This week, the resurrected Sara is out of control and hunting the person who killed her – Thea. Also, John Constantine migrates from NBC and makes his first appearance on the show.
SPOILERS AHEAD
We open to find Sara stopping two thugs from attacking a young woman, only to have Sara turn and attack her herself until the police interrupt her. Sara not only speaks in a different language before escaping but she conveniently grabbed a white sheet as she left. I guess we won’t have to wait long until we see White Canary in action after all.
Allow me to gird myself and my poor eyes for the secondary storyline. Thea has hired Alex Davis, a highly recommended political strategist, to help Oliver with his campaign. The first line he utters did a great job of telegraphing the fact that he’s going to be a love interest for Thea, but hey, as long as we get this ‘Olly for Mayor’ storyline over with, I don’t care. The smug new Davis wants to know if there are any skeletons in Oliver’s closet that could sink his campaign despite having no competition. If only he knew…
Normally I’d sum up what the flashbacks were at the end since they don’t move forward very much throughout the episode, but not this week. The flashbacks start with Oliver almost being outed as Conklin believes him a spy after finding his ARGUS gear. Fortunately, they’ve already found a spy in the form of Matt Ryan’s John Constantine! Sadly, the Constantine show never really got the audience it deserved (Friday night, NBC? What did you think would happen?!), so I’m quite happy to see Matt Ryan making a crossover appearance as his awesome take on Hellblazer.
Totally not a sociopath Laurel and her father meet at the scene of Sara’s recent murder from the opening scene where Laurel promises to find her before she kills anyone else. Meanwhile, Felicity enlists the help of Curtis to clean up the recording from Ray that she listened to last week as there is clearly something else on the file. And yet, no one seems to be able to string these very, very obvious clues together yet. Captain Lance meets with Damien Dahrk who is amused that Sara is still running around. He tells Lance to gain access to a server farm and plant a device for him as we uncover the other subplot for this week. This is also right about the time that Oliver gets the call about the ‘woman’ who has been killing people around town and discovers that Sara is back from the dead.
This, of course, has Oliver a little bit upset. The explanation that Laurel and Thea offer him obviously annoys him mainly because he has JOHN FREAKING CONSTANTINE to call. Of course, this just means totally-not-a-sociopath Laurel gets to act like she’s not a sociopath and everyone agrees with her somehow. In the flashback, Constantine breaks free and forces Oliver to show him the place he’s looking for on Lian Yu.
Felicity figures out what Dahrk has given Lance but without adequate time to crack the encryption, Oliver sends Lance off to complete the errand with Diggle as backup. It becomes clear that the girls Sara is attacking look like Thea which is an opportune time for Sara to catch up with her and give Thea a pretty savage beating. Thea ends up divulging her ongoing struggle with the bloodlust and totally-not-a-sociopath Laurel is somehow still defensive and blames Oliver for not caring about what she’s going through. I can’t make this up they honestly think it’s good to write her character like this.
In the flashback, Oliver and Constantine find what John’s been looking for a Oliver gets his first taste of the magical realm. Diggle and Lance plant the virus and when the alarm goes off, Lance pretends to be apprehending Diggle which works at a federal facility, for some reason and they make their escape. Thea tells Laurel about Sara’s need to kill the person who killed her and I don’t have to tell you that totally-not-a-sociopath Laurel looks like she’s going to serve Thea up to her sister on a platter.
On Lian Yu, Oliver helps Constantine retrieve an artifact. Lance confronts Dahrk about Andrew Diggle who Dahrk relays the information that the other Diggle was doing all sorts of illegal enterprises in Afghanistan and so HIVE had an assassin take him out. Thea uses herself as bait to lure Sara out and once they catch her, Laurel decides to kill her (honestly, who’s making the story choices for this character?). Luckily, Oliver decides to call in a favour and John Constantine arrives to rescue Sara’s soul.
John can only bring two people to the other side with him to get Sara’s soul and Oliver decides Laurel is the best choice to bring along for the ride. They go to another realm to retrieve her soul which did nothing for me other than wish that Matt Ryan still had a show. Ultimately, they rescue Sara and her soul is returned which is good cause she’ll be less of a monster once Legends of Tomorrow kicks off.
We end off with John giving Oliver some words of advice in Star City and some protection on Lian Yu. Oliver makes a new bond with Laurel, Lance give Diggle the file on his brother and Curtis FINALLY puts together that Ray is still alive.
This week’s episode did a great job of almost entirely being set up for Legends while still being a pretty solid Arrow episode. The inclusion of Constantine was a pretty fantastic addition to the episode and I really hope they bring him back again. Of course, not all was good as you may have noticed I had a problem with Laurel’s character. The writers were literally all over the board with her the past few weeks and my dislike for Katie Cassidy seems to be dramatically outweighed by the writers desperately trying to make her unlikeable but still keep her an integral part of the show. I’ve tried to make sense of their choices, but I’m completely at a loss. With a couple of more weeks until Legends of Tomorrow kicks off, Arrow still has the arduous duty of bearing the weight of launching the new show, as next week they rescue Ray, with a couple of tie-ins with The Flash to help thing along. Hopefully the few episodes of Arrow left until the new show starts will at least feature White Canary appearances.
P.S. Since the story was actually pretty sound, Matt Ryan and Caity Lotz definitely offset Katie Cassidy this week. Neil McDonough was just icing on the cake!