Jessie Robertson reviews the twenty-first episode of Arrow season 5…
Curtis, his quips and the T-Spheres are all becoming an integral part of this show….
As a much improved and more down to Earth season 5 winds up, we can take stock into what this season had to offer: a damn good and not just scary, but insane twisted genius in Adrian Chase; a Team Arrow unlike any in its history but one of great value, and another Oliver conscience-crisis that dare I say it, may stick? Gone is the mysticism that Damien Dahrk brought last year and the nuclear explosions and what remained was Oliver trying to clean up Star City with martial arts, arrows and the occasional firearm. The (somewhat) culmination came tonight when faced off with each other ( in a crazy good fight scene of furious action) Prometheus and Green Arrow (back in costume) comes down to a mind game, the same Adrian Chase has been playing Oliver with for months. When told his father wanted to disown him, Chase lain down his sword and submitted to Oliver. The honor both men had been playing at with their father’s memories came crashing down to the ground tonight; as Chase’s latest head game was to send a 15-year-old concrete corpse to Oliver, and it turns out, his father was like him in another way; he was a murderer.
Tonight’s chase was another example of the kind of show Arrow drifted into this season; a mystery of evil intentions, leading from one clue to the next; now this isn’t Batman, so a lot of times, the answers just appear (that tends to happen when you have a Felicity Smoak on your side), but the chase of Chase has been part of the fun. He’s nuanced, he’s psychotic but he’s so classic DC Supervillain it feels right (what criminal nowadays sets a trap to encase their foes in concrete?). Thea returns, and she should in an episode centered around revealing truths from Queen sr but she’s still not feeling right, she’s a “hot mess” in her own words. When Oliver shows her Robert’s video to her at the end of the episode, it’s not Oliver that has to lean on her, it’s the both of them leaning on each other and it wraps up tonight’s tale of two fathers nicely.
Although that’s not all the Father Knows Best we get; Chase’s caper this episode was to re-create his father’s chemical attack on the citizens of Star City, but up the ante and go poisonous gas. He recruits Derek Sampson (wrestling tough guy Cody Rhodes) who you may remember can’t be hurt…literally that’s his power. The beauty of this is once Chase is revealed as the Throwing Star Killer, all his criminal convictions are being overturned and he recruits these baddies to do his bidding. Why Sampson would work for him, I have no idea, what’s a zombie dude do with money besides Curtis’ theory of strippers and AR-15’s? Anyways, the plan is a bust, naturally because Team Arrow is a well oiled machine these days. Speaking of Team Arrow, Rene gets his day in court, except it’s not the cakewalk he imagined; he’ll have to testify about his whole situation with losing Chloe in the first place and that includes talking about her mother’s drug use and tragic death. Quentin is there to support him and gives him a stirring speech but alas, on the day of the hearing, Rene is a no-show and Chloe’s tearful eyes tell the story there.
Rounding out tonight’s episode, we see Oliver fly back to Lian Yu with Anatoly to set the stage for his return home and we see him plant the iconic Deathstroke mask onto the arrow on the beach. But, it looks like he’s not done fighting for his life on that island as Kovar reappears and takes him prisoner.
8/10 – After the comedown from last weeks’ very emotional episode, Arrow sort of goes through the motions this week following Chase’s every clue towards his capture – but as the episode ended, I was left wondering “oh crap , where’s William?” just as Chase lets out an evil smile.
Jessie Robertson
Originally published May 11, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
