Things just went from bad to “no” last week on Arrow as Laurel dove headfirst into Canarydom and then full-on faked out her dad not once, but twice, into believing she was Sara. So much NO.
It all spirals when the team attempts to shut down Laurel’s turn at being a vigilante after she gets her ass handed to her. Eventually all sides agree they want her on board, so she continues on. Of course somebody with a cell phone puts it on TV when she and Roy inadvertently get an Alderman killed.
We also meet the new mayor–played by Christina Cox–who Ray approaches, offering to fund the city’s ability to fight back against various and sundry threats. He and Felicity also bond a bit more after their supremely awkward discussion/fight last week.
Thea picks back up flirting with her DJ, Chase, while taking the time to tell Malcolm they aren’t running–he gives her the partial truth about who Ra’s is, but not the whole truth about Oliver’s possible demise. At the end of the hour, we find out Chase is a mole for (or member of) LOA when he calls to tell them Thea isn’t leaving town anytime soon.
Up on the mountaintop, Oliver convalesces and we flash back to Hong Kong, where we get the additional piece of info that Maseo stole the big bad bio agent to trade to China White for Tatsu. It turned out to be bogus and everything went to hell pretty quickly but they all made it home. In the present, Tatsu tells Maseo to stay and that she loves him, and Oliver proposes a return to Starling City (yes!) but Maseo instead fights off the LOA boys who have arrived to look for Oliver. There’s also a hint there that something happened with Maseo and Tatsu’s son, so I think we have more to learn about why he went dark and they separated.
In Starling City, Laurel is asked a couple of times by Quentin if she’s heard from Sara because the Canary is all over the news. She says no, and then she calls him, with some wizardry from Felicity that changes her voice to Sara’s, and she appears in person, above him in the shadows on a fire escape, in full Canary garb, and tells him she’s OK. Ugh. Hated this. It’s like they’re stacking the lies so much that when the actual news comes to him, it’s going to detonate for mass destruction. Again, so MUCH NO.
And that’s where we leave everyone, with Vinnie Jones still running amok. I hope we get Oliver home sooner than later (tonight, maybe?), but I’m guessing the point there, as TPTB have articulated, is for everyone to become someone else without him and then have to learn to live with him again, with those changes intact, once he returns.
I’m a bit at the point where everything feels more manipulated and less organic. I honestly don’t know if that’s because I’m comparing it to The Flash, which is consistently a stronger show (I said it) every week. It feels like it’s starting to show that TPTB are spending more time on the new baby, or maybe that’s just me.
Here’s a sneak peek of “Uprising.”