The mid-season break from The CW’s Arrow has been a brutal one, with Oliver Queen challenging—and losing to—Ra’s Al Ghul for his sister’s life. Impaled and flung off the side of a mountain, we’ve had a long month wondering how Ollie could possibly recover from not only a potentially fatal wound, but a fall a few hundred feet down.
The episode opens with Arrow’s trademark bombast: a pair of criminals is on the run from Arsenal, and the ensuing car chase leads to plenty of highway havoc. At the end of the line, a familiar green figure fires a volley of arrows, but it’s not Oliver. Diggle has put on the Arrow suit (“This suit is too tight,” he groaned) to help Arsenal as well as keep the illusion that the Arrow is still watching over Starling City. One criminal is captured, the other escapes and Diggle explains his lack of skill with a bow and arrow: “I’m more of a glock kind of guy.”
The show then flashes back to Hong Kong, where Oliver and Maseo are tasked by Amanda Waller to collect Alpha, a catalyst for a bio-weapon that they have in their possession. Maseo begrudgingly agrees, reminding Waller that his wife, Tatsu, has been kidnapped. Waller reminds him that the mission takes priority over rescuing his wife. While some may disagree with casting the slender Cynthia Addai-Robinson as the traditionally stocky Waller, she certainly has the character’s vicious coldness down pat.
Back in the present, Ray Palmer is trying to work some kinks out in his A.T.O.M. suit so that he can help clean up the streets of Starling City and realize his vision for Star City. Felicity, still unaware of Ollie’s fate at the hands of Ra’s Al Ghul, confesses that she’s afraid for Palmer if he takes up a vigilante role.
We then cut to the snowy mountain where Ollie and Ra’s Al Ghul has their battle, and we’re given a full look at how severe the situation is: Ollie fell hundreds of feet onto a rocky cliff, but a mysterious figure approaches his body…
Meanwhile, we learn of Danny Brickwell, a criminal simply known as Brick (Vinnie Jones from Snatch) who has been released and confronts the escaped shooter, a man named Jose Anton, from the beginning of the episode. He chides Anton for drawing attention to himself, and then gives him an option: if he can kill Brick with his own gun, he can live. Anton hesitates, and Brick beats him to death. I don’t know who managed to get Jones to sign on for this role, but he is a perfect fit for the grittier tone of Arrow, as well as an imposing villain.
Next, we see Thea training with her father, Malcolm Merlyn, after which she explains her concerns over Oliver’s disappearance, being unaware that he challenged Ra’s in order to save her life by wiping out Merlyn’s “blood debt.” Merlyn offers to look into the situation, despite almost certainly knowing Ollie’s fate at the hand of the head of the League of Assassins.
Felicity manages to track the elusive Brick via burner phone to an abandoned warehouse in the Glades, so Roy and Diggle head out to investigate. Instead, they find a pair of oil drums, one full of burned evidence, the other with a burned corpse. They fish out a few scraps of burned paper and return to HQ so Felicity can check them out. Merlyn confronts them there asking them if they are aware of the whereabouts of Oliver, and explaining that Oliver is either dead or Ra’s Al Ghul’s prisoner—and he doesn’t take prisoners. Sure enough, Merlyn heads to the mountain and finds the blood-soaked scimitar at the site of Ollie’s fall.
Back in Ollie’s past, he, Maseo, and a small team finally break into the lab where Alpha is being held. Ollie finds the chemical, but the group is ambushed by Chinese Triads and pinned down.
Back in the present, Merlyn returns to Arrow HQ with the sword, and delivers a somber warning: no matter how they may try to think that this is all a hoax masterminded by Merlyn, the simple truth is that Oliver Queen is dead. Felicity stands up and reminds Merlyn that, if it weren’t for him manipulating Thea into murdering Sarah Lance, there wouldn’t have been a blood debt and Oliver wouldn’t have had to challenge Ra’s. Merlyn, shockingly, agrees and explains that he has to shoulder that burden for the rest of his life.
Flashing back yet again to Hong Kong, Oliver manages to slip away from the Triads with Alpha in tow, but is attacked by a man who separated from the group. The two scuffle, and Ollie has an arrow lined up to kill the man, but instead lets him live.
Back in the present, Diggle determines that the mysterious scrap of paper from the warehouse is actually full of case numbers for criminals that the vigilantes apprehended, and that Brick is going to break into the police evidence warehouse to steal the physical evidence against these people. Without the evidence or testimony from a vigilante, their cases would be thrown out and they would walk free.
Roy and Diggle head to the warehouse, but Brick has already made his move. Diggle manages to shoot Brick, but the bullet only grazes his temple, leaving him at the mercy of the hooligan. Thankfully, Roy steps in and saves Diggle, but Brick gets into the truck of evidence and escapes when the bay door slams shut, separating Roy and Diggle from their quarry. Back at HQ, Felicity reveals that she was the one who shut the door, as she’s already lost Ollie and couldn’t stand to have two more of her friends killed in the line of duty.
Ollie’s body is brought to a mysterious shack in the woods just as Brick makes his plans apparent: all of those whose evidence he stole now work for him, and they will work together to take over the Glades. Two of his new henchmen leave, only to be disabled by one of the Canary’s sonic devices. Laurel is finally revealed as having taken up the mantle of her dead sister, declaring herself “the justice you can’t run from.”
Finally, Ollie awakens in the shed, where Maseo explains that he had to be brought to Tatsu so that she could bring him back to life.
This return episode was positively jam-packed with equal parts action and emotion. The episode brought to mind the mid-90’s comic storyline “World without a Superman,” which showed how the world coped with the loss of the Man of Steel. This episode showed how everyone would process the loss of Oliver Queen, and it shows a side of everyone that we didn’t necessarily expect. Felicity is the most outward, and her strained interactions with Ray Palmer are indicative of her grief, all but begging him not to take up the mantle of A.T.O.M. Diggle is also hit hard by the loss, as he says that he still felt like he was Ollie’s bodyguard, even though that was a role he no longer filled. Finally, we got to see more of Ray Palmer’s motivations for trying to become a vigilante, and Brandon Routh’s normally manic portrayal of the scientist takes on a more sober tone when his motivations are questioned by Felicity.
Unfortunately, I find Laurel’s taking up the mantle of Black Canary a bit sudden and forced. She hasn’t been a particularly likeable or convincing character since the end of season 1, and to believe that she’s suddenly a capable martial artist after half a season in a gym is a bit of a stretch. We’ll see how well she does over the coming episodes, as Black Canary is a constant staple in the Green Arrow comics.
Overall, season 3 has been pretty densely packed with new characters, and they’ve mostly been delivered in a compelling fashion. The lead up to the Atom reveal is giddying, and even the strangely out-of-place Ra’s Al Ghul is a grim threat. Hopefully we can resolve this without yet another harrowing threat to Starling City by season’s end, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.