Arrow S05 E06: So It Begins

Well, I'll give it an A for effort and dramatic effect, but the opening to this episode, with Green Arrow and Spartan walking into what may be a trap, to get a flaming message that says, "So it begins," left me kinda meh.

I've talked before about how I feel about yet another archer as the big bad when we had a perfectly good big bad in Chad L. Coleman's Tobias Church. Church was new, different, dangerous, smart, charismatic, and we barely got to delve into that interesting Charon obsession of his. He was Negan to "Arrow," and now we have just another archer.

Another problem I have with the opening is that it just has Green Arrow and Spartan, watched over by Overwatch. Oliver didn't want to involve the team because it might be a trap. This is why I didn't want Diggle back quite so soon. With no A team, the B team would be the A team, know what I'm saying? At this point they will always be on the sidelines.

The showrunners seem to be at a loss as to what to do with Quentin and Thea this season. Their subplots seem more like busy work or placeholders than anything else. Or maybe not. The same can be said to some extent regarding Felicity and her cop boyfriend Malone. Keeping secrets from a lover is one thing, but stealing evidence is a whole different arena. When Felicity tells Malone she works for the Green Arrow, he surprisingly takes it well. Knowing this show, that can't be good.

Prometheus seems to be targeting Oliver by killing people whose names are anagrams for people on The List. Is it just me, or should that be a very short list? Anagrams are easy, but to find people in the same city who names are anagrams for each other would seem so specific as to be nearly impossible, right? Those are crazy odds.

After much dissent from the team after learning Oliver was effectively a serial killer, they split up to each guard one of Prometheus' six targets. He hits the one Artemis is watching, seemingly teleporting in and bulletproof. And when Green Arrow shows up, he vanishes in a burst of flame. If nothing else, some trust is reestablished with the team. Let's see how long it lasts.

Meanwhile in the past, Konstantin Kovar has declared war on the Bratva. When Oliver's new family strikes back by trying to intervene, Kovar captures Oliver and preaches to him about unity. Konstantin is the father of Leonid Kovar AKA Red Star/Starfire, and played by Ivan Drago himself, Dolph Lundgren. We will see more of him.

The kicker at the end of the episode is that Felicity discovers that Prometheus' weapons are made from Oliver's melted down arrows, meaning he has access to SCPD. We fade on Quentin waking up with a wound and a throwing star. So he is either a split personality caused by alcoholic black outs, or he's being set up. I'm voting for option two. Could it be Malone?  Now that would hurt...

Next: Finally Vigilante!

Arrow S05 E05: Human Target

When we left "Arrow" last week, Wild Dog had been captured by Charon, Tobias Church, and torture had begun, and continues as we open this week. Even though Team Arrow is on the hunt, and eventually find Wild Dog, it's too late. He broke, and told Church that the Green Arrow is actually Oliver Queen.

This is a curious turn. First, it happens offscreen and second, it seems too easy. As Rene is digging his own grave at gunpoint, he does get some vital information out of Church - why he's in Star City. Being a port city with water access Church can get drugs into and out of the country easily, perfect base of operations. As we go to commercial break, I couldn't help but wonder if this was all part of Oliver's plan. It would not be the first time we viewers were the last to know something like this.

We also know that Church is working for Prometheus, supposedly this season's big bad. I don't know who this television version of Prometheus is but I have to say I'm distressed that it's another archer. Really, another archer? It's like speedsters on "The Flash," what is it about Green Arrow that attracts so many archers?

In the comics, Prometheus was created by writer Grant Morrison as an anti-Batman (and there's the other recurring "Arrow" theme - everything Batman). He fought the Justice League using a database of fighting techniques, strategies, and information on his potential enemies that could be downloaded directly into his brain. Above and beyond defeating both the Justice League and the Teen Titans, he blew up much of Star City. In the end, Green Arrow ended him with an arrow through the head, long story short.

There were two other villains who called themselves Prometheus in the DC Universe. One was a henchman of Doctor Alchemy who gained super powers from an industrial accident at Kord Industries, went on to fight the Teen Titans, and died in one of Roulette's fight clubs. Notably, Roulette, who recently clashed with Supergirl on the CW, also in the comics believes her grandfather to be the Terry Sloane Mr. Terrific. The other Prometheus was an imposter disguised as the first one I talked about above, an inferior pretender.

Of course speculation on who this television version of Prometheus is a game for another day. This episode is about something else - someone else. And for comics readers, the title of the episode alone spoils any surprises that may occur within the show. For the uninitiated, the Human Target is a comics character with a very specific skill set and modus operandi.

Christopher Chance is a master of disguise who used to appear in the back-up slot of 1970s Action Comics. Created by writer Len Wein, Chance would assume the identity of a person marked for murder until the killer was captured. Oftentimes Chance would appear to be murdered, making it easier to find the killer, thus the name, the Human Target. Earlier in the episode, he is namelessly referenced as John's old friend.

Here on "Arrow," Chance is played by Wil Traval, no stranger to comics television as he played Will Simpson on "Marvel's Jessica Jones" on Netflix, a character who in the comics becomes the powered psychopath Nuke. The Human Target has had two other TV incarnations, the first was a limited run in 1992 with Rick Springfield, and two seasons played by Mark Valley in 2009. So, as I was saying, when Oliver is shot dead, no comics fans were surprised.

The ending of the episode seems incredibly rushed. The threat of Tobias Church is ended prematurely, a dangerous complex criminal exited in favor of yet another nearly invincible mystery archer. Boo, hiss. Chad L. Coleman is wasted if this is his run on "Arrow," and furthermore Wild Dog not getting a proper shot at payback is just as bad. Before dying at his hands, Church gives up the secret of Green Arrow's identity to Prometheus, eliminating the problem of Church telling everyone in prison.

It's all too easy, too convenient, and rushed as if the showrunners wanted the Charon storyline over as soon as possible. If so, then they know how we all felt about Damien Darhk all last season. And then they throw a real monkey wrench on the trashfire. Chance saved Oliver's life in the Bratva flashbacks, unknown to Oliver, but now known to the pesky reporter Thea has been clashing with. One manufactured plot point, made to order, why was Oliver in Russia when he was supposed to be on a deserted island?

There were a few good points this episode, among them the return of Spartan, and John and Rene bonding. Oliver did actually have a few moments of sanity and normality, but unfortunately it turns out that was really Christopher Chance. Although, the writers must have been confused because Oliver continues to act human with Felicity, saying they should both move on romantically.

One hope for this wholesale shoveling away of prior storylines should be that perhaps we'll have a clean slate to start from. Also I hope having Spartan back won't overshadow the new Team Arrow recruits who I'm really starting to like, more than Oliver, but then again, that's not all that difficult. And I wish we'd seen more of Scimitar, named only in the credits, Church's masked freak bodyguard. That was a quick cameo.

Next: So It Begins!

Arrow S05 E01: Legacy

At the end of the last season of "Arrow," it was truly an ending. Oliver and Felicity were no longer a couple. The Black Canary was dead. Thea had given up her semi-heroic life. John too needed a break from Team Arrow, effectively leaving there no Team Arrow. And Oliver had taken on the duties of mayor of Star City.

We open on the mayor being late to a function, and Thea making excuses for her brother's tardiness. He out on the street in Green Arrow gear fighting the still free Anarky from detonating a bomb. He's also got a puppy dog tag along in a hockey mask trying to help. Green Arrow doesn't want his help, and nails him in the leg with an arrow.

The helper is Wild Dog, or at least the prototype television version of Wild Dog. Back in the 1980s when comics were changing (I won't say for better or worse), and things like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns were hot, people were experimenting with new types of comics and heroes, and Wild Dog, created by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty, was one of them.

Wild Dog was really Jack Wheeler, whose rich girlfriend was killed by the mob. Inheriting her fortune, this former Marie went all Batman/Punisher to get back at the mob wearing a hockey mask and sporting automatic weapons. He was extremely violent and the stories, in his own limited series and the much-missed Action Comics Weekly, were grounded in reality.

As the episode gets rolling, Felicity is reviewing potential recruits for Team Arrow seeing as they are so short handed. Wild Dog is among them, as is Evelyn Sharp (who masqueraded as Black Canary last season), and 'Mr. Ski-Goggles' (Felicity is no Cisco Ramon when it comes to codenames). That last one's police sketch bears a striking resemblance to the 1980s version of the Vigilante.

Oliver doesn't want to train a new team. That's s shame, because there's a new big bad in town, Tobias Church, someone new, without a name or background in the source material comics. He makes the gangs and the corrupt police department look like amateurs. On the episode, police mention that Church and his crew tore through Hub City and Bludhaven, respectively the home bases of the Question and Nightwing.

Church is played with grace and menace by Chad L. Coleman, Tyreese from "The Walking Dead," but a far cry from that character. His real acting chops come from his role as Cutty on HBO's "The Wire." This dude is as good as his character is evil. Church has earned the name Charon in, pardon the pun, underworld circles because of the gold coins he leaves on his victim's eyes.

Star City dedicates a statue, on the waterfront of all places, to Laurel Lance the Black Canary. Not only does this lure alcoholic and Donna-less Quentin Lance out into the open, but also Church and his crew trying to bait a trap for Green Arrow... with a rather feisty mayor who can defend himself too well. As Oliver puts up his hands and surrenders, I had a flashback of the 1966 "Batman" when Bruce Wayne is kidnapped and the villains wonder aloud, "No millionaire playboy fights that well."

Also, who caught the license plate of the faux S.W.A.T. getaway truck? What state is the "Land of Mist"? Most fictional cities' locations in the DC Universe are set in stone but Star City has always been a point of contention. Most reports put it on the Pacific coast in Northern California, but there is some argument for a Great Lakes location. Depictions in this series alone have placed it both on the west coast and Iowa. So what state is the Land of Mist?

Flashback Island this season will apparently be Russia, cataloging Oliver's time with Bratva, and his quest for revenge against Kovar, the warlord who terrorized Taiana's people, and may or not be Starfire/Red Star. After a misunderstanding in a Russian fight club, we are reintroduced to Anatoly Knyazev, AKA the KGBeast, who was Oliver's cell mate on Ivo's Amazo ship.

Explaining his mission to the Russian, Anatoly warns Oliver off, as Kovar has an army. To fight Kovar, Oliver must become Bratva. Anatoly has advice however, relevant in flashback and present day - "The shark that does not swim, drowns." Forget promises to the dead and move forward.

When Thea dons the Speedy costume one last time to save Oliver, we got that same bugaboo that I think all of us thought was finally in the past. It's been four seasons, sheesh. To kill or not kill. Do it or not, Oliver makes it pretty easy in the flashbacks, why is he so bugged now? Either way, Thea is out, and Felicity is back to her push for a new Team Arrow. With Anatoly's advice in his head, Oliver gets his head right.

There's a confrontation with Church's forces that include Coleman doing a Nagan imitation with a baseball bat, and later Heath Ledger as the Joker by uniting the gangs against our hero. Notably, Church takes out yet another member of the Bertinelli crime family.

We had a couple last minute stingers but first there was a ham-fisted attempt to give Curtis (finally) a reason to want to join the new team. First, it looks like it might be possible that Felicity's new love interest could be either Wild Dog or Vigilante. And then there's the costumed killer that attacks one of Star City's few good cops. Looks a little like the Dark Archer, but my bet's on Ragman. Or could this be Prometheus? Time will tell...

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.

Next: The Recruits!