What happens when a side-kick goes bad? What happens if the teacher can’t control their student? Arrow is about to find out.
Roy finally comes clean about his nightmares involving killing Sara, and this week’s episode deals with the murkier side of vigilante justice.
Actually Roy’s subplot is somewhat sidelined again this week in favour of a plot involving Ted, Laurel’s trainer, being set up to look like a vigilante killer. Oliver has his suspicions on the matter at hand, despite Laurel’s insistence that Ted is innocent. What follows is a paper trail story that raises some of the awkward questions about having side kicks. It turns out Ted has a shady past in vigilantism, involving a side-kick of his own called Isaac, who feels betrayed after Ted cut him loose.
I confess myself a little disappointed. Roy has been getting sidelined a lot this season. Considering how awesome it is for him to have his own costume and fighting skills, he feels woefully underused. It’s nice that the show didn’t have him not tell someone about his fears of having killed Sara for long. Having him keep the secret would have drawn things out. And with all the ‘who dunnit?’ stuff going on this season, it would have been a rather odd twist for him to wind up being the culprit. The worry that some Mirakuru might still have been present in his system seems a bit narrow.
In the world of flashbacks we see Oliver learning a technique that will help in the main plot. I always prefer the current goings on as opposed to the flashbacks, but lately they so seem to have had less relevance to the story at hand and appear to only be around now because they started with it back in season one and are obliged to continue doing so.
Anyhow, this episode is a bit of an odd mix. Having something heavy like Roy’s current situation coupled with a fairly bland plot involving Ted comes across as rather lazy. While we have a nice parallel between Ted and his old sidekick Isaac and Oliver/Roy, ultimately we know how this will turn out. It is at least good to know that Oliver wouldn’t abandon Roy even if he was guilty. What makes it awkward is Diggle’s reaction. Adamant that their rules should apply to Roy as much as ‘the bad guys’, he seems to miss that Roy may well have been affected by Mirakuru at the time. Obviously you can’t expect Laurel to brush that one off, but these circumstances are so unreal that it’s impossible to know how to deal with it properly.
Oliver himself plays hypocrite this week. He seems very keen for Ted to be guilty on this one. Bearing in mind that Ted was a vigilante just like him, the irony is palpable and no one points it out. That, and Oliver has quite the body count on his vigilantism alone, contrast to Ted’s one (apparent, as it turns out he didn’t do it) kill. There’s an ethics debate here that doesn’t really play out to its full potential. What’s weird is Roy technically still knows what was said to Sara before she was killed. The show doesn’t touch on that one, indeed, it turns out he is having substitute guilt for killing a police officer in season 2 whilst he was on Mirakuru.
The stinger at the end of the episode reveals another archer character. This one a red-head who calls herself Cupid (Stupid!). Interestingly she’s hidden in some earlier scenes. As such, this one seems focused around killing criminals, leaving police with injuries. With so many archers appearing on the scene, one wonders if there will be a tournament at some point just to see who’s best.
Who do you think the red-headed archer is? Do you think Roy is going to quit vigilantism after realising that he murdered a police officer? Let us know in the comments below.
