Check out this week’s Arrow review! It’s long but I just have so many feelings about Oliver and Thea!
What was immediately fascinating about this episode is how the flashbacks were in Starling City and the present time was on Lian Yu, a cool contrast from seasons 1-2 where it was the reverse. Especially while in the direct middle of the five-year journey. I also noticed that the present and past were a bit more even this episode, as opposed to majority present, minimal past. The focus of both sides of this episode is Oliver’s relationship with his sister. I am so glad that Oliver told Thea the truth once again. As she said, now they truly have no secrets from each other (well, Oliver always has a few up his sleeve).
This Thursday is apparently Recap Central. Here’s my Recap of this week’s Arrow, where I get to make a Friends reference and a Grey’s Anatomy reference and I feel awesome about it.
Well, almost. But two of the biggest season reveals finally happened in this week’s Arrow: Thea found out Oliver is the Arrow and Captain Lance FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY found out about Sara. There are a few things each character is a bit, ahem, fuzzy on… (how long has Sara been dead? Who killed Sara?), but it will finally be nice to get past btoh of these distracting omissions. Now, besides the circumstances of Sara’s death, we just need Lance to know Oliver is the Arrow and most of our major secrets will be out in the open!
The end of this week’s Arrow gutted me (and Oliver) more than the literally torso-piercing mid-season finale did. As I write this I am still in shock and can’t really move. We’ll get to that later though.
With regard to the title and the Malcolm-ness of the episode: I mostly just liked the alliteration of the recap subtitle, but both epithets were used for Malcolm in the episode and I think it represents the two parts of him. The Magician is the man he was before the League. He was flawed and scared but he cared about his family and still chose to show Nyssa his trick even when he saw that she was a tweenage bad-ass. The Monster is who he became. The League didn’t erase his anger or despair, it suppressed it until it drove him insane. Insane enough to think that destroying the Glades was helping the city (I am still thrown by all of the logic-adjacent support he got from Thea and Roy in this episode).
Malcolm has to rectify both sides of himself, as does Team Arrow. I agree with Felicity that he is a monster, but in contrast, he listened to Oliver and didn’t kill Brick. Hedoesseem to care about Thea (well, to a certain extent; he did still put her inthe crosshairs of Ra’s al Ghul). And if redemption and changing your ways is a theme of the series (which is what Oliver’s character development has been about so far), then Oliver is the person who can best help Malcolm redeem himself. Just like Canary was the name for Sara that she felt was beautiful but didn’t really represent who the League turned her into, Malcolm struggles with the same with his own name. Maseo also became someone else when he joined the League. This season is about identity and all of these characters must reconcile the different parts of themselves, including the different names they go by. Malcolm must stop being the Monster and return to being the Magician.
Check out the rest for my Olicity thoughts, because of course I have some.
In which I discuss the Arrow midseason finale and note that most superhero/action-adventure shows pull the same stunt Arrow did. And that’s not a bad thing. TV is not about the big moments — that’s for movies to focus on, it’s often about the aftermath. This major moment on Arrow, and this episode, is merely a transition to a new stage in the story and that’s exciting.
Major spoilers for Arrow 3.09 “The Climb” are below and beyond the jump.
There is a point in most TV series (especially action/adventure shows like this one), where everything seems to burn to the ground. It’s the awful part where you get to it in your rewatches of even your favorite TV shows and you wonder if you can stomach those episodes again. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re painful for the characters. They reach a low point that it seems they can’t get out of, a fire they must endure to come out the better for it. At some point, Buffy dies, Angel gets buried at the bottom of the ocean — my fellow NOCs can probably give a Smallville example — I’m sure your favorite long running action/adventure show (any drama really) has had a moment like this one.
I am ready for the next leg in the journey of the story and the development of all the characters who must come out of this moment the stronger.
Also, in the comments, there’s an interesting, though brief discussion on another way in which the show doesn’t lend proper representation to a cultural group. This time with R’as al Ghul, who has suffered this before time and again. These conversations are important to have because if we don’t have them and bring them to the light, they will keep happening. Join the discussion!
Read more: NOC Recaps Arrow: A Battle He Was Always Going to Lose | thenerdsofcolor.
