‘Arrow’ season 5 episode 10 review: The Black Siren battle; the new Canary search begins
Going into Wednesday night’s winter premiere of “Arrow,” we know that there were many people out there understandably infuriated by The CW giving it away in advance that this “Laurel Lance” was not the same one who died on the show last season.
Now that we’ve seen the episode, we understand more why they made that decision: It honestly wasn’t that big of a deal at all. Within the first ten minutes of the show, we learned that she was actually Black Siren, the Earth-2 version of the character. She was there to do the bidding of Prometheus, but before that, she did her best to manipulate Oliver through one of his biggest blindspots: His guilt. She knew that he felt terrible even still over what happened to Laurel on Earth-1, and even more that, his guilt over the infamous boat ride in the pilot was still there.
Even after Laurel was found to be working for the other side, she even still managed to convince him that she was worthy of redemption, telling him a story about how she loved the Earth-2 version of Oliver before he died so many years before. (Ten, to be precise.) She went to Central City to start anew, and eventually became the meta-human that served as one of Zoom’s most-trusted associates.
The thorn in the side of the Siren – Felicity Smoak. This was a different version of the character than the one we’ve seen over the past season, and one that we rather liked. This was ANGRY Felicity, and to be fair Felicity should’ve been angry like this a long time ago. Her fiance lied to her about having a kid, she’s almost died numerous times, and Prometheus set up her boyfriend Billy Malone to be killed by mistake. She’s been betrayed so many times now (including by Evelyn) that she has no interest in waiting around for Black Siren to do the same thing. That’s why she was fine squaring off with her.
Felicity eventually became a thorn in Oliver’s side, as well, as she intentionally let Black Siren go so that she could better track her and figure out the path to Prometheus. This proved to be reasonably effective. More than that, Rene getting a depressed Curtis Holt out of his funk long enough so that he could come up with some new technology to stop Laurel proved to be the key to defeating her for good. She’s now back in prison, and while Prometheus is still out there, everyone’s alive … so there’s at least that.
The new Canary – Oliver promised that he would find someone else to take on the Canary legacy, and the cliffhanger suggested that there may be another worthy woman out there — but it’s kind of hard to tell given such limited information that we have.
The clever Diggle plan – Adrian Chase is a great character for the show this season. On one side, he’s Vigilante and someone Oliver Queen isn’t a fan of when he’s out in the field. However, at the same time he turned out to be rather great as a District Attorney doing a favor for the Mayor. He managed to come up with a unique loophole that allowed for Diggle to stick around in Star City a while longer; it may not be permanent, but he’s keeping the military at bay for as long as he possibly can.
This week’s flashbacks – The only thing worth noting through all of this is that we ended up seeing Oliver tormented until Talia al Ghul turned up. We don’t know much about her yet, but isn’t it nice to see that she’s a part of the universe?
Overall – The one disappointment that we have is that we were hoping for whatever reason that this Laurel would turn out to be someone who would fight alongside the team; however, that turned out to not be the case. Grade: B+.
Next week – Be prepared for the arrival of two important characters, a vigilante as well as more Talia. If you want to know more, head over to the link here. (Photo: The CW.)