"Leap of Faith"
Arrow delivers yet another strong entry into the new and final season now centering around the League of Assassins' corner of the series. With a few welcomed faces making a return, solid action sequences, great character interactions, and intriguing lore building, Season 8 continues on a successful track record of noteworthy episodes. Let's dive into some positives and negatives (thankfully more pros than cons in this episode).
Pros:
Thea's Back & At Her Best!
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| Side Note: Love Speedy's character design here |
I knew that Thea would show up at some point during Arrow's final season, but the idea of positioning her into a League heavy episode was perfect for her previously established Lazarus Pit arc. I love that we get to see this background mission finally spotlighted and given closure (no Roy?). Also, seeing Oliver and his sister back together not only brought on the nostalgia feels, but also conveyed a strong sense of progression with her character. Several times during the episode, Thea is shown to be matured not only as a person through wisdom and experience, but as a legitimate fighter with her action scenes. I found myself glued to the screen during her life reflecting discussions with Oliver as it beautifully displayed to the fans just how far this character has come making things all the more bittersweet and emotional during their teary goodbye at the end.
League of Assassins Mythology & Characters
With Thea's return also comes her League story arc making way for characters like Talia and even Athena to return. When Oliver stated that he was going to Nanda Parbat during last week's episode, I was expecting Nyssa with the hope of Ra's making a surprise appearance. Instead we got Talia who, although not as fan pleasing as Nyssa considering the show's long history with that character, was an enjoyable allegiance shifting antagonist.
It's through Talia (and later Thea's translations) that we're given some intriguing lore about the League's recorded history with the Monitor detailing that the first Ra's Al Ghul was bestowed primordial knowledge from Mar Novu. Being an absolute sucker for fascinating mythology building, I found myself constantly clamoring for more lines about the original Ra's Al Ghul's sensibility of balancing "good" and "evil" to appease to the Monitor and withhold his potential wrath. It gives Season 3's Ra's Al Ghul a new interesting layer towards his extreme methods and motivations. We're also treated to a little tomb raiding during the episode as Nanda Parbat's caverns are given the TV budget Indiana Jones treatment...and I enjoyed it.
The stuff with Athena almost felt like a side villain thrown in just for the sake of eventual action scenes, but I actually didn't mind it as I for one wanted to see her return furthering Thea's very own hero-villain conflict since Season 6. Although brief, we do witness her assumed death at the hands of Oliver defeating her and the tomb's ceiling-falling trap(?). Despite not getting to see Thea be the one to take her out, I did think it was awesome having Thea defeat Talia instead via trial by combat. It not only proved Thea's progression as a skilled warrior but also redeemed the "Queen" name in the League's Trial By Combat history. As a bonus, Ra's defeated and "killed" Thea, so this is kinda like a multilayered payback to some degree.
The awesome twist however comes with both Thea and Talia deciding to create a new league from the ground up offering up a fantastic send off for these 2 characters (possible future appearances in later Arrowverse crossovers?).
Solid Fight Scenes & Production
This season of Arrow wastes no time in setting up and delivering tons of great fight scenes with each episode that we've gotten thus far. It truly does feel like a final season where everything considered to be tried-and-true fan pleasing Arrow content is frequently thrown at the audience...and I'm loving it. Oliver and Thea fighting off both League and Thanatos Guild members was an absolute treat. Yes, I may have made a little joke towards the "TV budget Indiana Jones" traps, but I did enjoy the fire blazing walls action set piece.
Processing A Destroyed Universe
Diggle traumatic reflection of Earth-2's destruction adds a sense of weight to the major event following up on Laurel's emotional reaction during last week's episode. It's great to see the writers not skip out on what should be a massive heart shattering tragedy even if this sort of thing is considered "Flash territory" in the Arrowverse franchise. I admire that the Arrow ensemble is taking it just as seriously and not writing it off as a "Yeah that happened...moving on" subplot.
Season 3 References
Each episode of Season 8 so far has been directly linked to a past season in some way, shape, or form. In this week's episode, we find ourselves exploring what would've been the present day story of Season 3 surrounding the League of Assassins. Arrow reflects this in various ways such as using the Season 3 arrowhead logo design amongst other different Easter eggs. The spotlight nod for me personally was Talia mentioning Ra's Al Ghul defeating Oliver on the cliff as well as the daunting mountain climb of the same episode. It's cool having what I believe to be the greatest mid-season finale of the show being briefly called back before the series concludes.
Team Arrow Jr. Finally Goes Somewhere Interesting
Seeing both Oliver and the flash forward characters get teleported to present day Arrow cave surprisingly made me feel remotely engaged with Team Arrow Jr.. Oliver's reaction to seeing his grown up daughter and son was quite the jaw dropping way to end the episode. As someone who has never cared about the flash forward storyline, this is probably the greatest idea that they've come up with to give those characters something legitimately interesting to do. What does this mean from a family legacy perspective will be a compelling dramatic angle to explore depending on how much time will be spent on it. Either way, consider me intrigued.
Cons:
Return of The Boring Flash Forwards
Here we are again exploring with another episode of Arrow where I find myself not caring whatsoever about the flash forward story. I honestly couldn't tell you what the characters are even trying to do on their grand mission. The only thing that has somewhat caught my attention is the fact that the Deathstroke gang gives me hope that Slade will return in some fashion. I'm also constantly wondering where Diggle and Bronze Tiger is during this time period. It's all speculation with nothing else of interest. Now yes, I was surprised to see Zoe die looking from the perspective as a viewer who saw this character as Rene's adorable innocent daughter in previous seasons. Unfortunately, I never really felt attached to her character in the future making her death feel a little less dramatically impactful.
Hopefully the ending cliffhanger will add in a whole new layer to these characters giving some semblance of optimism for the supposed future spinoff series, Star City 2040.
Episode Rating: 9/10
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