Arrow is back from its break to wrap its disastrous season up after it completely went off the rails before taking a few weeks off. Can the final leg of the season salvage something and save this year from being a complete wash?
SPOILERS AHEAD
We open up on a couple who are tied to a chair and look like they’ve been tortured. They profess their love for each other before their capture puts an arrows in each of them. You guessed it, Cupid is back this week and I’m officially washing my hands of this show.
We pick up with Laurel in court as she tries to keep Damien Dahrk from flying the coop. If everyone remembers last week, the team destroyed his idol of power and he’s in trouble for kidnapping Oliver’s illegitimate son. Let’s just gloss over the fact that Laurel is still assistant DA here and focus on that Dahrk is held pending a pre-trial trial or something. Meanwhile, Felicity is packing her stuff and her and Oliver have an awkward moment where she assumes that her role as Overwatch is secure despite the fact that they haven’t even addressed their own problems. So, Laurel has a problem with keeping Dahrk in jail as she doesn’t have a case. Felicity volunteers to be a witness but that just leads to some really bad dialogue about they’ve broken up – cause the team wouldn’t know that, of course. Lance calls them and Oliver investigates Cupid’s murder scene which indicates that Cupid has become quite jaded which is more of problem than usual.
The team investigates and they figure out that Cupid is killing celebrities who are getting married. In court, Diggle takes the stand and is taken apart as a credible witness for buying drugs with Thea months ago. Why they need witnesses while they aren’t actually having a trial is beyond me, but I guess this is the storyline. Considering one of the writers/ producers used to work on Law & Order, you’d think this would be thought out some more, but here we are. After the disaster in court, Lance volunteers to take the stand but that would incriminate himself, so Laurel is resistant to that. Felicity calls and has Cupid’s location and she’s got two new victims. They chase her to a warehouse and her and Arrow duke it out. She escapes but Arrow manages to snag a piece of her costume as she takes off.
Felicity runs forensics on the costume after she has a super weird aside about hating everything. Lance goes to Laurel and they agree that he will take the stand against Dahrk. Felicity manages to piece together where Cupid is holed up and the team moves out. Cupid isn’t there, but they find where she picks her victims and they realize that Felicity and Oliver are on her hit list. The pair of them decide that they’re going to go undercover to flush Cupid out. Lance takes the stand and spills everything, including all of the crimes that he committed for Dahrk and in order to save Laurel’s life.
The teams sets a trap for Cupid in the form of them getting married. Oliver delivers his vows which are ‘touching’ and ‘lovely’ which, of course, means Cupid shows up to kill them and she pegs Oliver with an arrow in the chest and goes to detonate a bomb to destroy the building. Luckily Oliver was wearing Kevlar and he tries to talk Cupid out of going through with this but she isn’t listening. Felicity takes over and gives an impassioned speech about love which sways Cupid, but then they attack Cupid anyway and manage to put a stop to her reign of terror. Felicity and Oliver agree to meet up and talk about their future. The team goes to court where Dahrk is held in custody until his trial (what?). Lance gets suspended and is now under investigation. Felicity meets up with Oliver and gives him his ring back, telling him that she’s leaving. Darhk gets put in his cell, but he’s managed to sneak his wedding ring in with him. A little foreshadowing of where his true power lies?
In the flashbacks, Oliver and Taiana find the idol Reiter was looking for and steal it, retreating further into the caves to keep him from taking it.
So, the return did not improve on the quality of the season. I mean, it wasn’t the train wreck that the past few weeks have been, but it was barely watchable. Between the nonsensical court scenes and the cringe inducing dialogue, when the show needed to rebound back strong, they fell flat on their face. To be quite honest, I can’t even muster the energy to describe everything wrong with this episode because I don’t have the space or the time to do it.
It’s all but a foregone conclusion at this point that this season is a write off, but Arrow has already been picked up for another season next year. All we can do now is grit our teeth through the last few episodes and hope that the creative team can come up with something watchable next year that washes the bad taste this disaster of a season has left.
Doug Mercer reviews The Flash each week, so stay tuned right here for more! Also be sure to check out our recent review of 11/22/63!