ARROW Season 4 Episode 7 Fights Are Some of the Series' Best Ever



A few weeks ago Stephen Amell took to Twitter to say he believed the most recent run of episodes he had shot on ARROW, specifically Episodes 6-9, were the strongest ever in the show’s history. Last week I watched with anticipation, but was ultimately let down. This week however – hoo boy! – was good.

Let’s dive right in and say that the fight sequences in this episode were great. Usually the fights involve the emerald archer and company fighting a group of generic baddies until Green Arrow shoots the last one with an arrow and they fall down. This is usually fine; it’s what I’ve come to expect from the show and serves it perfectly well. But with comparisons being made to Marvel and Netflix’s DAREDEVIL and its hallway fight sequence, a part of me really wanted to see if The CW would step up their game.

Immediately after watching the episode, I took to the Internet to see fans praising the fights scenes as well and James “Bam Bam” Bamford, who is a stunt and fight co-ordinator on ARROW, had made his directorial debut with this episode. The sequence of Green Arrow and Diggle fighting the Ghosts in a small maze of shipping containers was a great set piece at the heart of the episode but the fight of the episode goes to Speedy’s one-on-one encounter with one specific Ghost. Their fight starts in the lobby of an abandoned mental institution, goes into a lift, up a floor, spills out onto the corridor, breaks into a cell then back out into the corridor. Not all one uninterrupted shot mind, save the brilliant transition of fighting whilst the lift is going up a floor, but a great sequence none the less. Kudos has to be given for the story telling within that fight too. Speedy needs to take down a man who is bigger and stronger than her, without killing him, both for her own personal reasons of besting her blood lust and the mission’s sake, they need to bring this man in particular in alive – all whilst he is trying to kill her right back for her trouble. Afterwards she doesn’t shrug it off either, but (to use a pro wrestling term) sells the fight as having taken nearly everything out of her. Brilliance. More of this please CW! 

Back on the Internet, another thing fans and I agreed this episode was the greatest of David Ramsey’s performance as John Diggle. He’s always been good but this week he got some real juicy scenes to sink his teeth into. Coming to terms with the revelation that his brother wasn’t the stand- up guy he thought he was, his road to closure is brought to an abrupt halt with the unmasking of one of the Ghosts in the field... his brother Andy! (I mean, I did call it.) I also thought that the Ghosts would turn out to be clones, which it seems they’re not. Ray Palmer, not quite sure what else to do with himself since being rescued and returning to normal size, deduces the missing genetic markers in their DNA seem to be HIVE’s way of masking their identity – the genetic equivalent of burning off someone’s fingerprints. Holding onto the hope that anyone can come back from even the darkest of places, Oliver refuses to let Diggle give up on his brother, insisting they can kill two birds with one stone if they capture him; reunite the brothers and figure out what HIVE is up to. This just adds to importance of Speedy’s fight as it was Andy she was scrapping over 2 floors with. 

Moving slowly ahead with his mayoral campaign, Oliver Queen is approached by Darhk and made an offer he can’t refuse... play ball or end up like the previous candidate who ended up pulling out after an attempt was made on her life and her daughter was kidnapped. Oliver considers it as a necessary evil to get close to Darhk to bring him down before being convinced by Diggle that Darhk will need to be dealt with differently from other bad guys, being taken down in the light of day. Oliver’s speech (about very admirably cleaning up the docks) acts both an a stirring moment for his campaign and a thumbing of the nose directly to Damien Darhk, letting him know he will fight him on all fronts. (The conceit being Damien Darhk doesn’t know Queen and Green Arrow are the same man, because that little mask does so much to hide his identity.) 

In Speedy’s “normal” life, Thea Queen’s sub-plot of trying to date Oliver’s campaign manager whilst dealing with being a vigilante suffering from violent outbursts after being back from near-death gained a new level of relevancy this week after Damien Darhk tried to drain her life force from her only to see it majorly back fire on him, causing him to be briefly overcome by some sort of darkness, possibly the same darkness that possesses Thea to be violent. After refusing her father Malcolm Merlyn’s offering of killing an accused paedophile to sate her condition, Thea may have just found a way to overcome the master of the Darhk arts (edit?). An interesting thing of note here, though established before, is how former League of Assassins member Darhk and new Ra’s al Ghul Merlyn are aware of each other. Is Thea about to become a pawn in a very deadly game of chess? 

On the island, the stakes have been set with a big emotional beat and a huge lie that is primed to blow up in Oliver’s face. Five years ago, so I guess that would be 2010, Oliver had to kill one of Baron Reiter’s prisoners after he was put up to attacking him the untrusting Conklin. Afterwards Conklin reveals that the man he killed was none other than the women Oliver had saved and kept hidden away, Taianna. Conklin takes lashes for his betrayal of his “brothers” after Reiter somehow divines that he was lying (using twigs?) but it’s the fact the Oliver went and told Taianna that Conklin killed her brother that has me intrigued. The one and only friend and ally Oliver has on the island and she’s one word away from finding out he killed her brother. Though he obviously made it out ok (they are flashbacks after all) I’m going to be waiting with baited breathe to see the moment she finds out, because believe me, she will find out. 

ARROW takes a week off for Thanksgiving but with the extended trailer for the Hawkgirl and Hawkman heavy ARROW and THE FLASH crossover episodes having been released this week and the showrunners promising it will be actual 2-part crossover and not just two stand alones episodes that each main characters guest star in, I can’t wait!

Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW beat writer