Oliver, Sara, Diggle and Felicity return to the lair and find Slade waiting for them. An epic battle breaks out and one member of the team is sent to the hospital. Thea hits her breaking point and Oliver is faced with a choice - his battle with Slade or his family. Meanwhile, Laurel struggles with a new secret.
Another week, another episode of Arrow that unveils some new twists and complications to the story. There's a cure to the mirakuru. Laurel knows Oliver's the Arrow but doesn't say anything. Robert Queen knew Malcolm was Thea's father. Isabel was also Robert's lover who almost ran away with her but chose to stay with his family. Also, Danielle Panabacker and Carlos Valdes stopped by to introduce their characters for the proposed Flash spinoff. It's was an action-oriented episode that never felt over-stuffed. It felt meaningful to the characters in ways that were also exciting. That's the dynamic that Arrow covers so well especially now that it's heading so confidently into the final episodes of its season.Oliver and his team are trying their best to stop Slade from building up his army of mirakuru-infused super soldiers. They struggle fighting against just one. An army full of them would be devastating to this world. Yes, it's weird that Oliver and Sara just now got around to saying that there potentially is a cure to the drug - because, you know, the flashback stuff had to catch up to get to that reveal. But it also shows the team actively doing stuff in an effort to stop it from happening. They aren't just sitting around waiting for Slade to slip up while they are off stopping some villain of the week. Slade's plan is in motion and that is their top priority. The stakes are real and life or death.
The reveal that Roy is fueling the blood transition machine was wonderful simply because of how he was the last time we saw him. He was storming out of town because he was so upset. We weren't expecting him to be back in the lair and friendly with everyone. Sure, some character says that they can't find him but once we see him in the chair it hits so well. It's been a part of that character's design too. We don't see him every week. So why then, should we expect him in an episode when he hasn't been in it at all for 40 minutes? But Roy is there and makes for a much more satisfying final third of the episode.
But Slade's villainous doings are still growing. Diggle shoots Isabel and we believe that she dies. Nope, Slade hooked her to the machine and now she's super powerful too. She's grown immensely more interesting as a villainous character. Was the lover angle with Oliver's father really necessary? Probably not. But it also gives as a good of an explanation as we could have expected as to why she's doing this with Slade.
Elsewhere, there's Laurel who is finally starting to put the pieces together in regards to Oliver and her sister. Slade flat out told her that Oliver is the Arrow at the end of the last episode. And yet, her reaction is very different than expected. She approaches it with a calm head. Something I wasn't expected when she was crazily putting pictures up on a corkboard. But then, she had this really nice chat with her father about knowing who the man is under the hood is not as important as the man in the hood. That's a really interesting concept. It lets Laurel in on the big secret - plus makes her seem smart by finally being able to connect everything together. Now we're not left consistently wondering why no one looks at the Arrow and not immediately know that it is Oliver.
Some more thoughts:
- "The Man Under the Hood" was directed by Jesse Warn with story by Greg Berlanti & Geoff Johns and teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Keto Shimizu.
- The complex family stuff with the Queens just doesn't interest me as much as the action and tension with Oliver's fight with Slade. It gives Thea something to do and makes Oliver feel more guilty about things than he probably should.
- Lance sure got out of prison easily, didn't he? All he had to do was get beat up and then Laurel could come to his rescue.
- I liked The Flash spinoff characters. Sure, they were just plot points here. But they got to remind us about Barry and that corner of the universe. They also got to show - through that fancy gun thing - what kind of reality that show will be grounded in.
