ARROW Season 4 Episode 3: Much 'Restoration' Needed



Opening with another generic action set piece, we find Green Arrow and Diggle (is he ever going to get a superhero name?) taking on more of the Ghosts (doing what exactly?). This time things play out a little differently.

Getting the drop on Diggle, one of the masked Ghosts doesn't kill him but instead chooses to let him live. I've seen enough sci-fi shows and read enough comics to know this means one thing; that man is Diggle's brother. Yes, Diggle wants to bring down HIVE because they were behind his brother's death but my gut just tells me this is so. 

Later in the episode, when scanning a cyanide capsule tooth extracted from one of the other Ghosts, Felicity remarks on how it's missing half the genetic markers normally found in DNA and that its owner should only be a pile of goo. I'm not familiar with HIVE in the comics, but my clone sense is tingling. Perhaps the reason Damien Dahrk is so ready to dispatch his own men at the slightest failure is because they are simply clones. Homegrown henchmen that he can replace, a dime a dozen. 

In a scene that serves to introduce this episode's comic book bad guy of the week, I noted a masked Ghost in the back; conspicuous in his reluctance to unmask even in the presence of his master. I feel this was for our benefit, pending a future revelation to his identity.

The card slinging hitman Double Down, a.k.a. Jeremy Tell (get it?), played by actor J.R. Bourne, makes his entrance as another outside gun for hire, demonstrating his powers by and killing one of Dahrk's men. A couple of minutes googling this character taught me I should be thankful he only peeled of his regenerating tattoos. In the comics his skin was apparently replaced with a deck of cursed cards. When he peels them off to throw them, he has no skin underneath. I know ARROW pushes the violence a little bit, certainly more than THE FLASH, but that definitely would have been grim. Awesome? Perhaps, but definitely grim. 

Double Down not being a member of HIVE also serves to show possible friction between Dahrk and the villainous organization as it's not Dahrk who brings him in, but a new character and HIVE representative Mina Fayed. But just as I thought we might have a new player in town, showing the warring faction's within HIVE, wouldn't you know an ARGUS agent pops up to alert Diggle that this very woman is the one who put the hit out on his brother. I thought this revelation might lead to something, but clumsily Fayed is killed off in the same episode she was literally conjured into existence by the writers. Fearing his only lead into HIVE is gone, Oliver reassures Diggle that going forward things would be different as this time he won't be investigating HIVE alone. It's nice to see that Diggle keeping the HIVE connection to his brother's death a secret only lasted a couple of episodes as so often I find myself shouting at the screen how dumb characters are for trying to go it alone. 

I'm not thrilled, however, about the boys working through their issues so soon with Oliver regaining Diggle's trust by taking a figurative bullet for him. I feel the CW is once again forgoing real human drama in place of the kind of schmaltzy status quo these kind of shows thrive on. Don't worry though, I'm sure they fall out again around Episode 9, only to reunite around Episode 13 only to fall out again... When your show is 23 episodes long you have to tread a lot of water. 

At Palmer Tech, Curtis Holt is shown working on new technologies such as super advanced contact lenses and some kind of T-sphere device. I know almost nothing about Mr. Terrific and am really trying not to spoil it for myself, but I assume Holt is going to end up using most of the wearable tech he's devised to augment himself and take to fighting crime. Or perhaps there'll be another big lab explosion like the one that killed Ray Palmer... or did it? 

Felicity's phone playing up earlier in the episode was cute but I was just waiting for it to be revealed as to why, which we got by the end of the episode with the random characters on her phone's screen forming her name. We know Ray is returning as the Atom for next year's LEGENDS OF TOMORROW. Could Ray be trapped inside her phone in a miniature form? Has he been subjected to every selfie and sext that Felicity has taken with her new beau Oliver? Poor, poor bastard. 

Now onto one of the biggest problems I have with the show: Nanda Parbat. Exactly where is this secret sanctuary of the clandestine League of Assassins? I have theorized with a friend that it isn't in some remote location somewhere in Asia as hinted but is instead located in a quarry about five minutes outside Star City. It's the only way to explain how easy it is to get to, especially considering this week the girls, Laurel and Thea, have travelled there with a coffin in tow. Despite all warnings about how dangerous, untested and immoral it would be to use the Lazarus Pit to bring Sara back from the dead, Laurel seems desperate to try it even using Thea's messed up relationship with her father to her advantage. Thea, consumed by a blood lust that can only be sated with, well, blood, is tormented by these feelings including the fact it was her who killed Sara last year, albeit under her father's control via the use of some trance inducing product. To assuage her guilt in this, Malcolm/R'as (John Barrowman returning in his new-ish role) agrees to try to resurrect Sara. Laurel may seem like she cares for Thea's plight, but her hug is less than convincing to me. She gets her way and Sara is brought back from the dead, an almost rabid animal instead of the women she loved. 

Nyssa al Ghul, the previous R'as daughter and lover of Sara then destroys the Lazarus Pit (with some kind of bubble bath concoction?) so that fans will never end up asking, “Why don't they just bring them back from the dead?” Remember, the ticking clock has someone marked for that grave seen in Episode 1. 

The flashbacks are an absolutely afterthought for both me and seemingly, the writers right now, contributing nothing to the narrative. So Oliver is back on the island and has ingratiated himself with a bunch of modern day slavers it seems as they make their workers grow a new brand of genetic hybrid opiate nicknamed Slam (which I'm sure will turn up on the streets of modern day Star City soon). 

The only takeaway I really had from the flashbacks was that Oliver has once again met an attractive women on the island and seemingly gained her trust in the fact that he's not really a bad guy. The joke has been made before (in Season 2, I believe) of how exactly “hellish” Oliver's stay on the island during his years missing was if he kept finding beautiful women to sleep with him. We'll have to see as the stories unfold. I always knew the writers made it up as they went along, but I'm losing faith that they are going to be able to make it good.

Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer