‘Arrow’ episode 10 review: A leaf in the wind

“Arrow” is back, and wow, did we ever miss it. There’s really no show on TV right now quite like it, since it combines the sort of excitement of a superhero movie with the character development of a network drama. There’s quite a bit going on here every week, and the action sequences are pretty well-done.

For Wednesday’s episode “Burned,” let’s start with the one thing that endeared us to the hour right away: Firefly. This was one of Oliver Queen’s most interesting villains yet, mostly because it was the most like a real comic book villain out of anyone that has been on the show thus far. He was a firefighter turned evil after being left behind at the scene of a burning building, and his motive was ultimately simple: revenge for being destroyed.

If there was just one complaint that we had with the villain, it comes via something trivial: the moment we saw his face. We actually would have felt it to be more powerful had we never seen who the man was until his body was burning on the ground; with it being the way it was, it instead felt a little too pre-planned of an attack for him to make, like he walked into Oliver’s nightclub in the end convinced that he was not going to make it out alive.

Away from that, the rest of the story was solid. It was a nice change-up to see it be Diggle who got Oliver out of his depression and back to his vigilante work, especially since he was so reluctant to sign up in the first place. In addition to that, seeing Laurel’s father use the phone against her to contact the Hood was a nice twist, since it shows just how desperate the man is to catch someone, even in spite of them actually being classified as a hero in Starling City for a change.

Did you like Firefly as a villain, or do you feel that, like a certain other firefly referenced in the title, he was gone far too soon? If you want to take a quick look at another villain in Count Vertigo, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: The CW