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Arrow Ep. 3.11 “Midnight City” proves its secondary players aren’t quite ready for prime-time

Arrow Ep. 3.11 “Midnight City” proves its secondary players aren’t quite ready for prime-time

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Arrow Season 3, Episode 11 “Midnight City”
Written by Wendy Mericle & Ben Sokolowski
Directed by Nick Copus
Airs Wednesdays at 8pm ET on The CW

 

As Arrow often does, “Midnight City” finds its heart most consistently with Felicity Smoak. There are many attempts in this episode to forge emotional connections between characters – Laurel and her father, Maseo and Tatsu, Malcolm and Thea – but when “Midnight” is focused on Felictiy and the void left by Oliver Queen, it enriches her story and Ray’s, elevating it beyond a lot of the other, more telegraphed material in this week’s episode.

What Felicity’s presence in “Midnight City” really adds to is Ray’s story, which is really a lot of re-purposed season one Arrow material, fit around the background and persona of Ray Palmer. He’s rich, resourceful, attractive, and dangerous; Felicity Smoak is attracted to him; Ray/Oliver’s feelings for her help him stay grounded to his humanity, and their mission to protect the ones they love, and the city they love. The beats are endlessly familiar; but in the wake of Oliver’s “death”, gives much more weight to the journey of Ray from man in a suit and tie to man with a quantum-processor powered super-suit; some vague idea of vengeance or social nobility is only going to get you killed, or at best, isolated from the people you’ve sworn to protect.

Felicity’s see-sawing emotions give a lot of weight to that journey, which is otherwise delivered to us in protracted form, like the rest of the episode’s stories. While there’s no denying the effectiveness of the emotions shown by Quentin and Laurel by “Sara’s” re-apperance in Starling City, it borders on disturbing how horribly Laurel handles it. If there’s anything Laurel should take away from Sara’s death, it’s that withholding truth from the ones you love, no matter how difficult it may be, only lets the negative fester like an infection – it’s something Oliver learned way back in the pilot, when his father committed suicide in front of him.

However, the fake voices and silly blindness of Quentin to recognize his own two, unique-looking daughters is forgivable; what isn’t is how openly this episode telegraphs where this story is going. Laurel’s clearly not ready to be The Canary; and it’s only a matter of time before her father figures out she’s the Canary, either by Laurel ending up in the hospital or someone accidentally breaking the news that Sara’s dead. Combine that with all the talk we’ve heard about his heart condition… and it stands to see why Quentin’s felt like a much smaller part of Arrow’s third season then he’s been. I’m not necessarily saying he’ll be killed off (it’s 50/50, though, isn’t it?), but Arrow is clearly heading to a place where his and/or Laurel’s life is in jeopardy, and it’s not disguising it well.

Paired with Laurel is one of the episode’s more effective stories, however; if anything, “Midnight City” shows that Roy’s grown up a little bit, even if it’s growth that’s kind of been unfounded on-screen throughout the season. He’s able to follow Merlyn without him knowing (at first; still, pretty impressive), and he delivers the most important moment of truth, the symbolic anchor of the entire hour: there’s no hiding the truth. It will come out; and as much as Merlyn wants to delay telling his daughter the truth about why he wants to leave Starling City (as well as what happened to Sara), the worse the end result is going to be.

That haunting bit of dialogue is resonant through all the stories of the episode, even the less effective (turns out DJ Long Hair works for the League, which hopefully leads to Thea chopping him to pieces later this season). Sometimes that truth is something external, like the news of Sara’s death; other times (like in Ray and Oliver’s personal journeys), that truth comes from within, discovering the inspiration that fuels us, allowing it to be channeled properly. For Oliver, that was realizing rage couldn’t substitute for grieving, nor be an excuse for justice; for Ray, it’s that avenging his fiancee’s death is going to keep the people he loves (or himself) alive now. You can become a hero for selfish reasons, but those selfish reasons can’t be fueled by hate and anger; when it does, it leads to someone as conflicted as Maseo (or increasingly, Malcolm Merlyn).

There are bits and pieces of “Midnight City” that don’t fit as neatly as the script would like it to; however, Roy’s speech to Merlyn gives a lot of perspective to the holding patterns many characters find themselves in at the time while Brick intimidates the city and takes over the Glades. And until some of those conflicts are resolved, Oliver’s going to be trying to get back to Starling City, while uncovering the true allegiance of Maseo, and the larger plans of the League; hopefully, those moments catalyze sooner rather than later.

– Randy

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