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.

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.