‘Arrow’ season 3, episode 14 review: What mattered most in ‘The Return’
Did Wednesday night’s new episode of “Arrow” really change much in the grand scheme of things? It’s a risky question, but think about it for a moment. The main purpose of “The Return” was to have Thea realize that she killed Sara Lance, and to unify her and Oliver closer, while Malcolm Merlyn was pushed further away from both of them. Meanwhile, you got a better sense that Captain Lance is not okay with his daughter Laurel, and for a variety of different reasons.
The rest of the episode, while still fun, was mostly fan service. Let’s start here with the return of Slade Wilson, which was fun but incredibly brief. Given that you had Manu Bennett for the entire episode, we thought that we’d get the opportunity to see more of him than we did. Was he defeated a little easily? Maybe, but you can probably attribute that to being on the island in prison for half of the year. He was freed by Malcolm Merlyn as a way to truly test Oliver and Thea, and we suppose that this happened. However, in allowing Slade to live, maybe Thea made her first real move towards “not a killer” being on her resume.
What is good about this is mostly that it leaves the door open for more of Manu Bennett someday. In case anyone forgot, the other person supposedly on that prison with him is Captain Boomerang, who we suppose was not featured because the actor wasn’t available.
As for the flashbacks to Starling City, the most meaningful part was learning that after securing the Omega, they were going to be heading back to Hong Kong. Oliver had seen Tommy, Laurel, and Thea, but the real question mark here is why in the world there was no Moira Queen sighting here. If you are going to do this story, it feels like you really needed all of them to make it work fully. Still, it was fun to get updates on what most other characters were doing so many years ago, including brief little scenes with Diggle and Felicity (which happened to be the only time we saw either one of them during the episode).
Overall, our main critique for the episode is that while the Slade stuff was fun, it in itself didn’t really move forward the main plotline that much. We’re still going to face off against Ra’s al Ghul, and there could have been other ways to have Oliver confess to her the truth about Sara. Still, we did just say it was “fun.” Even if we were never quite shocked, we were almost always entertained. Grade: B.
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