‘Arrow’ Episode 3.10 “Left Behind” (7 out of 10) Starring Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, David Ramsey, Emily Bett Rickards, Colon Haynes. Guest Starring Vinnie Jones, Cynthia Addai Robinson. First aired January 21, 2015.
When we left Oliver Queen in early December, he had traveled to the Himalayan kingdom of Nanda Parbat, home of Ra’s Al Ghul. There he challenged Ra’s to a duel…and died pretty quickly. A sword through the chest, followed by a fall off a cliff. A literal cliffhanger. Nice! Back home in Starling City, the Arrow’s been gone less than a week, and things are falling apart. A new crime boss named Danny Brickwell is taking on the cops. “Brick” seems to be nearly invulnerable to bullets (and arrows, we’ve gotta assume), and is more than just a thug. He’s set himself to work freeing all of the prisoners that Team Arrow have put away over the last two years. He’s taking evidence from the Starling City PD, and using quasi-legal means to get them out. Not a jailbreak, but worse–they’re all hitting the streets, all legitimate-like.
This crime wave is quickly overwhelming Oliver Queen’s allies. John Diggle becomes the de facto leader of the crew, but feels unequal to the task. He’s an incredible right hand man, but isn’t quite sure how to turn his muscle and brains into a leadership role. He’s also not the Arrow, and is left with tools that don’t fit his needs. One of those tools is Arsenal; Roy has been getting better at the sidekicking, but as with Diggle, needs more leadership. Felicity is kind of a mess; one hero she loves is gone and presumed dead. The other, Ray Palmer, is about to take his life in his hands by putting on the A.T.O.M. suit, and wants Felicity’s help fine-tuning it. She (to her credit) refuses.
On a third (fourth?) front, Malcolm Merlyn is sure that Oliver Queen is dead, he travels to Nanda Parbat, he retrieves the sword used to kill Oliver, and brings it back to the Arrowcave for analysis. By the way, how many villains now know where the Arrowcave is? I know at least Merlyn, Deathstroke, and Captain Boomerang have the address–add all of the heroes and sidekicks who know about it, and it’s becoming quite the hub of activity. It is under a nightclub…one of the only series regulars who doesn’t know it exists owns the damn nightclub. Anyway. Merlyn sees which way the wind is blowing and wants to take Thea and hit the road…hopefully continuing her training in the ways of the dark side.
Then in flashbacks, we have Amanda Waller using Oliver and Maseo to do her bidding, superseding Maseo’s need to find his wife Tatsu. It brings Oliver and Maseo closer together, even as it creates friction between them and Waller. This flashback connects neatly to the current story in Nanda Parbat.
It’s nice to see them try, and fail to fill Arrow’s quiver
In all, the episode felt messy. More disjointed than it needed to be. Even though we know Oliver Queen isn’t dead, we still get over the top emoting from Felicity about the whole thing. Which is appropriate, but seemed to drag the narrative. It also gave her motivation to refuse to help Ray Palmer with his A.T.O.M. suicide mission. It added depth to their relationship, but also meant there wasn’t the banter that serves to lighten the tone of this sometimes bleak series. We do get some nice moments between Diggle and Roy, and it’s nice to see them try and fail to fill Arrow’s quiver.
The final scenes of the episode have Laurel at long last donning the Black Canary costume. We see her lawyer mode, failing to stop Brick’s prison breaks. We see her fears about losing Oliver, but also the only one with hope that they’d see him again. It’s been a natural buildup of the character over this season and last, so it’s nice to see her handily kicking some ass. She also used the “Canary Cry” sonic bombs, something I think we only saw Sara’s Canary use twice before. I hope this Black Canary uses them more. Showrunners have said this will kick off an arc of three episodes centered on Black Canary, something I’m looking forward to.
Episodes like this have a lot of forward movement; there are about ten characters whose stories move forward in “Left Behind.” I wonder if it would be better to have some focus on a smaller family of characters, and put others on the back burner. In any case, it was a solid episode, but missed on a few marks. Hoping for better next week.