Bravo! It was a wild ride of emotions, but the latest episode of Arrow was worth every moment. Arrow and The Atom team up in an awesome way, Captain Lance continues his mission to take down the Arrow, Thea becomes a casualty in Ra’s al Ghul’s plans to get Oliver to succeed him and more on Arrow: Broken Arrow. Spoiler alert!
On a Mission
This week, Captain Lance continued his mission to bring down the Arrow, the vigilante with whom he once worked with to save Starling City. You may remember that Captain Lance’s vendetta against the Arrow started when he found out that his daughter Sara—former League of Assassins member and girlfriend of Nyssa al Ghul—was killed and that the Arrow intentionally withheld that information. Captain Lance, then of course, needed someone to blame for his daughter’s death and since he knew that the Arrow and her were close, he blamed the vigilante.
Since then, with no help from a rise in archery related deaths, Captain Lance has been mounting evidence in his case against the Arrow. It also didn’t help the Arrow’s cause when Ra’s al Ghul—who remember is on his own mission to get Oliver to take over his position as head of the League of Assassins— told Captain Lance that the man he has always hated and the vigilante in Starling City are one in the same. Oh, it was on after that!
Arrow and The Atom Team Up Against Deathbolt
The Atom has sure been busy this week! Since we knew the DC character was coming to Starling City last fall, most of us have anxiously waited for his time to shine. Well folks, this week Iron Man, I mean the Atom did just that. After his warm-up appearance on The Flash, The Atom came back to Starling City to provide a much needed assist with what Oliver and the gang presumed was a metahuman by the name of Jake Simmons, a version of the DC comic villain Deathbolt. Although, technically Cisco disproved that Simmons was metahuman when he figured out that Simmons did not receive his abilities from the particle accelerator explosion as did all the other known metahumans that they had encountered previously.
Initially, The Atom sort of subbed for Arrow in a face off against Deathbolt. That didn’t go so well for The Atom as he isn’t exactly known for his hand-to-hand combat skills. But, when The Atom and Arrow combined their individual unique skills, it was a sight to see.
So Long, Arsenal
Seriously, I think my heart stopped for a minute as I watched Roy Harper clutch his side and fall to the prison floor in slow motion. I knew then that that wasn’t a good sign, but ultimately I just had to believe that the writers weren’t killing off Arsenal. No way! Then in the next scene, Thea broke the bad news to Oliver that Roy was dead. It was so abrupt and it came out of left field. Roy was dead, just like that. Or, was he?
As it turns out, Roy had worked with Diggle and Felicity to devise a plan—unbeknownst to Thea and Oliver—to fake his death so that he could escape prison. They got us good! But, we couldn’t celebrate for too long because not long after Roy was saying goodbye to the gang before leaving town. It’s like the writers were saying: “see what we could have done, but we didn’t, so you should take Roy’s leaving a lot better now.” Ugh, the emotional roller coaster that was.
Ra’s al Ghul Sends a Message to Oliver
Then, as if there wasn’t enough drama in the Broken Arrow episode, Ra’s al Ghul shows up. Can we just take pause to acknowledge the fact that Thea held her own against Ra’s al Ghul? She has officially graduated from the badass academy!
After a quick sparring, Ra’s al Ghul sealed Thea’s fate with a knife to the gut. I have say, yet again, I didn’t see that coming either and perhaps I’m not the only one. Then again, this could be another fake out…sort of. The last scene with Thea showed her lying on her living room floor in broken glass and a pool of her own blood, but if you stuck around for the preview for the next episode you’ll know that Oliver takes her to Nanda Parbat to bring her back to life. Like I said, bravo!
Arrow airs Wednesday nights on CW at 8:00pm EST/7:00ppm CST.