ARROW Gets a New Sidekick and KaPow! Back Story
Episode 114 “The Odyssey”
This week, we even get a dream within a flashback! Layers!
This hour picks up where the last one ended, with Arrow aiming at Moira Queen, who does what any self-respecting target would do: anything to distract the person aiming a weapon. She does this with a photo of her kids and the sob story that she needs to stick around for them. Oliver, of course, wouldn’t quite take this from anyone else, but it’s his mother. Dropping his guard is the big mistake here (outside of not wearing a real mask…), and Moira gets the drop on him, shooting him in the chest.
So now there’s a big pool of blood on the floor. Don’t think for a second that Moira won’t grab a sample of that…
The flashbacks on the island give us quite a bit of material to mull over, as we see Oliver’s interaction with Slade Wilson take center-stage this week.
Plus, it give the sidekicks plenty of screen time. Diggle and Felicity get to have that conversation the fans have bandied about. Does it bother Diggle to be part of a vigilante operation after spending so much time in a uniform? What about law and order? And Diggle gives us his reasoning, about how sometimes what’s right isn’t necessarily what’s legal. His protection of a warlord in Afghanistan, at the cost of several lives, has made him feel tainted. His helping Oliver has assuaged that guilt, given him something to believe in — the whole truth, justice and the American Way bit.
Felicity seems to be taking it all in stride, having already figured out Oliver’s lame lies were cover for something bigger. And even though she’s got qualms about Oliver’s methods, it’s clear she’s buying in on the whole “making a difference” song. Let’s just make her Oracle already… And don’t tell me it’s happenstance that she’s wearing Batgirl purple when Oliver asks her if she’s officially on the team. She is, but only until they find Walter.
That’ll change. Welcome to Team Arrow, Oracle. Your upgrade to the ArrowCave is all shiny and stuff.
There are quite a few Easter eggs in this one, starting with Bill Wintergreen, the other man in the mask, and his demise at the hands of Slade — the sword through the eye is a callback to Deathstroke’s own one-eyed status after he was shot by his wife. And Slade mentions his son, Joe, to Oliver. Fans will recall that Joe spent a lot of time with the Teen Titans as Jericho. Could we be seeing some more world-building here? Or just winks to the hard core fans?
Yao Fei’s daughter, Shado, also carries a DCU pedigree, being one of the women in Oliver Queen’s life — indeed, even having Ollie’s child. And the fact that in this version of the tale, Oliver and Shado both have the same dragon tattoo on their backs… that cannot be insignificant.
Nice bit of rescuing, there, Slade. Coming back for Oliver instead of taking off with the plane earned him some more time on the island, but it also probably scored him some karma points and good will from Oliver, which will doubtless play into whatever ends up causing Oliver and Slade to be at odds.
Overall, it’s a solid episode that gives us plenty of fast-moving back-story, all the while giving the supporting players time to shine a bit. And the Diggle/Felicity dynamic is fun to watch, as Diggle keeps getting surprised by how well the I.T. girl is just rolling with it…
And Oliver has the Line of the Night: “Trapped on an island and my only friend is named Wilson.”
>>>>>
