Director: Kevin Tancharoen
Writers: Speed Weed and Oscar Balderrama
Starring: Stephen Amell, David Ramsey, Emily Bett Rickards, Willa Holland, Paul Blackthorne, Echo Kellum, Rick Gonzalez, Juliana Harkavy, Katie Cassidy
Summary
Diggle puts on the hood as the Green Arrow but struggles to lead the team as they track down a terrorist group led by Onyx. Meanwhile, Oliver has some troubles in relating with William, specifically in academics.
Positives
This episode follows up from the previous episode wherein Oliver asks Diggle to take on the hood as the Green Arrow and lead the team. We see the team take on Faust, who escaped from the custody of the SCPD back in this season’s first episode. In the first part of the episode, we see a well-oiled Team Arrow led by Diggle, but when they encounter a terrorist group led by Onyx, Diggle struggles to give the hard call. This is the first time we see Dig taking on the role as leader in the team. But at the end of the episode, Diggle gets his beat and finally begins to lead the team like what Oliver did before.
In addition to this, we get to see Diggle try out his new toy which is a crossbow developed by Curtis and Felicity. They call it the Green Monster. This is an awesome scene because we get to see Dig try out the crossbow and it seems that his hands are not shaking anymore. Also one great thing is that the show explores even their heroes’ use of armaments. It was also said in this episode that for the past few missions they had, ever since John took over from Oliver, the Green Arrow is not using his bow and arrow, which is a problem. I thought that they would give Diggle a new weapon for the next episode but BAM! they immediately resolved that problem.
Speaking of Diggle, this episode revealed that Diggle is no longer experiencing tremors with his hand but it gave us a glimpse that Dig is using some kind of drug for him to control his tremors. It’s a great reveal and it even makes this season more complicated. Hopefully we get to see how this will turn out and how this may affect the team in the future. Also, an addition, his crossbow is totally awesome and suits Diggle.
Also, another great thing is that Special Agent Samantha Watson is back and she is really persistent when it comes to investigating Oliver and connecting him to the identity of the Green Arrow. We can see that this is still an important part when it comes to the story. It also makes a great spin to the story and helps the characters to grow. Agent Watson is one of those characters that you should look forward to or you should never take your eyes off because she might be a character that can blow everyone’s mind.
I loved that Oliver is still trying to connect with his son William. In this episode, Oliver tries to comfort his son, who is having a hard time with math. Oliver fails to give him good advice and we can see that he is slowly becoming frustrated with how to deal with these kinds of things. Yes, we have seen Oliver take down Malcolm Merlyn, defeat Deathstroke, overthrow Ra’s Al Ghul, kill Damian Dhark, and conquer Prometheus but this is new waters for Oliver. He first consults Quentin, who gave a somewhat quirky and useless piece of advice. Then he goes to Felicity for help, which she willingly accepts. It is a great episode seeing your favorite characters grow in the areas they are totally not written for.
An additional positive is the opening monologue of Oliver Queen. It may be a small, simple thing, but the monologue is one of the most important thing in the show. It narrates what happened and it may also hold some secrets for future episodes. So for this season’s opening monologue, it goes something like this:
“My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell, I return home with only one goal, to save my city. But I couldn’t honor that commitment and honor the promise I made to the mother of my son. So I asked the best man I know. ”
Negatives
One dull thing for this episode is the villain. Onyx and her crew are not threatening, even though they stole a dangerous nerve gas that can kill everyone. It feels like this episode is one of those filler episodes and is a boring one because of that. They didn’t move the plot forward and it didn’t even give us who the villain for this season would. Although, we got a plot twist when the episode revealed that the reason Diggle is no longer experiencing tremors (that’s what he’s calling it) was because he’s using drugs to suppress it, somehow Onyx never gave a lasting impression to the episode. They are a cliché group of villains who only wants vengeance.
Hopefully, the writers of the show may actually write an episode where the villain can leave a lasting impression, like Cupid, Deadshot and Cyrus Gold (yes, he was in the series). This way, the filler episodes will not feel as boring as this one and can make an impact on the show. Also, hopefully in the future, these villains they introduce can be an integral part of the season.
Verdict
For this episode, I can say that it is neither good nor bad, somewhere in the middle. It gave us a twist regarding Diggle’s condition. We also saw a connecting moment between Oliver and William. Also, Felicity and Oliver are now back together which can be considered as a highlight for this episode. My only complaint is that the villain was not that impressive, they were just cliché to me. Hopefully, even if it’s just a filler episode, they create a villain or group of villains that is compelling and can be used for future episodes.
