Jessie Robertson reviews the fifth episode of Arrow season 8…
In Russian, prochnost means “strength.” Typically, on Arrow, that would indicate Oliver’s fighting prowess, but tonight. As the team splits on important missions, Oliver takes Laurel and his children to Russia and when he’s there, he learns a new lesson in strength: keeping your family together.
Like The Flash this week, our main story thread was the strongest, by a lot. These are the kinds of stories that worked so well in Arrow’s later seasons that were given time to develop and used the history of the show to strengthen it’s foundations. Having Anatoly back is always welcome and while we never saw his comics counterpart develop, Callan Mulvey (Anatoly) has consistently done fantastic work on Arrow, whether he was friend or foe. Seeing him here, in probably his last appearance, was a delight and he was not one without quips, per usual.
The story beats involved Team Arrow to retrieve plans for the weapon they are hoping to arm with plutonium to recreate the wave that destroyed Earth-2 to destroy the Monitor. They find them pretty quickly (after Oliver beats some giant’s ass in a cage fight- Laurel remarks “He’s twice your size.” and Oliver replies, without missing a beat “So I give him half a chance.”) but the Bratva, as they are wont to do, get involved and nearly kill Oliver and Mia to get the information on the plans. Later, they devise a plan to get the plans back and trick the Bratva- using Oliver and Mia as cage fighters in a distraction while Laurel and Anatoly get the plans back. All of this happens as Oliver struggles to let his children help, even though he requested they come with him to Russia. He tells Mia when she protests they are not children, “You are when I look at you!” in a very powerful scene, recounting how he just recently saw them as children before he was drafted into Mar Novu’s mission.
Oliver and Mia bonding in the episode’s beginning, him giving her a tutorial on how to use trick arrows, coupled with Oliver not only putting trust in her, but putting her in harms’ way showed great strides on his end. Laurel also has her own struggles, being pressed by the Monitor (and Lyla) to steal the plans for them before Oliver got them. She has no issue with doing this but finds inspiration in how others see her, particularly Mia and Anatoly, and she can’t betray the team, not this time. The episode ends in dramatic fashion with Laurel revealing Lyla as the traitor to the team and Diggle’s pained expression on his face as he’s darted and put to sleep.
Diggle was busy too, in a series of scenes that were pretty high on the ridiculous. He recruits Roy back into the fold, based upon the kids info on the future. That idea, in itself, is not ridiculous. It’s consistent with John’s character to always extend that olive branch to people that need it; the idea that they are in full costume, slinking around a delivery site that plutonium is about to be dropped off to, having a very long conversation about many topics, then casually taking out maybe 4 guys and stealing this highly illegal, and dangerous substance. It was way too contrived!
Rating: 7.5/10 – A solid episode that stood on the backs of the family unit Oliver finds himself with: the future episodes last season showed Mia and William were interesting and layered characters and those scenes really pay off having them with Oliver and it shines here.
Jessie Robertson
