I liked the “present day” sword fighting, but for whatever reason the Chinese girl in the flashbacks looks pretty goofy running around the streets of Hong Kong with a kitana. Maybe because she’s the only one in the flashbacks with an oldtimey weapon, while everyone else has a gun.
Both the character and the actress herself are Japanese, hence the use of the Japanese samurai sword.
I am sure glad that Nyssa wasn’t killed. She is so hot.
I’d like to know what happened after Thea shot Ollie and he was walking towards her. Then break for commercial and everyone is back in the arrow cave…
It was oddly edited, but I didn’t think he was walking particularly towards her.
I don’t love this storyline but I don’t hate it either. Ras is an interesting character, but I wish we knew more about what is actually motivating him. What does the League of Assassins do other than have vendettas against people who have betrayed it? (And how are they constantly getting back and forth between “The Hindu Kush” and Starling City?)
The swordfighting with sparks at the beginning was a pretty neat visual.
While I’m not a fan of this storyline (or any scene with Thea), this episode wasn’t bad.
While I know it’s a neat visual, swords do not spark. While every TV show assumes the audience is ignorant and I’ve learned to let most of it go like water off a duck’s back, for some reason I always feel sparking swords are a direct insult to my intelligence.
From this point there are two standard resolutions to the Oliver situation:
-
The power of friendship/Twue Wuv brigs him back to himself at the last minute and he starts kicking Assassin butt.
-
It turns out he wasn’t brainwashed at all, but he was playing as if he as because he was always under scrutiny by the league and if he showed his hand things would go Very Badly Indeed for Ollie and everyone he knows. Just before the endgame, expect to see all the subtle ways he helped his friends(often without their knowledge) leading up to the big"I never fell" reveal after which he starts kicking Assassin butt.
Both of these outcomes impress Ras enough that he allows him to “postpone” his ascension and just watch Ollie from a distance until The Detective enters the picture.
Seems like 2, almost?
While Black Canary using her voice to disable enemies is truer to the comics, it looks kinda stupid in real life. I wonder if Cisco will eventually modify the device to enable her to fly?
A.T.O.M. vs an F-22 was cool but turned out to be just a MacGuffin to capture our band of heroes. Still not a fan of this whole Ra’s storyline. Does anyone really think they’re all dead?
Nope, of course not. There’s an easy out as well - the explanation that his buddy sure as heck wouldn’t give the real bio-weapon that killed his kid to a group like the League of Assassins.
The Ras plot has been kinda weak, but this season’s flashback storyline has been even worse.
One thing that’s been bugging me all season is all the worship Team Arrow is giving Oliver. He’s been a douche all along, especially to the team, yet they all act like he’s the first coming (that other one ~2000 years ago was just a fake out). With such a weak storyline and villain this season, it’s more glaring than in previous seasons. They should have kept Vinnie Jones around all season - he chewed up scenes as a gleeful villain much better than Ra’s.
IMHO, rather than spinning off Ray Palmer (Routh), they should have expanded his role here as a good guy counterpoint to Oliver Queen. Superhero shows are becoming the new NCIS/CSI/L&O. Too many, and I say this as someone who learned to enjoy reading through comic books ~40 years ago.
I think they’re really overdoing the death fakeouts on this show. When Moira or Shadow or Sara died, it was impactful because it was real (so far) and they didn’t do some kind of immediate reset that brought them back. But recently we’ve had the death/near death of Ollie, Thea, Roy, and now Felicity/Diggle/Laurel. It has no meaning because we know they won’t kill them all off.
I know(or at least heard) she got the scream device on Flash. Did they reference her getting it on Arrow? We were shocked last week when she screamed(we didn’t know Black Canary’s powers). Seemed like it just showed up and we don’t watch Flash yet.
Wholly agree. Comic books do this too. Death becomes meaningless.
We’ve seen how dark a place Maseo was in.
I think more likely is that all of the good guys got inoculated (surely Felicity could whip up some serum in 10 minutes from the blood of Maseo’s wife) before heading in, and are now just faking being dead.
But yeah, no way they’re all dead.
(Or if they are… Lazarus Pits all around?)
Hey, speaking of Lazarus pits…
Ra’s was all annoyed that the one who had (allegedly) betrayed him about alpha/omega was conveniently dead and could not testify on his own behalf…no mention of using the Lazarus pit to resurrect him and do some questioning. It’s not like he’s hesitant to use it, given that he threatened his daughter with “1000 Deaths” earlier…
Hate to say it but this show may be off of my watch list after this season. It started off interesting enough, but Malcolm hit the nail on the head this episode when he said
“You are not very good actors”
I actually kinda guffawed at the TV right then.
Real life interfered with my TV life. Damn nit. I’m on ep 19. Prison Roy. Atom & Felicity should probably be related. Atom is cute.
Joe from The Flash needs to come down to Arrow City and talk some sense into Other Cop Dad.
Thea still irritating. “Are you lying to me now?” I’m in prison. Shut up.
Back soon… 
I’m happy they finally started putting Meta Humans on the show.
Wow. Roy got stabbed? C’mon. Ollie took a sword through the ribcage and fell off a frozen cliff somewhere between Milwaukee & Tibet. And got better with Herb Drink.
Felicity rocks. Ollie/Ray slash team up (don’t call it that) against eye beam guy rocks more.
Theo & Raas’ fight was beautiful in choreography & filming. Theo will be resurrected. Geez, swords through the ribcage on this show just doesn’t impress me anymore.
Okio (?) & Samurai mom & reluctant assassin dad are fast growing on me. I want them in the show. Great team.
Meta humans without the accelerator explosion? That’s fine. If this were the MCU I’d know what’s going on, but I have no idea what the DCU is doing with meta humans, etc.
How do people eat, pee & poop in those tiny cells? We find out! No, we don’t. Dang. They know we’re wondering though.
He did. You need to catch up on The Flash as that happened a few weeks ago.
I’m catching up on both. I’m not reading upthread (either thread) yet so as to not be spoilered.
Continue the thread though. I’m not allergic and can skip-read pretty well.