Jessie Robertson reviews the sixth episode of Arrow season 3…
G U I L T Y
That’s the message left behind as the Arrow team finds gang-bangers strung up like cured meat in a freezer. It’s a pretty disturbing portrait and they are light on suspects. Oliver finds the message again, this time discovering the body of a regular citizen, strung up, dead, blood dripping from his jowls like a fresh carcass, and finds a suspect: Ted Grant. Yes, the Ted Grant that’s been training Laurel ad hoc since she was turned down by her former lover…..”lover, sounds so creepy,” sorry had a Felicity moment.
Two weeks after we had a fairly innocuous episode, we again find ourselves running in place, setting the stage for various characters, and scenarios. Laurel again takes center stage and she’s not as grating as normal, giving herself a rebel air, defending Ted and telling Oliver point blank “I’m not part of your team.” I found that comforting because I had just written in my notes that she’s not a good fit for the team. It turns out Ted was in an elaborate setup, by a masked man aiming to psychologically torture him before killing him. Ted was actually the original vigilante, fighting crime on a small level, only in the Glades, to help make a difference. The man hellbent on taking him out is his former sidekick, Isaac Stanzler. I like this turn as it gives Starling City more history, painting more layers on the city itself, as I feel it’s always been its own character of sorts. Ted mistakenly killed a bad dude 6 years ago and left Isaac on his own, to be taken and tortured by people looking for revenge against the “Wildcat.” For plotting all this out, when Stanzler kidnaps Ted and Laurel, he doesn’t have much of a plan, just for them to drive. He seems pretty befuddled for a former hero, though he does manage to hold his own, for a minute, at least with Roy in Battle of the Sidekicks!
Roy also is a huge part of the puzzle this week, with his apparent murderous Mirakuru-driven rage not entirely over, he believes he killed Sara; he even confesses to the whole team, including Laurel. I didn’t like it went that far, considering it seemed to be an obvious red herring, and considering Laurel’s revenge kill attitude a few weeks ago with Merlyn, she was able to keep composed when Roy was said to be the culprit. I was also a little disturbed at the tech Felicity brings up arbitrarily that helped her realize someone killed Sara by throwing arrows at her. Please tell me this was not another program she wrote? Felicity was toned way down this week but we still got some fun dialogue between her and surrogate little brother Roy. So, is this how we saw Roy’s trajectory? I know people were happy he’s not with Thea anymore, but it seemed to be the only thing that gave him identity besides wearing red and doing parkour before every potential fight.
Another week and we still aren’t any closer to finding out who Sara’s killer is and for a show that stays on a usual hypersonic course, things are moving much slower in Starling City this season. I feel like maybe we’re sort of treading water until the Arrow-Flash crossover stuff goes down, then we’ll get to the meat of the season.
Other Notes:
– If you watch closely, outside Wildcat Gym when Ted Grant is first framed for murder, in the crowd is a fetching red head- turns out she’s Cupid, next week’s villain. She’s off on the right foot as she (presumably shoots Stanzler) by saying “I’m Cupid, stupid.” Nice.
– Oliver has a short fight with Ted, which ends with a modified boxing glove arrow to the face! Classic trick arrow of the golden age Green Arrow from the comics.
– Felicity mentions while doing a trace that there are 86,000 Paco’s living in Starling City- does that figure seem strange to anyone else?
– Ollie dubs Roy “Arsenal” which is a moniker he went by while apart of DC’s superteam the Justice League
– This week’s flashback was a drawn out sequence where a memory retrieval technique was used- I have a feeling this is not the last of this particular trick we’ve seen
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 13, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
