‘Arrow’ season 2, episode 20 review: ‘Seeing Red’ leads to Moira Queen shocker
Who knew that “Seeing Red” was going to become one of the most stunning episodes of “Arrow” to date? Going into it, the impression we had was that this was going to be largely a Roy Harper story, which in some ways contained filler that would not impact the story of Slade Wilson very much
In some ways, maybe we were correct with this assertion … at least for the first 50 minutes. This was not an episode that spent a whole lot of time discussing Slade, and while Roy was on a tear of violence across the city, it never felt as though he was in danger of actually dying even with Sara Lance ready to shoot him. The death that took place instead was Moira Queen, and her departure from the show (via sword of all things like she was Aeris in “Final Fantasy 7”) changes almost everything.
First of all, kudos to the producers on the surprise, and this was legitimately a surprise. There was no warning that something like this could happen, and the moment itself was rather abrupt. Could we had more of a mention that Slade was pondering this? Sure, but the element of surprise factored big into this when you realized that just when it looked like Oliver was going to get things back together again, they were taken away. There’s no questioning that Moira is a pretty terrible person, and giving up a grandson without Oliver knowing about the kid’s existence is further proof of that.
Oliver having a kid out there is troublesome, mostly because children can be the kiss of death for any show. But, we don’t imagine that this will be explored until next season, anyway. More of the focus in “Seeing Red” was on Roy being stopped, Oliver trying to reconcile his past with Slade to his present, and also Sara deciding that she could not be the guy for Oliver that he wants her to be. The end of that relationship was probably the episode’s biggest flaw, since it was not the out-of-left-field surprise you want. She just said a few weeks ago that she wanted him to open up, and now she’s leaving him because she is closed off to the possibility of being anything other than a killer? What’s with that?
Still, this episode was at least further proof that you should be watching “Arrow” if you are not already. After all, you are otherwise potentially missing out on something here. Grade: B+.
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Photo: The CW