Arrow episode reviews

All season, Arrow has struggled to find balance – a fitting metaphor for its main character, who is now learning that when there are too many balls in the air, there is no such thing as balance. Hell, half of the season has been hijacked by the Tony Star- Ray Palmer story, which is basically Oliver’s story without all of the physical and emotional trauma that comes along with it, which has often left Oliver a reactionary character on his own freakin’ television show. Throw on top the show’s regression with characters like Quentin (who is back to season one levels of obsessed dickhead cop in recent weeks, as he hunts the Arrow), Diggle, and Nyssa, and it’s become clear that Arrow is way too crowded, both in terms of the pretty white faces we see every week, and the story lines accompanying them.

One would expect, given the title of the series, that Arrow would focus mainly on Oliver Queen as The Arrow (or Green Arrow or The Vigilante or whatever). And that’s true, for the most part.

It was only a matter of time before Oliver Queen’s morality was tested in the face of Sara’s death: no matter who may have committed the crime, Oliver will struggle with the decision to kill them and betray the vows he made in season two. Surprisingly, “The Magician” is that episode, though it replaces the actual killer with recently-returned Malcolm Merlyn, doubling down on the test of The Arrow’s humanity: even if he didn’t think Malcolm killed Sara (who we find out, was sent to Starling to hunt him down), Oliver had to decide whether to let a man who murdered over 500 people live. That particular tweak is really the saving grace of “The Magician”, elevating an otherwise obligatory set of scenes (Nyssa gets pissed off, Laurel gets pissed off, Malcolm teases Oliver and pisses him off… you catch my drift) into a fully-formed hour of dramatic television, highlighted by a three-way fight and underlined by the frustrations of Team Arrow and the dead ends they’ve faced.

Remember when Arrow was just the story of a guy getting revenge on the people who fucked over his less-than-honorable father? Arrow’s grown (and grown up) quite a bit since the first season of the show, a rapid expansion of settings, characters, and people who know that Oliver Queen is Arrow (seriously: remember how many people found out last season?). And every now and then, Arrow stumbles a bit under the weight of keeping so many people and plot lines up and running at any given time in Starling City – unfortunately, “Corto Maltese” is one of those hours, an entertaining episode held back by the sheer amount of material it’s trying to cram in (and in some cases, straight rush through) as it begins to establish the larger stories of what appears to be another wildly ambitious season of Arrow.

Identity has always been a major theme of Arrow, particularly with its lead character, who has spent the better part of the first two seasons figuring out who he was. As everyone on Team Arrow (which it really is at this point, especially if Laurel’s on board) reflects on Sara’s death throughout the episode named after her, this idea of searching for one’s true identity comes to forefront and frames an otherwise melancholy episode with a few philosophic brush strokes, trying to dig beneath everyone’s pain about Sara’s death for deeper self-revelations.