At the beginning of this new year, one of the geeky things I’m most excited about is where “Arrow” and “The Flash” are headed. CW’s two superhero series are usually the television highlight of my week, and watching them with my sons has become a nerd ritual. With that in mind, here’s a quick recap of what you need to know if you’re catching up with Season Three of “Arrow.” This will be an overview of episodes 3.2 – 3.7; I reviewed the season premiere here, and the two most recent episodes are big enough they warrant their own reviews, coming in the next few days.
Instead of doing an episode-by-episode plot breakdown, it’ll probably be better to go through the main characters and update you on what’s happening with them, leading up to the midseason finale. This is already a transformative season for most of them, making this season entertaining and faster-paced than previous seasons.
Let’s start with Sara Lance, AKA the Canary.
She’s dead. Comic book dead, or dead-dead, you ask? Dead-dead. Three arrows to the heart on a rooftop, falls ten stories, lands on the pavement, got buried in the cemetery (where she conveniently already had a grave, nice), dead-dead. I liked how they were handling her character, but her death does pave the way for her sister to become Black Canary. Anyway. Sara. Dead.
Next up: the Olicity situation.
“Olicity” is the fan community “shipping” Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak. Hard. There have been a few kisses here and there, a lot of flirting, in Season 3 they finally go on a date. Which ends with explosions, but has some even more brutal conversations at dinner doing more damage than a bomb ever could. Basically, Oliver chooses being a superhero over being a boyfriend, and their hearts are both breaking for it. Slowly. Over the course of many episodes. I’m not sure if either of them will get over it anytime soon. And if you want an eyeful of fan art and tumblrs and gifs about it all, just do a Google Image Search for “Olicity.” You’re welcome.
And here’s Arsenal.
Roy Harper has graduated to his big boy hoodie and is now a full time member of Team Arrow. You get a true mentor/sidekick vibe between Ollie and Roy now that I’m enjoying, and one that we really haven’t seen in 21st Century superhero television or movies. It’s an interesting dynamic that’s been sidelined since Tim Burton’s Batman, and I’m liking how it plays out. That often translates into Roy not being quite good enough, becoming a hostage, being sent to dispatch henchmen….but it’s working. He gets a few dramatic moments of his own when he thinks he’s the one who killed Sara in a mirakiru-fueled rage, but it wasn’t him. Really.
With the Arrowcave filling up, someone’s gotta get put on the back burner.
For right now, it’s Diggle. He’s got a new baby, he’ll be getting married to Lyla…he’s never had a costume, but now he’s even more behind-the-scenes than he was. I like the guy, I hope he gets an increased presence in the second half of the season.
Thea Queen is looking hotter than ever.
…by which I mean she’s been on Corto Maltese with her pop Malcolm Merlyn, training in the family art of ninja-assassining. So she’s been learning to fight with swords, holding her hand over candles, getting a more grownup haircut and wearing midriffs that are…well…she looks good. She’s also less annoying and whiny than she’s ever been. Finding out she’s been lied to by everyone in her life, getting her mom impaled to death in front of her, and becoming even more of a billionaire heiress than she was has been good for Thea. She’s the biggest question mark right now–she could become Arrow’s biggest ally or biggest enemy; I’m hoping the producers go someplace bold with her.
At the beginning of Season Two, I wanted Laurel Lance dead.
She was mourning Tommy Merlyn, she was a drunk, she was crying all the time…she wasn’t annoying, she was uninteresting. By the end of Season Two, she was going places. In the season finale, she finds out Oliver is Arrow, she helps defeat the bad guys, and then just as she’s feeling good, her sister is killed in front of her. I was worried that this would return her to her whining, but it’s hardened Laurel. She’s been training with a former boxer named Ted “Wildcat” Grant after Oliver refused to train her. We’ve seen her in promo pics as Black Canary, so we know it’s coming…but she’s not quite there yet. I’m liking her more than I ever have. Black leather will do that.
Speaking of Wildcat…
He’s only been in a handful of episodes, running a gym. There’s been a hint of an almost-superheroing past when he defended his brother, there was even a cat-shaped black mask on the shelf in the gym. I’m hoping he becomes a full-on hero alongside Laurel for a few Wildcat/Black Canary teamups…but I don’t necessarily see it happening. He’s a fun character and an interesting counterpoint to Oliver. Plus his gym was the site of a fight where Oliver jammed an arrow into a glove and used it as a boxing glove arrow, and a million fanboys laughed and bonered and it was good.
The other new guy this season is Ray Palmer.
Ray Palmer is best known to geeks as “Atom,” a scientist who uses “dwarf star matter” in a belt to shrink down to microscopic size…and fight…crime. But like, tiny. Here, Brandon Routh’s character comes to Starling City, takes over as the COO of Queen Industries, and takes over as a potential love interest for Felicity. She’s rebounding, but she’s rebounding nicely. Palmer is funny, he’s likable, he’s smart, he’s handsome, and he’s on the cusp of being a superhero in his own right. We get some pieces of a tragic backstory, we see his inherent goodness…he’s a great guy.
But what we care about is this:
At the end of a single episode, we see Ray looking at the A.T.O.M. suit. We don’t know what the acronym stands for, but he spent the episode working out a business deal that would let him acquire the dwarf star matter he needs to finish the suit. Earlier producers had said “if we see Palmer in the Atom suit, it would probably be on ‘The Flash,’ not ‘Arrow,'” …but they may be rethinking that. At first I thought we’d be getting ripped off if we never saw Ray Palmer as Atom; now I like the guy as a civilian so much, I’m fine either way.
But do it. Totally do it.
All of this leaves Arrow–Oliver Queen–in a transitional period. Some of his allies are dead, some need extensive training, his sister hates him, his girl…who he doesn’t want to be his girl but he loves…is with a super cool guy, his former girlfriend is turning into a superhero, which he doesn’t like…he’s in the middle of a hurricane. Which isn’t as calm as you’ve been led to believe. His life is already shaken up, he doesn’t need a new guy thrown into the mix.
Like the Flash. But here he comes.