Jessie Robertson reviews the seventh episode of Arrow season 3…
A busy week in Arrow land, as Sara’s murder takes a back seat and Oliver’s feelings for Felicity are forced to rear their much desired head. The show opens with a flashback to six months ago, during Slade’s city-wide takeover with masked Mirakuru soldiers; cut to an alley where the Arrow saves an innocent woman from certain slaughter at their hands. She’s shown keeping a souvenir from the ordeal. Back to present day, Oliver is informed by Lance of finding a dead body cloaked in green leather and we’re off. While we’re here, why is Lance still out investigating cases on the street? He’s the only chief I’ve ever seen in any show acting like a regular beat cop. Anyways, what this all leads to is a superhero stalker the likes of which Oliver (or anyone else by my estimation) as ever seen: Carrie Cutter (played with fervor and delicious evil by Amy Gumenick) as a love-struck archer vying to be Oliver’s girlfriend or whatever sick equivalent she has in her head. Her arrows are tipped with hearts (which also was part of the title screen this week) and while she isn’t the skilled archer Oliver is, she’s just enough crazy to give him problems. The crux of her appearance is to provide a backdrop for Oliver’s feelings to resurface (at least the topic to resurface) of what exactly is going on between him and Felicity. Diggle seems to be all for it and plays matchmaker between them and while I enjoy his and Felicity’s chats, it was a bit unfair of him to lay guilt on her lap that her teasing something more with Ray Palmer is clouding Ollie’s judgment. It is fun to see Stephen Amell get to play shadowy tortured man with Cupid as she flaunts herself all over him, giving her, in essence, the same speech he did to Felicity, that he needs to be alone, for his friends, family and the city’s sake, while at the same time, doing a classic “knock everything off a table” anger behind closed doors.
As we see Barry and Iris go through a similarly strange “will they ever” situation on The Flash, this one feels a little more muddled. Felicity has already found herself in the middle of danger due to her close association with the Arrow, so her risk there is practically negated. It seems that the problem lies with Oliver; he keeps initiating this self-imposed exile from Felicity. As the season ticks on, these issues may come more to light. Felicity’s love life is going just fine as Ray Palmer lends her a Couture dress and a $1 Million dollar necklace to wear to a potential dinner with a client (named Gardner Fox, longtime Justice League scribe for DC comics). She shows yet again she’s a girl with limitless talent as she speaks earnestly about Palmer, pretty much securing the deal with her own words; another genuine and believable performance from Emily Bett Rickards. She and Brandon Routh make a good on-screen team, with the right mix of saucy genius and awkward chemistry. As the episode concludes, we see Palmer pull up a schematic of his “A.T.O.M. exosuit” Looks like he’s ready to join the crime fighting leagues.
In our flashback scene, we get a much more rounded and solid story as Maseo goes missing while on an Argus mission and Oliver and Tatsu go searching for him. In addition to finding out Oliver doesn’t know how to use a washing machine (If no one ever showed him, what do you expect?), it seems Tatsu is pretty much a bad ass with a samurai sword. Her character is rumored to be Katana of DC comics lore, and she even mentions her and her both outsiders, which happened to be the superhero team she was a member of. Sorry, nerd aside. Their worry was all for naught as Maseo was kept in seclusion after the deaths of 3 other Argus agents that same day. The couple’s scene together was a nice embrace, and the warm reds of their apartment give off a warmth that I think will play nicely into Oliver’s further development as a hero and a man. The flashback ends with him taking his laundry bag, but did he forget the soap?
A very fun episode with more depth of character than I expected this week. I still believe it’s as I predicted and everything is window dressing until after the epic Arrow v. Flash two night event coming in December.
Other Notes:
– ” I have a type” Felicity’s reaction to seeing a shirtless Brandon Routh doing pullups in his office. Dude’s still got his Superman physique!
– Did anyone else think the Arrow-Cupid fight scene was a little strange? I can’t explain I just felt weird watching it, like this episode didn’t need them fighting each other.
– After Layla secures placement for Cupid on the Suicide Squad, Diggle mentions she’s crazier than the last crazy chick they had: has Harley escaped then?
– No Laurel this week; that should make the haters happy, as she seems to be the most unliked character on the show
– Palmer wants to be alerted once the dwarfstar alloy has been found in his newly acquired mines; Dwarf Star is a villain of the Atom, but not the Palmer Atom, actually the Ryan Choi Atom.
– Digger is Here! I’m referencing long time Flash Rogue and Suicide Squad stalwart Captain Boomerang appears at the end of the episode in brutal fashion. I think he’s a great character for either show and can’t wait to see him in action.
Jessie Robertson is a contributing writer who loves all things comic books. He currently has one novel on Amazon.com, exploring people able to consciously do what they want in dreams. Yeah, sounds good right? Feel free to email him anything, questions, comments, critiques or Lost trivia at phdreamer81@yahoo.com.
Originally published November 20, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
