laurel, for the love of god. You cannot just spring his not so dead anymore daughter on him like this. Jesus.
Anyway, Lance is obviously freaked out and tells Laurel that that is not Sara and then proceeds to tell Dahrk about it. Seriously, what is wrong with this family? I don’t know who is worse: Laurel, for bringing Sara back to life in the first place, knowing full well what the consequences would be and what she was going to subject her sister to; or Lance, for learning his dead daughter is alive again and then telling the bad guy about it. And then he takes the bad guy’s advice to heart and returns to Sara, ready to put her down, as Damien suggested. What. The. Hell. But Laurel gets there just in time and saves her sister from being murdered a second time. All seems well for a while, but later on, she returns to Sara’s secret hideout, only to find her sister is gone.
And last, but definitely not least, let’s talk about Felicity and how much I love her new found friendship with Curtis. Her line “Oh, my god, this is probably what talking to me feels like” was just so spot on and so spectacularly delivered by Emily Bett Rickards, that it had me laughing out loud. So when she tells him she knows the code showing up in her phone is coming from Palmer Tech and Curtis tells her he doesn’t have anything to do with it, they figure out it’s coming from the hand of the Atom’s suit. My guess is that (SPOILER ALERT?) mini Ray is trying to get in touch with her somehow, hence the criptic messages on her phone and the flickering lights at lair 3.0. But what was really great about this whole subplot was that it showed just how hard Felicity is taking his death and it was about time they touched on this. She may have been in love with Oliver the whole time she was with Ray, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care a great deal about him. And I really believe she is probably blaming herself for his death, so I am really excited to find out how they are going to approach this storyline and introduce Ray back into their lives.
All in all, very solid episode and it was a very nice touch that Thea is the one helping Oliver with his campaign. I have always loved their relationship, but it has been extra special this season.
ARROW returns with an all new episode on Wednesday, November 4 at 8/7c on The CW.