Team Arrow Hack-Off Win Derails HIVE: Arrow Season 4, Episode 22 Review
Since Stephen Amell has said if he hadn't been an actor, he would've been a baseball player, this analogy is appropriate:
Episode 22 was an action and stunts three-peat.
Not since season 2 have James Bamford and his team been on fire like this. Oliver/Diggle field action, just the two of them, feels like the old days, as did arguably the best street fighting all year.
Across the suburban front yards at full tilt, and Green Arrow's half-twist over the hedge while firing upside down: that was more WWE than Arrow.
Woah.
The rest of the episode? Meh.
I like callbacks and foreshadowing as much as the next girl, but not if the Arrow writers hammer us over the head with some of the weakest writing since Constantine's visit.
A short list of things that just didn't make sense:
Damian Darhk's strong suit is not human resources, nor apparently civil engineering. One disgruntled ex-employee brings down Tevat Noah like a pup tent?
When Alex kidnapped Thea, he let her bring her Speedy bow and arrows? Also, people bounce back from weekend hangovers more slowly than Thea's HIVE-induced mental state.
So, in season 4 the other half of the Glades gets burned to ashes, the half Malcolm didn't succeed in destroying in his season 1 Undertaking? Am I seeing things, or did they re-use that footage?
Donna is mad that Felicity didn't tell her she'd been working with the Green Arrow for 3 years, but thought it was OK to lie to Felicity for almost 20 years about leaving Noah, rather than the other way around?
(Not to mention Felicity forgiving her mom so readily, when abandonment has fueled that dysfunctional relationship and was a key factor in her breakup with Oliver?)
Now that Noah and Felicity have met and she knows the truth, and calls him Dad, my guess is they will keep in touch behind Donna's back, which, as much as I love Mama Smoak, she kind of deserves.
Too bad Donna doesn't realize yet how ideal technical partners Felicity and Noah really are, having dual-handedly disabled Rubicon and saved the world as they all know it. (Felicity's ex brought his hacking A game and still was obliterated by Team Felicity. Another poor HIVE recruiting decision.)
Felicity was upset in season 1 when Oliver killed one person! How is she not coming apart emotionally after being forced to decide whether to kill thousands or millions?
Captain Lance is running comms? (Where is Lyla, as doom is even more imminent than last week?)
That was a pretty long list. Sorry.
Arrow will close out season 4 no doubt with great flourish, and set in motion the following season 5 story lines (wild speculation by me, absolutely free):
Team Arrow will take a break to process the devastation individually, then regroup - with some personnel changes - when they realize they're needed to rebuild Star City.
Oliver will lead the city to hope, in the light (meaning, not in costume). He better watch his step around next May, though. How many Star(ling) City mayors have been killed in office? Ruvé makes four. (Thanks, Anarky.)
Felicity and Oliver will reconcile. Oliver calling Felicity "Overwatch" on comms this week sounds like the ice is thawing. Maybe Noah will be the impetus by showing Felicity that he, who has an even worse trustworthiness track record than Oliver, can change, too.
After Damian Darhk's death, his daughter will either go to live with the Diggles - here is John, carrying the girl in his arms - or will end up as Oliver's son William's sister, since they've already met, when Damian kidnapped William a few episodes ago.
And then we'll get "The Exorcist." Probably not the granddaughter Mama Smoak had in mind.
The season 4 flashbacks having mercifully been put to death, Oliver will wake up in the season 5 premiere in Russia, with Arkady offering him a vodka shot. I'm begging you, Arrow writers: let it be so. Amen.
Curtis, who stumbled into the Kuttler/Smoak family reunion from hell, with hilarious results, will become hero Mr. Terrific and key to Felicity getting her company back, which she renames Smoak Technologies, as forecast in Legends of Tomorrow, 2046.
Felicity will be acknowledged as the hero she's been all along. There won't be anyone on earth - or whatever is left of it, after Darhk's attempted nuclear annihilation - who questions this anymore.
She threatened - to his face - the head of the League of Assassins. She stabbed Slade Wilson/Deathstroke when he had a knife to her throat. Damian Darhk, not knowing any of this, inadvertently unleashed her inner "Bitch With Wifi" onto HIVE, and lost.
Most importantly, Malcolm Merlyn will be even more afraid of her now. As well he should be.
Next week, the season 4 finale "Schism"
