If you are a Diggle, Felicity, and island fan than The Odyssey was for you! I am that person and I was in heaven.
This week picked right where we left off last week, with Arrow telling Moira about how she had failed Starling City. If that wasn’t shocking enough, Moira, after pleading in the name of Oliver and Thea, goes off and shoots Oliver! Granted she didn’t know it was Oliver but still, she shot her own kid. Of course Ollie gets out of there and the camera pans to the pool of blood he left. I’ve watched enough crime shows to know this was a problem.
In a very heads up play, Oliver finds his way into Felicity’s car, instructing her to the Arrowcave instead of the hospital. Finally! It’s about time that Felicity is told the truth, although I will miss the incredibly stupid cover stories Oliver came up with. The rest of the episode was basically Diggle and Felicity trying to keep Oliver alive. Another reason to keep Diggle around? Apparently he can dig (hehe) bullets out of bodies. He may not be so great with fritzy defibrillators, but that’s why Felicity “I’ve been fixing computers since I was 7” Smoak is there. They made a pretty good team and Oliver lives to see another day. However, I do have to call bullshit on Diggle’s proclamation that Oliver’s injury was a “Zone II wound” as a simple Google search classifies Zone II as part of the neck and that was clearly a shoulder shot. Come on Diggle, get it right man.
The majority of the episode was flashbacks to the island. Last week we met Slade Wilson and learned that the guy in the mask back at Fyers’ camp was obviously not Deathstroke, because Slade Wilson is Deathstroke and there he is helping Oliver escape. Come to find out this week that not only is the masked man not Deathstroke, but rather that’s Billy (William) Wintergreen. I don’t know why I didn’t even think of him last week, but I didn’t so I was surprised when Slade said his name.
Now I know that Arrow hasn’t really been all that concerned with canon, but this whole thing with Deathstroke is really convoluted. Wilson and Wintergreen were friends. At times they took on a mentor/student role. Wintergreen was Wilson’s best man when he got married. In the end
Deathstroke/Wilson does end up killing Wintergreen, but that’s only because his son, well the spirit of his son, has taken over his body. It wasn’t actually Deathstroke himself, rather his son, Jericho. Wilson even mentioned his son to Oliver when he said that Wintergreen was his son’s godfather. So the idea that Wilson killed Wintergreen himself is a little bit of an annoyance, but then again the show is set in Starling City and Oliver Queen’s mother is a major character so really this is just another in a long list of taken liberties.
Obviously the focus of the island was the attempted escape by Wilson and Oliver. Before they could do that though, Oliver needed to become a somewhat trained soldier-like individual. Hence the training montage with him and Wilson. Of course Oliver, being from a very privileged and not very hands-on background, doesn’t do so hot with that. The best part of the episode came when after watching Oliver struggle to start a fire for hours, Wilson pulls out a lighter. Of course this is a family show so Oliver didn’t take all that newly learned hand to hand combat skills and beat the crap out of Wilson, instead he just laughed it off. It’s official, Oliver is a better person than I.
So far on the island we’ve seen Oliver grow a little from the elitist douchebag to a somewhat more humble man, but this episode really brought his selfishness to the spotlight. He’s made it no secret that up until now he’s thought pretty much only of Oliver, so you’d think that when Wilson is telling him that you have to live for yourself, he’d be on board. However, instead of ditching Yao Fei to grab his assured seat on the plane out, Oliver heads out to try to get Fei to go with them. One has to wonder why instead of running through the jungle he didn’t just take one of the dozen Jeeps sitting there, but hey he went back and that’s all that matters. Of course Fyers was waiting for him and had Wintergreen attempt to execute him which ends up with Wintergreen’s death but the real revelation in all this is…
SHADO!!!!!
I fear we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to poetic license on storylines, because I have a feeling there is no way we are going to see the comic’s version of Shado and Oliver’s relationship, but still it should be fun to see what happens. I can not tell you how happy I am that they had her as part of the island because as I said here, I was really quite concerned that she was just going to be some throwaway paralegal or something. I’ll admit that I have zero idea as to how they are going to continue the island story, but at least we don’t have to wonder (for now) how it is that Slade Wilson and Oliver Queen ended up on a plane together with there being no mention of Wilson being rescued.
After all the island excitement, we returned to the Arrowcave and what the what?!?! Oliver has the same tattoo as Shado! The intrigue, it is strong.
Of course we couldn’t go an entire episode without Thea so she made an appearance, thankfully it was short. Annoying, but short. Oliver declares his mother off-limits to the Arrowcrew, and we finish up another visit to Starling City.
This was a great episode. Probably my favorite so far of the season as I love the island. It’s not that I don’t enjoy modern-day Starling City but I’ve really liked how they have told the island story so far and this episode was no different. Had there not been the wide injustices done to the Wintergreen/Wilson story, it might have been a 4.5 but going to have to stick with four out of five.
Not only was it a great episode this week, but there was good news as well. Arrow has been renewed for a second season! It comes as a surprise to no one, given how strong the ratings have been, but it’s always nice to have that renewal become official. Not only that, but apparently the powers that be have seen the fan’s reactions to our favorite IT girl because it was announced that Felicity Smoak will be bumped up to a main character next season. No doubt there are ‘Felicity and Oliver’ shippers who are just beside themselves with this news.
That’s all I have, until next week Arrow fans!
Grizzly Bomb 