Glenn Walker is a writer who knows pop culture. He loves, hates, and lives pop culture. He knows too freaking much about pop culture, and here's where he talks about it all: movies, music, comics, television, and the rest... Welcome to Hell.
In the last episode of "Arrow," the town of Havenrock was nuked in order to save the much more populous city of Monument Point. The unavoidable death toll is in the tens of thousands instead of millions. The disaster has made Damien Darhk near invincible. He's powerful enough to kill Green Arrow and Spartan, but he doesn't, so they will live long enough to die in the armageddon when Darhk gets the rest of the missile codes. Rookie James Bond villain mistake - always kill the heroes, always.
Felicity is taking it hard, and she had a hard choice, she didn't want anyone to die. They're going to need help to keep the codes from Darhk, so she enlists Curtis, who more than a little starstruck by her hacker dad, the Calculator. I loved when he said to Felicity that she now made so much more sense, and also the WarGames reference. Of course, in retaliation Darhk enlists Cooper Seldon from "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak" to work the opposing side of the hack. I loved the Eye of Sauron on the screens when Cooper took over the Team Arrow computers.
Meanwhile Thea is being held prisoner by dear old dad Malcolm Merlin inside Darhk's Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (yeah, I went there) after Anarky killed her boyfriend, who was not Dr. Davis after all. Anarky, who's hunting Darhk, may actually be more of a monkey wrench in his plans than Team Arrow. I am so sick of deus ex machina in these superhero shows of late, Anarky better not be the one to take out Darhk.
While Felicity is called away to deal with the domestic trainwreck that is her parents, and Green Arrow and Spartan discover Darhk's underground EPCOT, Quentin Lance is alone in the Arrowcave. It's during this time that Sara Lance returns from her time journey with "DC's Legends of Tomorrow." If you watched the season finale the next evening you know what happens when she learns Laurel has been killed. Like on "Doctor Who," Laurel's death is a fixed point in time and cannot be altered. Sara returns to the time stream.
On Flashback Island, Taiana is possessed of the power of Reiter's Khushu Idol, and planning to bring it home to her village to take revenge on the warlord there, a guy named Kovar. Interesting, the only Russian named Kovar in the DC Comics Universe is the superhero Starfire/Red Star, decidedly a good guy last I checked. Unfortunately, Reiter is still alive and isn't letting anyone leave with the idol.
Back at Darhk's Noah's Ark/EPCOT Thea been drugged and wants to kill Oliver. Merlyn steps in and says the most truthful thing that's ever been said in four seasons of this series. Oliver has always had an inability to do what is necessary. What's he going to do? It's already been established he's not going to kill Merlyn. Only John Barrowman. Cold hard truth. And right there, with those words, Merlyn takes the crown as Green Arrow's archenemy.
Inside the Ark, things have gone to hell, for exactly the reasons I had feared. Team Arrow has nothing to do with actively defeating the bad guy, again. While they stopped Darhk from getting the missile codes and foiling his plan, it's Anarky who makes the crushing blow. While the whole ark city is going up in white dwarf star alloy powered flames, little Lonnie Machin kills Ruve Adams.
As you can imagine, Darhk is at the end of his rope. And why he didn't kill Merlyn for his continued failures is beyond me. Malcolm and Oliver are just different sides of the same coin. As Darhk visits Felicity, Curtis, and Donna he promises to bring hell to them.
For my other reviews of the entire "Arrow" series, click here. And if you'd like to discuss this episode and anything else in the Arrowverse, please join the Arrow Discussion Group on Facebook.
The city of Monument Point has been mentioned once or twice in the "Arrow" series, and here, it's the title of this episode. In the comics however it's not just another DC Comics fictional city. I've mentioned that it was once a home base for the Justice Society of America, but there's a reason it is and why it was so important to them.
Monument Point was a city, near Washington DC, that had been repeatedly devastated by super-villains. After one such battle involving the JSA, the team sought to help the city rebuild and set up base there. The city council even made the Golden Age Flash their mayor. Monument Point became a symbol of heroes not just punching baddies, but also helping people.
Damien Darhk's plan is to burn the world with something called Rubicon that will launch and detonate all of Earth's nuclear warheads. DC Comics' fictional places (as well as in the Arrowverse) Corto Maltese and Markovia get shout outs as nations with nuclear armaments. As we open the episode, we watch as a Russian missile silo arms without permission. Felicity estimates there's only twenty or so hours before Darhk's Genesis takes effect.
Felicity suggests that Team Arrow needs the help of her father, the Calculator. So the hunt is on to find him, but Darhk is after him too, and he's got many of Iron Heights' former inmates helping him. Arrow and company have to go through Brick and Murmur to get to him. It's the end of the world, and the end of the season, so yeah, everyone is coming out of the woodwork, including Anarky who's against everyone else.
And yet, the end of the world doesn't stop soap opera from ruling the subplots, nor does it push Oliver to ask for help from Vixen or Curtis or Constantine or Wildcat or Fortuna or the Flash, even when they're name dropped. Darhk is pulling in all the villains, can't Oliver take a hint? Seriously, you can bring in A.R.G.U.S., but you can't call the Flash?
As you might have figured, between Felicity and the Calculator they manage to keep all the nukes from launching, except one, the one targeting Monument Point. Felicity is able to move the target to a smaller town. A lesser loss of life, but it's still devastating to her... In the meantime, death comes on a smaller scale to Thea, with Alex Davis dead at the hands of Anarky. I guess he wasn't Dr. Davis…
Per last episode's cliffhanger, Thea is dying because she won't succumb to the Lazarus Pit's bloodlust hangover. Rather than just calling John Constantine - who saved the similarly afflicted Sara, and thrilled viewers with his appearance - Oliver has, as he always does, decided to do things the hard way. Nyssa has a cure called the Lotus, which she will only surrender if Oliver kills Malcolm Merlin. Tired yet? We haven't even started.
Speaking of Felicity, she has her own problems, and her own subplot this episode. Not only is her estranged father the Calculator, but he confessed to it in order to win her love back. Her mom insists that he can't change, of course conjuring parallels to Oliver, but Felicity wants to try anyway. I was okay with Felicity and dad going for coffee, but I think bringing him to Palmer Tech and letting him see a T-sphere was a bit much. Good thing it was only a test.
Although Oliver tries to negotiate, Nyssa and Malcolm go to war. Again, distance and logistics are a problem. The League of Assassins is headquartered in Pakistan and Star City is on the US west coast, and yet the war is in the streets of Star City? How many times do members of Team Arrow and other cast go back and forth in what seems like no time at all??
Dr. Lamb, the Queen family doctor dating back to the first episode, gets a callback in this one. I did some Google fu thinking the name rang a bell and was maybe some forgotten evil scientist from Green Arrow's past, but he's not. I was however reminded of Green Arrow for Dr. Davis again. Wasn't there a Davis on The List? Could our campaign manager be related?
In the end, the villains were all wrapped up far too nicely and quickly I thought. How long really will the Calculator remain behind bars or the League of Assassins remain disbanded? And there are a hundred different hand jokes, with and without "Doctor Who" and "Torchwood" references, that I could make about Malcolm, but I won't. I'm just sad that we're obviously in for more Darhk, the story arc that never ends…
The Calculator is one of my favorite DC Comics super-villains, mostly because his existence runs between the utterly silly to the downright sinister. In any incarnation however, the Calculator is fun. And on television, he may yet be...
In his first appearances in the back-up stories of late 1970s Detective Comics, he wore a costume resembling a calculator and had the uncanny ability to only be beaten by a specific hero once. He fought and was defeated by Green Arrow, the Atom, Black Canary, the Elongated Man, and Hawkman. Once encountered, said heroes could never win again against him. When the storyline moved to the front of the comic, Batman finally found a way to take the Calculator down with those heroes' help.
The Calculator was around for a while after that, eventually fading into obscurity. When he reemerged, he was more in the shadows, and inspired by an urban legend that the super-villain underground had only begun to become aware of - Oracle. The heroes had some off-site source feeding them info and coordinating them. The Calculator became just that for the forces of evil, Oracle's opposite number.
We open this episode at Nanda Parbat, the citadel built into the side of a cliff in Pakistan that serves as the headquarters of the League of Assassins and the current R'as al Ghul, Malcolm Merlin. Don't think for a second I wasn't amused that our break from the-storyline-that-wouldn't-end this season (Damien Darhk) is provided by the-storyline-that-wouldn't-end last season (R'as al Ghul). Note to showrunners, the story arcs on "Arrow" need to be shorter.
I suppose I should have some reaction that Nyssa has escaped and taken over the citadel, but I'll be honest, I've already checked out. And I'm just as uninterested in the Thea subplot. And if John Constantine was able to fix the bloodlust in Sara, why not contact him again regarding Thea? Seriously, if aspirin works on a headache, why would you have to find another solution when a second headache comes along? Call John!
Then there's Roy Harper who's returned to Star City as a tech thief. The two companies he initially steals from have history in the DC Comics Universe, but not from the usual corners that "Arrow" borrows from. AmerTek hounded Steel for years and released the lethal Toastmaster guns on Metropolis. Cadmus is also based in Metropolis, specializing in alien DNA among other things. Roy had been hiding out in Hub City, home of the Question, when the Calculator blackmailed him into committing these thefts.
The Calculator's plan, surprisingly assisted by H.I.V.E., is to use a 'web nuke' to crash Star City, killing thousands. I think that's rather pedestrian and anarchist for a villain with so much potential, despite the lame codename. He is, in the end, more a foe of Felicity than anyone else, which makes the reveal at the end that he's Felicity's dad all the more shocking. So is computer hacking genetic?
Seeing Katana, if only momentarily, was a nice surprise. I hope we get more than that though. And it's always nice to see John Barrowman even if he always seems out of place when he appears. And I can't express how much I hated the dream within a flashback. Darhk's wife running for mayor seems a bit ridiculous to me however. Wasn't her husband outted as a super-villain a few episodes back?
For my other reviews of the entire "Arrow" series, click here. And if you'd like to discuss this episode and anything else in the Arrowverse, please join the Arrow Discussion Group on Facebook.
Back at Darhk's Noah's Ark/EPCOT Thea been drugged and wants to kill Oliver. Merlyn steps in and says the most truthful thing that's ever been said in four seasons of this series. Oliver has always had an inability to do what is necessary. What's he going to do? It's already been established he's not going to kill Merlyn. Only John Barrowman. Cold hard truth. And right there, with those words, Merlyn takes the crown as Green Arrow's archenemy.
