Arrowverse Real Talk - Featuring The Flash

I have not been blogging about the Arrowverse this Fall season, and the reasons for that are many, including not having as much time as I did last year. That said, a good chunk of my lack of motivation has come from the fact that most of the Arrowverse is a goddamn hot mess this year.

Supergirl started off obnoxious and featuring a couple of lesbians arguing constantly about the most asinine wedding decisions (DJ? Live Band? This argument took a whole episode to resolve!), although there was an attempt in the third episode to tell Maggie's story and feature her homophobic Mexican father who came up with a bogus AF reason for not wanting to be at her wedding. That was also a pretty decent episode because Kara wasn't the main feature; she goes up to Mars to help J'onn take care of some personal business, and it was overall a damn fine story. However, Supergirl has the Iris West problem: it doesn't know what the hell to do with its primary black character that isn't superpowered/alien, aka James Olsen. Last season he was all about doing good as the Guardian. This season, not only has he not done jack shit as the Guardian, but then his job as head of Catco gets taken away by Lena Luthor. Which, admittedly, I love all the Lena, and oh my god I ship Lena and Kara so hard... but not at the expense of a black character, FFS.

Hey guys! Remember me? Cuz my writers don't!

Arrow is... not bad, but it's not spectacular either. I'm still with it because it has its moments, and +1 internets for Stephen Amell managing to sneak in a Bruce Wayne reference that made fans titter. I've somewhat enjoyed the Oliver-as-single-dad storyline, but I'm giving this show's writer's the stink eye for what's going on with John Diggle (hey, another black character that the writers seem to engaging in some wtfuckery with). And look, as much as I hated how they killed off Katie Cassidy's Black Canary in season 4, can we just not with Black Siren? She's so shoehorned-in and forced, it's not even funny.

Guys, remember me? GOOD BECAUSE I WILL NEVER LET YOU FORGET EVEN IF IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE WITH THE STORY RAWR!!1!!11

Legends of Tomorrow has been 100% fabulous and you should go watch it right now. The reason for this is because both the writers and the actors of the show have all come to the conclusion that they are on the campiest show on the CW, and goddamn it, they are going to have fun with it! Legends has featured ridiculously hilarious stories of the Legends bumbling their way to heroic acts, the actors are clearly having a blast along the way, and I walk away every week with a smile on my face.

Camp has never looked this good before. 

But dear god, The Flash what in the Nine Hells are you doing?

Easily the worst of the four superhero shows on the CW, The Flash has hurt to watch sometimes. Barry is brought back within seconds after last season's "cliffhanger" (I called it, someone owes me $20, Barry didn't even last a full episode off of his show), and he finds that Iris has taken charge of Team Flash in the meantime. Which, on a surface level, I am totally fine with. Iris needed to do something, as she's been anything but useful in the previous seasons. I'm happy that Iris has taken front and center and that even after Barry's return, she still has a take-charge attitude.

But this show still doesn't know what to do with Caitlin Snow. We finally got a decent episode last night with Caitlin showing that she and Killer Frost have a tense coexistence but at least we can have them both, which is cool. But until last night, Caitlin has just been putzing around in the background, not really doing much. Which has been a problem with her character for four straight seasons.

Inexplicably, The Flash shoved aside fan favorite Kid Flash, ostensibly because the special effects for two speedsters at the same time were too expensive, and also because the show's writers apparently couldn't conceive of creating stories for Wally that didn't involve his speedster abilities. That sound you're hearing is me rolling my eyes because the Firestorm special effects are expensive for Legends of Tomorrow too, and yet magically, the writers of that show have figured out how to write stories for Jax and Martin that don't require them to fire up in every episode. Fancy, that. So Kid Flash got written off the show for reasons, although he's supposed to be back for the wedding crossover special. But there goes another black hero, running off into the sunset.

Don't run, Wally. Don't run.

What makes me really angry about this is that they replaced Kid Flash with another superpowered dude, this time the Elongated Man, and I get that maybe it's slightly cheaper to stretch Ralph's limbs as a special effect than to do a speedster, but really? Your excuse for getting rid him was that it was too expensive to keep a speedster around, so you replace him with a superpowered white guy? To further rub salt in the wound, Elongated Man had a pretty decently amusing introductory episode, but then completely ruins the character last night in "Girls Night Out" by making Ralph a really gross misogynist playboy who forces Barry's bachelor party into a strip club so Ralph can make continuously gratuitous leering at dancers. It took exactly one episode for me to hate this character. I'm pretty sure that's a new record. Even Marvel's Inhumans took the time to make its wooden and terribad main characters hateful to the audience over the course of five or six episodes.

"Girls Night Out" wasn't a totally terrible episode, because it did feature Iris, Caitlin, Felicity, and Cecile having to save the day from the weekly bad guy while Barry is off getting hilariously drunk thanks to Cisco. If the episode had been only about the ladies getting to be heroic, it would have been amazing.

This is my "WTF was that strip club subplot all about" face too, Felicity

While I deeply appreciated Barry's de facto drunken state being that he stands at the bar shouting "I am the Flash!" to a bunch of equally as drunk strangers who cheer for him every time, the whole strip club scene was seven levels of awkward and potentially really disturbing. Besides Ralph being gross the whole time, there was this weird subplot about Cecile's adult daughter dancing at the club as research for a book she's writing about feminism and the male gaze, which okay, I can kind of dig it. But there are some weird undertones of incredible disrespect for sex workers. And frankly, it was a very odd subplot that came entirely out of left field and had something to do with Joe being a parent or something, and something something "I'm freaked out about Cecile being pregnant." This part of the episode was, at best, an incomprehensible tangent, and at worst, fucking gross.

Also, what is the point of Cecile's baby? I've heard a fan theory that Cecile and Joe's baby might be Bartholomew, who in Young Justice is Kid Flash from the future (and Barry's grandson) who comes back in time to hang out with Barry and Wally. Just what this show needs, another future black speedster who can get shoved off to the side too.

Can we talk about how The Thinker, this season's big bad, looks like Brainiac? No? Okay, but let's at least thank The Speed Force that it's not another flipping speedster.

Look, The Flash season four is not as bad as Arrow season four (thank Dog), but I feel like this show is still lost and hasn't quite found its footing, something it lost way back in season two after a wonderfully fun and vibrant season one. The writers really need to find whatever muse it was that let them finally tell a compelling story about Iris and Caitlin being a part of an all-lady hero team, and stick with it, because that was good stuff. Whatever the hell else is going on with this show, though? It needs to get it together.

There is a silver lining to all of this, though. Nothing on the CW is as bad as Marvel's Inhumans.

But then again, very little is.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Critical Hits & Misses #280

• Comedian Louis C.K. has been in the news lately, dogged by allegations of sexual harassment by female comics. So maybe his new movie, about a 17-year-old girl who gets involved with an aging director, is maybe not the best choice...


• Today in NOPE DON'T DO IT news: Marc Guggenheim has revealed that one of the upcoming episodes in season 6 of Arrow will be topical and involve the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the Root blog is here to explain why the hell Arrow should MAYBE NOT DO THIS. 

For today's musical hit, we have Lana del Rey and "White Mustang"

Today's critical rolls: Should tv shows, even ones dominated by mostly-white writing rooms, address topical minority issues? It's kind of a Catch-22 isn't it? They won't hire more minority writers, but if we ask white writers to not write about these issues, then they won't get addressed, because of the lack of minority writers. Discuss!


Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

A Final Trip to 'Lian Yu' - Arrow S5 Finale

Yikes! "Lian Yu" was intense!

And no fooling, this was one of the best episodes Arrow has ever done, let alone one of the top for season five.

In fact, season five is one of this show's top seasons, harkening back to its strong foundations in season one. And speaking of season one, "Lian Yu" features the cameo returns of Malcolm Merlyn, Slade Wilson, and Moira Queen to Arrow.

Spoilers beyond the fold.

I actually missed a couple of reviews over the past few weeks, due to being involved in a car accident, so I apologize (I actually had people ask me on Facebook about the missing reviews). At this point, I'm not going to backtrack. Suffice to say that Adrian Chase has continued being the super genius bastard that he's always been, and that Team Arrow has never been able to keep up with him. In the previous episode before this one, Chase has, one by one, abducted the members of Team Arrow, as well as William, Oliver's son (and his mother, as we discover in this episode).

Thus, Oliver is in a bit of a pickle. Malcolm Merlyn also showed up in the Arrowcave last episode to offer help in getting Thea back. And Oliver ended up calling in another ally: Nyssa, his "wife." The sparks flew immediately between Nyssa and Malcolm as they growled at each other, and their verbal sparring continues in "Lian Yu" and it is great. Once on the island, Oliver picks up a couple more unlikely allies.

Awww YISSSS!

Happy to report that Slade Wilson was absolutely amazing (and that despite weeks of trolling fans about how he wasn't involved in this episode at all, Manu Bennett was indeed back and in awesome form). With the mirakuru cleared out of his system, Slade is sane again, and remembers everything he did under the influence. He wonders why Oliver didn't kill him for the execution of Moira Queen, and he's especially surprised when Oliver not only lets him out of ARGUS prison AND provides him with his gear, but also hands over a flash drive with information containing the whereabouts of Slade's missing son. You can almost see Slade softening, especially with the last.

Not gonna lie, Slade and Oliver fighting together again was a thrill I hadn't realized I was missing so very much.

This is a scene I didn't know I needed...

The other baddie Oliver picks up is Captain Boomerang, which he needn't have bothered, since the jackass turns on them almost instantly. Apparently Chase and his goons got to Boomerang first, but we don't learn that until Oliver rushes into an ambush and Boomerang pulls a gun on him. Slade appears to betray Oliver in that moment as well, but actually, he just proceeds to kick Boomerang's ass. Thankfully, Evelyn also gets her ass kicked in this scene, and put into a cage. And because Oliver is a much better person than I am, he promises to come back for Evelyn when Chase has been dealt with. Personally, I'd just leave the wench to rot on Lian Yu.

In other news, Ollicity is back on again!

Oliver sends Felicity, Curtis, Thea, and Samantha back towards the plane along with Malcolm as the pilot. The idea is that he wants to get the weaker members--Felicity and Samantha--safely off the island, and of course he wants his sister out of the line of fire. Despite Malcolm being Malcolm, he's certainly proven time and again that he will do whatever it takes to keep Thea safe, so I suppose he's trustworthy enough for this mission. Of course, the reunion between father and daughter is less than warm. Once again, John Barrowman and Willa Holland have fabulous chemistry together. They argue back and forth up until the moment there's a click and Thea freezes in place.

Yeah, how did everyone forget that Lian Yu is riddled with those stupid mines?

In a strangely heartbreaking scene, Malcolm shoves Thea off the mine and takes her place, and then tells them all to run away because Boomerang and some thugs are approaching.

Yeah, Malcolm freaking Merlyn sacrificed his life for Team Arrow (well, really for his daughter, of course). We see the explosion in the distance from Thea's point of view.

It's worth noting that while this is the comics genre and no one ever really stays dead, John Barrowman has thanked his fans for a wonderful five years. It sounds pretty final to me.

Oliver takes Slade and Nyssa to an old Chinese temple thing that's never been shown before in previous flashbacks of the island. Apparently that's where the rest of Team Arrow is being held. The three of them split up, with Nyssa going off on her own, and instantly Slade betrays Oliver and gives him up to Black Siren. But don't despair! It was all planned! Oliver wanted to get captured, because it gave him access to Dinah, and he gives her the collar that Curtis made for her that lets her focus her canary cry. It also allows her to break their chains.

Love me some lady assassins, NGL

What follows is a pretty awesome fight. We get treated to some beautiful fight choreography, starting first with an all-too-short fight sequence between Nyssa and her sister Thalia. Truly, if I have any complaint at all about this episode, or even this season, it's that we didn't get more of an explanation on why Thalia turns on her old student Oliver (yeah yeah, he killed my estranged father yadda yadda), and why Nyssa and Thalia seem to hate each other. I truly wish we'd had more development of the relationship between the sisters. There's some decent dialogue to that effect here, but still... I was left wanting so much more. These are two genuinely badass assassin ladies, and I am ALL about the assassin ladies of the world getting more screen time.

There's also a much larger fighter scene where everyone is fighting everyone: Dinah and Laurel have a canary face-off, Diggle gets to punch stuff, Slade and Nyssa fight more thugs, and ultimately, Oliver and Adrian face-off in their own apparent final battle. Once again, the fight choreography was phenomenal. Bonus points for Quentin getting the opportunity to knock Black Siren in the back of the head. And triple bonus points for Quentin insisting that Dinah be called the Black Canary.

It's worth noting that this giant fight scene in particular beautifully juxtaposes scenes with a flashback of the fight on Lian Yu between Oliver and Dolph Lundgren's Russian thug, just before Oliver's boat back to Star City is supposed to arrive. We keep switching back and forth between the flashback fight and the current fight, and instead of being jarring, this actually really works for the episode.

This is bad, right?

Ultimately, where in the flashback Oliver ends up breaking Kovar's neck and rushing off to catch his boat, Oliver has the chance to end Adrian's life once and for all, and he chooses not to. Which is a good thing because that's about when Felicity calls him and lets him know that the island is covered in c4 that is set to explode on a dead man's switch. If Adrian dies, the island gets blown up.

Nothing is ever easy for Oliver Queen. Nothing. Adrian won't tell him where William is, and he even suggests that he killed the boy, just to try to get Oliver to kill him (and thus everyone) too.

Ultimately, Adrian ends up escaping (because of course he does), and Oliver sends everyone to rejoin the rest of the team while he runs after Adrian. The team finds out pretty quickly that they are hosed, though, because Adrian sabotaged the plane, so it isn't going anywhere.

That freaking smirk! Josh Segarra, you are so good at making us hate you!

William is on the boat of course, and Adrian has one final card to play. Kill Chase, OR Chase will kill Oliver's son. Of course this was Adrian's plan all along: make Oliver make the impossible choice between his entire team or Oliver's son.

Jerk.

Okay, time for this jerk to die. Srsly. 

Oliver almost had his cake and eat it too. He manages a trick shot of an arrow that hits Adrian's foot and makes him let go of William, so Oliver grabs the boy. But our hero is not always the sharpest knife in the drawer, not to mention the fact he was in the process of freaking out about his son. So he fails to shove William behind him and then smack Adrian upside the head and knock him out, which would have been the obvious solution. Instead, he stands there shouting at Chase, while Chase plays his final final ace.

It's like the 4th of July up in here...

OMG the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers! Who will live? Who will die? Is Oliver a single dad now?

Unfortunately, some of the suspense was killed by the recent announcement that Dinah and Rene are still series regulars in season six. Thanks, CW! Also, the showrunners have explicitly stated that Thea Queen will not be killed off, ever. So there's three right there that you know survived!

Still, in my opinion, the combination of excellent writing, amazing acting (Stephen Amell has come so far since season one, he was brilliant here), and gorgeous fight choreography, really made this the CW's best superhero finale this year, hands down. And really, looking back on the whole season, despite a few duds here and there, Arrow had the overall best season period this year.

We won't know until October how anyone on Team Arrow survives (if you want my opinion, Slade saves all or most of them by taking them underground to the ARGUS bunker). I have my doubts that Samantha, William's mother, survives. But even if she does, William now knows that his dad is the freaking Green Arrow, so there's that to look forward to next season.

I'm also loving the return of gruff, cool Slade Wilson as an ally of Oliver's. I kind of really hated him in season two when he was basically the villain out of Days of Our Lives (like literally, in a suit with an eyepatch), and Manu Bennett is on record as saying he didn't care for the way Slade was written in season two either. I expect that Slade will disappear to find his own son, but that we can expect him back for cameos. I like the idea of a somewhat enigmatic antihero Slade Wilson at large.

Besides Nyssa and Thalia not having enough screentime together, my only complaint is that Moira Queen didn't have as much screentime either as I would have liked. But Susanna Thompson was still heartbreaking and fabulous as Oliver's mother when she receives that phone call from him as he is leaving the island. I love her so much.

I almost quit watching Arrow after the trainwreck that was season four, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The showrunners and writers really stepped it up a notch, and it was worth it.

What did you think of the finale? Let us know in the comments!

See you in the fall, everyone!


Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Prometheus sends Arrow "Underneath"

Honestly, is Prometheus the best villain this show has ever had?

I mean people talk a lot about Deathstroke, but Prometheus has been nothing short of terrifying. This guy didn't even show up in last night's "Underneath" until the last five seconds of the episode, and he was still terrorizing Team Arrow while being totally off camera the entire time.

Spoilers beyond the fold.

So last week Helix had given Felicity one more little bump in her quest to find Prometheus, just as they cut her loose. It was supposed to be some kind of high tech tracker thingie, but just as the episode ended, there was an explosion that sent Oliver and Felicity flying back. Oops.

"Underneath" picks up right where that one left off. The explosion wasn't that bad, but the power is totally out and Felicity knows right away what happened: an EMP was set off. How does she know? Because the high-tech chip in her spine that allows her to walk is no longer functioning and she can't feel her legs.

Well, crap.

This is apparently the episode that was promised to us by the whirlwind interview spree Wendy Mericle went on right before Arrow came back from spring break. Mericle did promise that Ollicity would work itself out, and that there was a reason why we never saw Oliver and Felicity discuss their relationship and break-up in any meaningful way. Well "Underneath" is the episode where that finally happens, and you Ollicity haters may be groaning right now, but the episode was surprising well-written and phenomenally well-acted. Considering there was very little action beyond Oliver being an idiot and falling for booby traps Prometheus had left behind, the episode really kept me engaged. Nor was the romance stuff overly heavy-handed or mushy. There was also a sense of urgency overall, because the Arrowcave is airtight and pretty much a nuclear bunker, so without power, Ollie and Felicity would run out of air within a few hours.

As it turns out, after the end of season four and apparently before the beginning of season five, Curtis slyly arranged for Oliver and Felicity to have a one night stand, and it was kind of sweet and adorable. But afterwards, Felicity tells him that she's not ready to discuss what happened yet. So I guess here we are, ready to discuss!

Ohhhh, mmmmyyy!

I don't talk very often about the actual craft of filming with the CW shows, but I feel like Arrow deserves special mention in this episode. Considering the entirety of the show, save for a few scenes, happens inside the confines of the Arrowcave, the cinematography and clever framing (like the love scene above and the use of the wine bottles in the foreground) was phenomenal here.

The camera only leaves our trapped heroes a few times, to show that Team Arrow has become aware of the plight of Oliver and Felicity, and they are doing whatever they can to get their fearless leaders out. But Prometheus' stupid traps make that difficult, especially after one of Oliver and Felicity's attempts from the inside releases methane gas from a pipe.

Anyway, I am also happy to announce that the marriage problems that John and Lyla started having last week did not drag on until season end! Despite Diggle having a bug up his butt for a lot of this episode, he finally realizes that Lyla is doing what she thinks her job requires, and that he kind of does the same thing for Team Arrow. In case you care, they do end up working it out by the end of the episode. I kind of didn't, because it was trumped-up drama of the kind Diggle is famous for every season, but I also understood that in this case, it was very much running parallel to the story of Felicity accusing Oliver of not trusting her (over Helix). Lyla accuses John of the same thing.

Ultimately, during a scene when Oliver thinks he's going to die, he admits to Felicity what happened in Prometheus' dungeon and that he thinks he is a monster because he "enjoys killing." If you regularly read my reviews, I did mention back during that review that I had no idea what the hell I, as an audience member, was supposed to do with the revelation that the titular hero has a taste for killing. Well thankfully, Felicity lets all of us off the hook here, as she points out that Chase had just tortured Oliver for a week without end, so Oliver would have admitted to damn well anything just to make it stop.

She's not wrong. This is the same argument that people use to point out that the US torturing terrorist subjects doesn't work because when you torture someone, they are liable to say whatever you want to hear, if it means the pain will stop.

Ultimately, Felicity still believes Oliver is a good man, and that there's a reason she's always trusted his plays, even when his decisions seem questionable. She wants the same consideration from him, even as she has gotten just a tiny inkling of the personal toll his sacrifices and decisions have had on him, now that she has made similar choices.

I think this means Ollicity is back on? Maybe? I'm not sure. There was a lot of emotion for sure in this episode, and as usual, Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards have fabulous chemistry together. It is a little sad, though, that the writers seem incapable of having Felicity shine by herself (as in last week's episode where she breaks with Team Arrow over Helix). She seems to do best when she has Stephen Amell on the screen with her (or back in the day when she used to have more crossovers with Grant Gustin from The Flash, another leading man she had fabulous chemistry with). I don't honestly know if that's a shortcoming of the writing (which I suspect) or of Emily Bett Rickards herself.

As I noted earlier, the larger-than-life Josh Segarra does make a short appearance in this episode, in the final scene, and the result is nothing short of chilling. It's not really surprising that Prometheus would make this play in the final episodes of the season... but it's still freaking terrifying.

Why yes, that is Oliver's son William he's talking to.

Arrow airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Dangerous Liaisons - Arrow Review

Arrow, you have failed this hacker.

Last night, as Arrow returned from a month-long hiatus, and after much hype, so hype yes, a bunch of lines were crossed and the result was kind of a snoozefest. Not to mention that Felicity finally gets a chance to "shine" as the focal character, and what we get is... kind of really disappointing.

Spoilers beyond the fold

Oh man, in the weeks leading up to the airing of "Dangerous Liaisons," the hype was real. If you don't normally keep track of this sort of thing and just show up to watch the episodes as they air, you might have missed the many interviews that Wendy Mericle and other people involved with Arrow had as they made the rounds discussing the dark path Felicity Smoak would be taking. And of course, how Oliver would have to confront her, and be there for her.

Not gonna lie: I fell for the hype hook line and sinker. I was so excited about Felicity getting a decent and cool story, although considering how little time the show spent exploring her motivations to go on this journey, I should have known better. Don't get me wrong, this season has been a startling about-face after the train wreck that was season four. But all I ever wanted this season was for Felicity to have a solid story that didn't involve her romantic relationship with Oliver. There's been this thing in the back of my mind throughout that has asked why Felicity went and did the things that she's done. I mean sure, Prometheus set up her boy toy to be killed by her former fiance. And Prometheus has done a lot of damage to her teammates. But Felicity didn't seem to spend a great deal of time grieving the dead boyfriend, or the betrayal of Artemis, and she didn't even seem all that broken up by how Prometheus has been playing Oliver like a cheap fiddle this WHOLE time.

Oliver: "Please don't do the thing."
Felicity: "But you would do the thing. That's why I fell in love with you."
Oliver: "Yeah , I know it's hypocritical, but don't plz."
Felicity: "Fite me."
This episode in a nutshell 

In fact, it kind of seems like the real reason Helix was so attractive to her was because a) Alena kind of hero-worshipped her, and b) Helix was providing Felicity with a means to feel useful to Team Arrow with all the information they were getting. Which, frankly, seems like some weaksauce reasoning to "cross lines" like hack the DHS and a myriad of other illegal activities, ultimately leading to Team Arrow getting caught up in making ARGUS look like fools in this episode. I mean, I get the need to feel useful, but it could have been done better than this.

But if lazy motivational and nebulous writing is the eyeroll-worthy part of Felicity's storyline this season, then the most egregious sin is probably the fact that the culmination of this entire thread came down to "Dangerous Liaisons" being nothing short of boring. We were lead to believe she would be going down a super dark path, and that she would "need" Oliver. And perhaps the latter might still play out in the remaining four episodes, because this one literally ends with a bang.

I'm not going to recap "Dangerous Liaisons" in great detail. The important thing to know is that Helix uses Felicity to obtain two security keys from ARGUS, which they need in order to release a super hacker that ARGUS has been keeping locked up. There's a good deal of espionage and shadow play, despite the fact that Alena and Felicity are two of the most goofy black ops agents ever (and they are quite adorable together, no foolin', although I never trusted that Alena girl. Couldn't trust her on The Magicians either).

Don't laugh. We're srz bizness hackz0rz, ok?

Oliver asks Felicity not to go through with the thing, but she does the thing anyway. And the thing is to rescue the inexplicably faceless hacker from ARGUS' shipping crate (sidenote: good lord, Lyla, even STAR Labs has more humane imprisonment-without-due-process facilities. An empty shipping crate that they sit in the dark in, tied to a chair? The hell? What is wrong with you? Even Lian Yu would have been better). Team Arrow tries to stop the thing from going down, but ultimately fail and Helix gets away with the super hacker. Sure, Felicity helped Helix do it, but she didn't do anything worse than fake-threaten Oliver. Nobody but a bunch of Helix-hired thugs died during the operation. And at the end, Helix cuts Felicity loose, because her connection to "Team Arrow is a liability" (IMO now that they have the super hacker, they don't need her anymore. Kind of a dick move). Helix did give Felicity a thing that was supposed to help her track Adrian Chase down, but the episode ends with the thing exploding in her and Oliver's face, so we'll see where this goes next week. Prediction: Helix will be next season's big bad.

If you ask me, the only person crossing inexplicably terrible lines in this story was Lyla, and her and Diggle arguing about it were ten times more compelling than anything Felicity and Oliver were doing. Bonus points for Diggle accusing her of becoming Amanda Waller lite. Although four episodes before the end of the season seems like the wrong time to introduce a new plotline for Diggle (his marriage may be ending over Lyla's ARGUS work). If you're thinking Diggle is a hypocrite, you're right, but he, like Oliver, was willing to admit that and to suggest that he knows the cost of going dark.

All in all, a mediocre return after a long hiatus, and an especially mediocre end for Felicity's Helix plotline. I desperately want her to have epic character development, and this simply wasn't it. If the previews for next week are any indication, we've circled all the way back around to Felicity and Oliver becoming romantically involved again. Don't get me wrong, I am an Ollicity shipper myself, plus I was really really angry by the ridiculous way the writers ended their relationship last season. At the very least Ollicity fans deserved some closure, if not outright making things right again. But I am not satisfied by the path Felicity has taken to get back to Oliver. She's had a whole season to grow as a person, and yet I feel like the opportunity for her story was kind of squandered.

One thing "Dangerous Liaisons" did do right was the side plot involving Quentin and Rene. Okay, when the heck did these two characters become so awesomely entrenched in each other's lives? Rene helped Quentin out earlier in the season, and last night, Lance returns the favor by butting into Wild Dog's business and forcing him to confront his daughter Zoe. All of their scenes together were a spot of genuine beauty in an otherwise mediocre showing.

How did this guy become the glue that holds this show together?

In case you missed the news recently, Arrow has upgraded Rick Gonzalez (Wild Dog) and Juliana Harkavy (Black Canary) to season 6 regulars. This is in addition to the news that Katie Cassidy is also back as Black Siren. I am okay with all of these things, but especially Juliana Harkavy, because Black Canary is fabulous and she's being criminally underused right now!

This is my "FUCK YEAH, BLACK CANARY, BITCHES!" face

Arrow airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Arrow is not in a happy place - "Kapushion" Review

Wow.

Talk about a huge bucket of water in the face, to all the Berlantiverse fans who were glowing and tapping and singing after yesterday's fun The Flash musical episode. I mean, Arrow and The Flash have always been tonally different, since their inception, and that was a purposeful decision. If Arrow went dark, you could always count on Barry and the gang bring a touch of brightness in that universe. Even during their crossovers, Oliver is usually srz bizness while Barry is lightening the mood.

But never before has there been such an abysmally wide crater between the two tones of the show, in the same week.

Spoilers beyond the fold, and strap in, because it's a pretty bumpy ride.

I will admit, I wasn't expecting the dark, dark place this show went. I mean, it seemed pretty obvious that Prometheus was trying to turn Oliver dark, and I assumed that the episode would go like this: Prometheus abducts someone he cares about and tortures that person in front of Oliver, while the rest of the gang rushes to save them both from imminent death.

So I was basically predicting your typical run-of-the-mill superhero tv episode.

That's not what we got.

Last week, Adrian Chase had our hero chained up and promising to get Oliver to see what he really is. This week, Adrian spends the episode in a totally unhinged state, become increasingly furious that Oliver seems incapable of figuring out whatever it is Adrian's point is. Color me as confused as Oliver, because I didn't really understand what it was he wanted Oliver to admit.

If you've been ignoring the Russian Bratva flashbacks all season because of how incredibly slow they were to get to any kind of point, stop that now. This episode brought the Russia storyline front and center and made it integral to the current Adrian Chase plot. Back in season one, the flashbacks were an interesting and well-used gimmick that started to get real old, even downright obnoxious, by the time we got to season four. And in season five, I didn't necessarily mind them as much as I had season four's, but I tended to skim over them, even in my reviews.

I make this bad guy shit look good...

But they matter. Not just for plot reasons, but because goddamn Dolph Lundgren popped up every now and again and he is a scene-stealing force of nature. And he was front and center in "Kapushion" so it was totally worth not skipping over the Russia scenes. Basically, Oliver helps Anatoly take down Kovar, but in doing so, goes to a really dark place several times. And several times Anatoly tells him he can't separate the monster inside of him from the man, despite Oliver insisting that he can. Ultimately, Anatoly sees that when Oliver channels the monster, he enjoys killing.

And that's apparently what Adrian Chase sees too. But he can't just out and say that. He wants Oliver to get there, to admit that he is a monster and not a hero.

Fair warning, this episode contains a LOT of torture. Adrian puts Oliver through physical torture, and then decides to use some psychological torture as well, in the form of Evelyn Sharp. Does that name sound familiar to you? She was that silly girl they wasted the superhero name Artemis on, who starts out with Team Arrow and then ultimately turns on them because Oliver is a murderer, so of course it makes perfect sense to help out the actual psychopath instead of the guy trying to be a good person.

If I sound contemptuous, it's because I am. I have no use for Evelyn Sharp. She was a poorly written character who was never given a chance to shine, I was not overly impressed with the actress, and worse of all, her reasons for turning on Team Arrow were shoddy at best and incomprehensible at worst. If she had never come back to the show, I would have been fine. And Adrian pretending to snap her neck in front of Oliver barely registered on my GAF meter. Maybe a slight blip of annoyance that they were killing a female character, but then I don't think I ever really bought that she was dead. Turns out I was right, because it was all part of the torture and Evelyn was in on it. The minute Oliver admits he enjoys killing, she gets up with a snooty comment and walks off. Keep walking, hypocrite. You literally just watched a man get tortured for days in some of the most horrific of ways, and somehow you feel vindicated? GTFO.

I can't even muster up the care to write something witty for this screen cap, because I DGAF about this character so hard. 

Whatever.

I don't have a lot to say about the plot, because I honestly have no idea where the hell this story is going. As an audience member, what am I even supposed to do with the information that the titular hero of the story likes to kill? On one level, the debate over whether heroes should kill bad guys has been raging for decades among comic book fans. Some people think Batman is wrong to let the Joker keep escaping Arkham, because every time he does, new innocents die. And some people have thought since season one that Oliver isn't a real hero because he did kill a lot in that season.

So is this ultimately an anti-hero's story? Maybe. I mean, it's not like Oliver's journey hasn't been understandable. He started out as a snot-nosed rich brat who knew nothing and whose greatest dilemma was how to escape his loving girlfriend and sleep with her sister, to having to survive on a hellish island where survival absolutely meant kill or be killed. It's not really surprising that he learned to kill. I suppose the surprising part is discovering, during the Bratva scenes in this episode, that he appears to enjoy skinning enemies alive "for practice." Christ. At least The Punisher is content with just killing his enemies quickly so he can move on to the next bad guy.

At the end, Adrian just lets Oliver go, and our broken hero stumbles into the Arrowcave, much to stunned and horrified expressions of his team, and tells them that he's done with everything.

Team Arrow: "I literally can't even..."

I mean, after what he just went through, I don't blame the guy.

Ultimately, it appears that Prometheus has done exactly what he wanted to do from the start: he has broken Oliver's spirit completely. When Stephen Amell delivered the final line of this episode, it was heartbreaking: "I don't want to do this anymore."

Speaking of Stephen Amell, this episode featured him in every scene, and while "Kapushion" was hard to watch just for the sheer level of darkness and internal and external torture, there's little doubt about it that Arrow's leading man was at his peak here. He was nothing short of absolutely fabulous in every scene. When screaming at Adrian during the torture scenes, Amell was raw and powerful. When torturing Russians or beating the crap out of Dolph Lundgren, he was awesome. And when he drags his broken self into the final scene, I believe him when he says he's done.

Josh Segarra continued his A+ performance of the very scary Adrian Chase, although I must say... Prometheus seemed unhinged and almost out of control in some of these scenes, out of sheer frustration that Oliver Queen just didn't freaking GET the point of his master plan. Dude, Segarra is killing it this season.

I have no idea what's going to happen to Oliver going forward, but I'm with you, Arrow... it's been a helluva ride, but season five is shaping out to be some of Stephen Amell's finest moments, both in and out of the suit.

But after "Kapushion" I think I really need to go watch "Duet" again, just to shake myself out of that dark, dark place Oliver is in.

On a final note... Oliver totally got the raw end of the deal this week out of the CW shows:

Arrow airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Prometheus is a Jerk and Other Truths - Arrow

To be frank, I'm still reeling a bit from "Checkmate," episode 16 of Arrow's season 5. And, I've sat on my reviews of the previous two episodes as well, because I wasn't really certain where the narrative arc would lead, and I wanted a clearer picture before I started opining about it.

Well, Prometheus has been fully revealed and he is gloriously terrifying, and quite easily the best supervillain on the CW superhero brigade to date. A few weeks ago I never would have thought I would be saying that, but here we are. Actually, I would say that Prometheus and Legend of Tomorrow's Legion of Doom are both amazing, but where the LoD is kind of hilariously entertaining (yet effective) in their evilness, Prometheus is frightening to a degree I never thought the CW shows were capable of writing.

Read on to find out why!

(spoilers ahead)

As a very quick recap of the main storyline, in Ep. 14, "The Sin-Eater," Susan Williams confronts Oliver and asks if he's the Green Arrow, and he lies about it, of course. But when Thea hears how close Susan is getting to the truth, she hatches a plan and has Felicity help her with hacking Susan's computer. They plant a bunch of nasty stuff on her laptop, which ultimately gets Susan fired from her reporter job and pretty much ensures that she will never work in media again. This leads Oliver to telling Thea she is a lot like their mother--which is not what Thea wanted to hear. Meanwhile, Prometheus leaks the truth to Police Chief Pike about the Green Arrow killing Billy, which leads to Oliver asking Pike to back off from the investigation for a bit. Not suspicious at all or anything, Mr. Mayor.

And in Ep 15, "Fighting Fire with Fire," it's revealed that Prometheus is actually Adrian Chase, the DA that Oliver has trusted all this time. For a while the presence of Vigilante threw everyone off this particular scent, since in the comic books, Vigilante's identity is Adrian Chase. In this episode, Oliver is facing impeachment over the cover-up of Billy's death by Green Arrow, and ultimately, instead of throwing anyone else under the bus, Mayor Queen decides to throw the Green Arrow under instead, announcing that he is a cop-killer and making him public enemy no 1. Apparently this is enough to stop the impeachment somehow. I didn't quite follow that line of thinking but ok. Thea exits the show because she's afraid of becoming her parents. And Susan gets her job back and she and Oliver are a thing again. Except that Adrian nabs her at the end of this episode, so she's probably in for a rough ride.

Okay then, so Ep 16 is "Checkmate" and it's a doozy! The team ends up learning through Felicity's Helix involvement that Adrian Chase is Prometheus, and she also ends up finding out where he's keeping Susan (who is being tortured/terrified). But the quiet downward spiral of Felicity is probably the real story here. In order to obtain all this information from her hacker buddies at Helix, she needs to start doing something for them, and "doing something" means hacking a DHS drone program, which I probably don't have to tell you is highly illegal. Not to mention that when Felicity gets a tour of the Helix compound, we find out that Helix has surveillance of like EVERYONE going on. To hell with your right to privacy, folks, but no worries, Helix is just protecting you from the big bad government! Red alert, Felicity... red alert.

LOL I am so going to federal prison for the rest of my life at the end of this season...

Much relieved to no longer have to hide his identity, Adrian Chase is now glad that Oliver knows who he is, because now he can openly be a giant dick. Like he seriously swaggers around that mayoral office like he owns the place, because he totally does, while you can practically hear Oliver grinding his teeth. But Oliver can't really do much, because after denouncing the Green Arrow as a cop killer a few episodes back, it would kind of be really bad if Adrian revealed to the world that Oliver is the Green Arrow. Also, Adrian still has Susan in his clutches, so anything Oliver does endangers her.

When Oliver quietly tries to get Pike to investigate Adrian's real identity, Pike immediately gets stabbed. And when Oliver tries to one-up Prometheus by bringing Adrian's wife to the scene of the crime and revealing the truth to her, Adrian seems annoyed AF but he still stabs her. I mean, I don't know why Oliver expected this psychopath to stop everything because of his wife, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if Adrian stabbed his own mother. He may yet get a chance to, since that's like the only piece on the board Team Arrow hasn't obtained.

Ultimately, Oliver finds out the his old mentor Talia also trained Prometheus, and when he demands to find out why, Talia reveals that she's mad that Ollie killed her father too. I don't know how Oliver never put together the pieces of Talia's training of him being so similar to Nyssa and the Assassins, but as much as I love our intrepid hero, he has always been kind of really freaking clueless. This is consistent with the character, and if he didn't always have people around to think for him, he'd never get very far. I accept that Oliver never connected Talia to R'as al Ghul because Ollie is kind of a loveable dumbass.

My name is Talia al Ghul. You killed my father. Prepare to die. 

And now that the full storyline has been revealed, and Prometheus has stated his ultimate endgame, I now also accept what this entire story arc is about. It's been hinted at several times this season, particularly in "The Sin-Eater" where the episode seemed preoccupied with the whole "paying for your sins" idea. Oliver has spent his life, even his misspent youth, never appreciating how his actions now may impact not just the future, but specifically, the people around him. He was a dumbass kid who didn't care whose bed he flitted from, and ultimately he ended up putting the Lance family through some serious crap. In following his jackass father's kill-book, he ultimately created Prometheus. In killing R'as al Ghul and taking part in the League of Assassin shenanigans, Oliver turned Talia against him. And now Prometheus is making everyone around Oliver pay the price.

Actions have consequences. This is not exactly a new idea, and certainly not a new idea in the comic book/superhero genre. But I will say that Arrow has done a phenomenal job in writing Oliver and Prometheus' arcs this season. And Stephen Amell and the smug-faced Josh Segarra have sold it every step of the way.

This is my "I own you, Oliver" face. 

Ultimately, Prometheus wants to mold Oliver into a killer just like him. To do so, he is going to dismantle every piece of Oliver's life, right in front of him. By the end of this episode, it's becoming clear that Team Arrow is in over its head, and frankly has been all season. And even worse, Prometheus ends up abducting Oliver. Chained up in some dark, dank place, Oliver is going to have to trust that the family he built around himself, his team and friends and allies, are going to pull through for him (and themselves) in time. If Oliver has made a great deal of bad choices that lead up to this point, then ultimately, because he is our hero, there must also be a good pay-off; he's made good choices too, in the form of the people whose trust and love he's earned.

Adrian keeps trying to paint Oliver to be a bad guy, and he wants to make Oliver a bad guy. But we are all of us human, and we all of us make bad choices at some point in our lives. Yes, those actions have consequences, but we weather those storms best when we have the support of our family and friends.

Like a typical supervillain, Adrian thinks that Oliver's "family" are his weakness. But in another superhero theme that's been used over and over again (but still works), Oliver has to believe that his family is his real strength.

We'll see if said family can pull through for him, and if they all survive it. I predict they won't be able to do it without calling in the big guns.

Heeeyyyyy, don't forget about me, guys!

By which I mean, of course, Vigilante. Because there has to be a reason why this justice-by-the-force-of-my-guns character has been hovering around the outer edges of season five. He's in the story for a reason, one hopes. And the showrunners suggested in an interview a couple months back that Evelyn Sharp's part in the story wasn't done, although to be honest, the writers messed that whole thing up, because I don't care if she ever shows up again.

I also predict Felicity is heading for a world of hurt with her Helix pals.

On the subject of female characters (because this is Critical Writ, after all), where most of season five has been very strong in terms of story arc and acting, I am somewhat disgruntled by the sidelining of female characters. Evelyn was a worthless character who never had a chance to shine before she went traitor, and there was that whole confusing decision to bring Black Siren into the picture for one whole episode and talk about redeeming her but then shoving her into an ARGUS jail and forgetting about her. Dinah Drake, the new Black Canary, started out strong, but has since faded into the background over the past few episodes. I want to love her, but they really need to do more with her. Thea, again, started the season out strong but her morally repugnant actions against Susan Williams has caused her to exit off the show. Susan has certainly been an interesting mayoral-antagonist-turned-lover, but I'm not a huge fan of turning her into hero bait in this last episode. And Felicity has a thing going on, but the season has been very slow to develop that thing, until we hit full throttle in "Checkmate" and suddenly she's hacking the damn DHS and diving off the deep end into a story arc that simply cannot end well.

As usual, Team Arrow, you can do better for the compelling female characters you have. But overall, keep up the good work. This has been an excellent season.

Arrow airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Spectre of the Gun - Arrow S05E13

So Arrow tackled the politically-charged topic of gun control in America.

Wait, what?

(spoilers beyond the fold)

Arrow has continued to surprise me, and at times, completely baffle me, in season five, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I discussed, last week, the bad habit the Arrow showrunners have of killing off Canaries and Lance women (and women in general, really). The addition of Dinah Drake to the team as the new Canary hopefully heralds in a new era of women not dying on the show, but who knows. 

Anyway, this week we take a pretty big step away from Dinah/Canary, other than John having a heart-to-heart with her about getting back into the actual act of living. It was a nice little bit of dialogue, bonded John and Dinah, and didn't take up a lot of space from the rest of the heavy show. 

And heavy it was. Curiously, the writers decided to tackle not just something topical and pertinent to American politics today, but to also tackle a topic that is extremely divisive and somewhat risky for a tv show that doesn't normally seem to lean either left or right, politically. 

But while I appreciated the oddly in-depth and careful approach to the topic of gun control, I was also pleasantly surprised by the method by which the writers chose to approach it. 

We barely see Oliver in his suit in this episode. That is, in his green suit. He saddled up once to shake down a gang thug who he thought--wrongly--might have been responsible for the tragic and brutal shooting that took place in the Mayor's office and killed a bunch of his innocent staffers. There was a useless little intervention there from Vigilante, the asshole in the ski mask who likes to kill bad guys, whose only role seemed to be to pop in and say, "Heeeyyyyy, remember me? I still exist! Bye now!" 

"And don't you forget I exist, either, punk! Bye!"

Other than that one silly and forgettable scene, Oliver tackles this episode in his day suit... as the mayor. What makes this surprising is that his being mayor of Star City has sort of been almost a running joke, and a convenient (if bullshit) way of making it possible for him to do things that Mayors in real life don't actually do, like borrow a submarine solo, or fly to Russia on a private jet with a bunch of people not on the city payroll. So color me stunned when he decides that he needs to deal with this shooter, and the implications of it, as Mayor Queen, and not the Green Arrow. 

Doing this episode, on this topic, with non-superheroics, was the ballsiest thing I've seen Arrow do in a really, really long time. And it paid off. 

The whole episode centers around a shooter that was angry with the previous mayoral administration for failing to pass a stringent gun owner registry, which the shooter sees as the reason for his wife and kids dying. So he shows up at City Hall, shoots up the place, walks out, and then targets other public places to further get his point across. What I love about this story is that the shooter ultimately isn't even presented as a nutcase. I mean yeah, it was wrong of him to do what he did and kill the innocent mayoral staffers, but his pain was real, and his rage at the government doing nothing is a very real concern in the actual United States. In the climactic scene at the hospital where Oliver confronts the shooter, Oliver points out that the gun registry wouldn't have helped the man's family, because the thug that killed them didn't obtain his gun legally. At which point, the shooter agrees, and that he has done something horrible, and that it's actually his own fault for not protecting his family like a man should (which is barely skating that whole forced patriarchal/masculine role on fathers and husbands who feel it's their duty to protect their families, which is another crazy heavy topic for another day). So he turns the gun on himself. Oliver then talks him down from that too, telling him that killing himself won't help anyone, and that there is a better way. 

I also really loved how the petty way in which this topic is normally debated in the US--especially on the internet--was presented in the form of Rene and Curtis constantly going back and forth. Curtis is your typical bleeding-heart liberal (no insult, because I am one too) who believes less guns on the street is better for everyone and means less dead people, and Lance jumps in and says that yeah, cops would prefer there be less armed citizens out there. And Rene is your typical pro-gun supporter who feels safer with a gun in his own hands. I loved their debate, because it was so familiar to me. I've had the same debate, with very nearly the same exact words, on countless internet forums. Curtis was speaking for me. 

Curtis: This is my liberal "Bitch, plz" face
Rene: This is my general "Bitch, plz" face, hoss

We also get Rene's origin story here in the form of flashbacks, where we see how his wife was killed (by her drug dealer, with a gun), and that his daughter was taken away from him by the state. It's really sad, but there's hope yet, because Curtis has a lawyer friend who is going to help Rene get his daughter back from the state. 

I think what was astonishing to me was how fabulously-acted this episode was. We have entire scenes of Oliver being mayoral, hanging out in his office, debating the gun control thing with a councilwoman, and the crazy thing is, it works. I was never bored, and perhaps more to the point because gun control is an important topic to me personally, I was totally invested in the story. 

There are a LOT of "Bitch, plz" faces in this episode...

Ultimately, "Spectre of the Gun" does not pretend to have the answer to this ongoing and raging debate. When the episode finished, I was kind of rolling my eyes a bit and thinking, "man, what a cop-out, they weren't brave enough to actually present a solution." But after a few hours of letting the episode stew in my brain for a bit, I came to realize... the Arrow writers don't have a solution. Of course they don't, because we've been debating this topic in America for decades, and within my lifetime, since freaking Columbine. Every time there's a mall shooting or a school shooting it rages back up for a while and people scream at each other on the internet a lot and politicians hold rallies to satisfy their constituents and make it seem like they are doing something, but nothing ever actually gets done. We as a society don't seem to have a solution, or even really look for one, so why would a bunch of writers for a superhero show have one?

Actually, I take it back. The writers do have the solution to America's woes, including gun control. You might have missed it. The magical solution to the gun control debate is: sitting down at the adult's table and listening to one another, and coming up with a solution that satisfies both sides. The councilwoman in this episode has some pro-gun arguments that made sense, and Oliver and the anti-gun folks did too. Ultimately, Star City gets a new set of gun safety/gun control laws that both sides accepted, because the laws were written up with both sides sitting at the table having a sensible debate. Woah.

Curtis spelled out the real problem we have, and it's not guns: it's America's toxic discourse.

I am reminded of a Facebook "debate" I recently had with a militant vegan who showed up to let all of us meat eaters know that we were, unequivocally, murderers, and anything we tried to argue or say was simply an excuse to make ourselves feel better. When told that her discourse wasn't going to change anyone's heart and mind, her response was, "I'm not here to change anyone's mind. I'm here to let you know that if you don't stop eating meat right now, you're lower than pond scum and that you should die." Well okay then. So I went into full troll mode and lovingly described the delicious double patty burger I had for lunch that day. I mean, I'm not a total heathen. It had mushrooms on it. With bacon.

We in America literally cannot discuss what we had for dinner last night without de-evolving into a hot mess of hatred and loathing (and trolling, yes). How are we ever going to fix real issues? We can't, of course, and that was the stealth message in this episode. Americans have gotten comfortable with only listening to their own POV and shouting over the opposition. (The cancer is hardly contained to America; if the Brexit debate last year in the UK is any indication, the polarizing effect has infected other countries as well).

Holy hell. We got all this from an episode of a tv show that features a dude running around with a bow and arrow on the streets of Detroit, basically? Yeah, we totally did. This is superhero entertainment at its finest, bringing to mind the fabulous run of Sam Wilson as Captain America in recent Marvel comics, to the first interracial kiss on American tv in 1968 on Stark Trek, and all the way back to Captain America punching Hitler on a comic book cover, to a couple of Jewish guys creating the quintessential American hero with Superman, who fights oppressors like wife beaters from the get-go. Genre entertainment, particularly science fiction and superheroes, has always been political and topical. Always. Anyone who claims differently hasn't been paying attention to the morals of any of those stories. I really, really appreciate Arrow taking a massive risk in doing this episode.

This was easily one of Arrow's best written and best acted episodes. And they hardly kicked any bad guy ass in it. 

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Canary in a Coal Mi--I mean Arrowcave

If you follow my Berlantiverse reviews, you might have noticed that while I have covered The Flash religiously since it came back from break, I've been completely silent on Arrow.

I'll be talking about all three of the post-break episodes in this piece, but mostly speaking in the context of Black Canary and whatever the hell the writers are doing with her.

(Spoilers beyond the fold)

If you recall from last season, Arrow inexplicably killed off a Canary (and a Lance daughter) yet again, which spawned a surprising amount of anger from the fandom. Surprising because Katie Cassidy's Laurel Lance has always been a somewhat contentious figure with the fans of the show. You kind of either loved her or hated her, or if you were like me, you found her obnoxiously annoying at the start of the show, and found her progression to hero surprisingly satisfying. So count me as one of the fans that was pissed when they killed her off, especially since I'm tired of Canaries and Lance women dying. Also, the last thing the Berlantiverse needs is less women on screen. And finally, as a comic book fan, I strongly believe you cannot have a Green Arrow without his Black Canary.

So Laurel's death was bullshit.

My face when Arrow killed off yet another Lance daughter

But this here is the comic book genre! No one ever really dies, right?

Back at the break in December, the final scene of the show was Oliver walking into the Arrowcave and finding Laurel there in a stunning turn of events. Of course, the CW decided to end that cliffhanger very quickly, because over the holidays, the promos and trailers for the second half of the season revealed that the "revived" Laurel was actually just Black Siren, the evil Laurel from Earth-2. So when the show came back from break, we got a shoddy explanation about how she escaped from STAR Labs (apparently Prometheus whisked her away without Cisco ever noticing what the hell?). Team Arrow locks her up, but we get a terribad argument between Oliver and Felicity over whether this Laurel is worth trying to save or not.

Now, if you recall, Felicity is pissed off at the world because Oliver killed her boyfriend accidentally, thanks to a nasty trick Prometheus pulled. Felicity has not once become angry or snippy with Oliver over that, thankfully. But she is angry, and she doesn't trust Black Siren as far as she can throw her, which is probably legit. Meanwhile, Oliver has found renewed guilt over everything, including Laurel's death. "Who Are You," S5E10, ends with Black Siren being moved to captivity in a nearby ARGUS facility, because Oliver is convinced he can bring her around to being a good guy.

Okay, sure, I'm down. If written well, a rehabbed Black Siren might be cool to have around.

Curiously, that seemingly obvious plan immediately gets nuked, when in S5E11, "Second Chances," Team Arrow embarks on a mission to find a new Black Canary, and finds her, in the form of a former cop at Central City PD whose been missing since the STAR Labs reactor went explodey three years ago. Turns out Tiny Boland, said cop, is now a meta, and she seems to be working her way across America taking out bad guys. Oliver tracks her down and finds that her meta power is the canary cry. How convenient! Anyway, he convinces her to join Team Arrow. We also learn that her real name is Dinah Drake. Wow, another Dinah! One with a canary cry! What are the chances???

Why yes, I'm a Dinah too. It's a popular girls name in Star City, but only for girls growing up to be black-clad badasses

If you're a comic book fan, though, "Dinah Drake" probably rang some bells. She's the current Black Canary in the DCverse. Not gonna lie, Arrow's new Canary is legit badass. Former undercover cop, so she comes pre-set with moves, and she's sarcastic and witty and she and Ollie have good chemistry from the start. The casting choice here--Juliana Harkavy--is actually pretty genius.

In other words, she's the Black Canary that always should have been. Thus far there have been no soft doe-eyed looks between her and Oliver, and that's probably because he's busy sleeping with that reporter chick Susan Williams that is almost certainly going to sink his mayoral career, but I bet cash money that in the future, Oliver and Dinah will be a thing.

I really like the new Canary, but I am also really, really confused. What the hell was the point of bringing up the option of rehabbing Black Siren, then, if the writers were going to insta-replace Laurel with a better Black Canary? I'm not against Dinah Drake, I just don't get the psych-out move of the Black Siren episode.

Whatever. Dinah settles right into her new role with the team, and in S5E12, "Bratva," she goes with them to Russia (sidenote: the rather convenient ability of the Star City mayor to visit a foreign country randomly by private jet was rather eyeroll worthy, I must say) to track down the general that tried to frame Diggle, and who is apparently trying to sell a nuke to terrorists.

Everyone in this episode is some level of emotionally distraught, except Dinah. Oliver has to deal with the Bratva again in order to get information on the nuke deal, which means he has to get back to his thug roots to get on Anatoly's good side. This causes him to belly ache about the fact that no matter how he tries to be good, he always ends up back here knee-deep in violence. Dinah talks him out of his self-pity and reminds him that as a leader, he inspires other people to be good. Meanwhile, John Diggle is losing his goddamn shit over this whole thing with the general, and even beats the crap out of a dude for information. And Felicity shows she's willing to cross a very nebulous line indeed to obtain what they need, which Ragman calls her out over.

Felicity: This is my "Do not screw with me, I know your every dirty secret" face. 

I'm not sure where this whole Felicity storyline is going. And also, curiously, Ragman has temporarily exited off the show because his rags stop working after he uses them to absorb the nuclear bomb's explosion. The show seems to be suggesting that Felicity wants to go all hacktivist again, and that might mean she has bigger fish to fry than whatever Team Arrow is doing, but I sincerely hope that they don't exit her off the show either. Dinah has emotional issues she hasn't dealt with yet, and when those inevitably blow up, I feel like the team will need Felicity around to be the calm voice of reason. I mean, don't get me wrong, Overwatch becoming a serious hacktivist would be cool, but I want her to remain on the team to do it. We need more badass ladies, not less.

Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happened in these episodes too. We get introduced to Talia al Ghul in the flashbacks, and I kind of love her. Diggle has the chance to shoot General Asshole in the face but doesn't, pulling back from the brink of yet another murder. Curtis has a crisis of faith of sorts and almost leaves the team because he keeps getting his ass kicked and he lost his husband, but Rene, of all people, pulls him back in by telling him that Curtis needs to do what he is good at. Which means Curtis is mostly back to team tinkerer. I love Curtis and I agree he needs to do what he's good at (plus his Mr. Terrific mask is freaking awful), but I don't want him to replace Felicity either. And speaking of Rene, this initially obnoxious Wild Dog character has become oddly gratifying and necessary to have around. Frankly, out of everyone on the team, he seems to be the most settled and comfortable with himself, so not only did he talk Curtis back from the brink of quitting, but in "Bratva," Rene counsels Paul Blackthorne's Quentin Lance, who returns to the show and immediately wants to dive right back in and prove he's a badass, except he has issues to work out still.

So Green Arrow finally has his Black Canary, but first he has to crash and burn with Susan Williams (I don't trust her, she's obviously digging up shit behind his back, and it appears she just figured out that he's the Green Arrow). I'm a little puzzled as to why the writers took such a meandering route to get to this point, and one can't help but think that the only reason we have Dinah Drake is simply because of the fan rage over the idiotic death of Black Canary last season. I mean, nothing in the show indicates they ever planned to bring her in from the get-go, and all of the convenience factors of her existence suggest she was rather hastily put together. But, she's cool.

Sidenote: I'm still pissed off that the Arrow writers wasted a perfectly good codename like Artemis on a trash character like Evelyn. Not only did she turn traitor because of stupid reasons ("you're a murderer, Oliver, so I'm going to join up with this serial killer!"), but when she was on the team, they didn't even let Artemis actually do anything. Wild Dog kept hogging the glory and story. And as Prometheus' lackey, she still isn't doing anything.

I demand my Artemis from Young Justice.

What do you think of the new Black Canary?