‘Arrow’ season 3, episode 5 review: The Roy secret within ‘The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak’
At this very moment, we are still trying to figure out whether we are tremendously excited about the way that “Arrow” ended its new episode on Wednesday night, or simply just anxious.
For an episode that was by and large about Felicity and her journey to becoming who she is today in Starling City, it was Roy Harper in the end who stole the show. We expected that Roy’s recurring nightmares would in a way be tied to him still having feelings for Thea; instead, they were all about him seeing plunging arrows into Sara Lance’s heart! Having Roy be responsible for this death is certainly an interesting twist, but you have to still wonder whether or not this was really Roy at all.
We’ll say that if it turns out that this is displacement, and if Roy is really just dreaming about this because his consciousness cannot recognize the people he has severely harmed back during his mirakuru binge, this twist will be nothing more than a cruel trick. With that being said, there is also a great deal of potential for this to be awesome if Roy was responsible for her death in some way.
Clearly, he did not go up there and kill her of right mind. There is no real motive for that. Either there is still a little part of his mind that is poisoned by the mirakuru, Ra’s al Ghul has some sort of mind control, or something else unexplained is going on. Anyway, it’s at least the first time all season we were legitimately blown away by something that we never saw coming.
In moving on to Felicity’s story, it was an entertaining standalone story that did give her a chance to be heroic, and for us to see a little bit more of her life. Charlotte Ross was particularly great as her mother, who showed up in the first place due to a really devious plot orchestrated by her supposedly-dead boyfriend Cooper (Nolan Funk). The fact that Cooper was still alive and behind the virus in Starling City was the most predictable twist in the whole episode.
Save for watching Felicity past and present, not too much happened during the episode. Malcolm Merlyn was mostly on the sidelines, though Oliver and Thea did come to an understanding in terms of his money. Meanwhile, Laurel decided to tell Ted Grant a little about her sister’s death, therefore giving her an outlet since she does not want to talk about it with her father.
Overall, we’ll say that despite a few obvious moments, “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak” was our favorite episode of the whole season. There was some humor to it, but most importantly, we got a chance to find out some more information about a beloved character, and still be surprised in the end. Grade: A-.
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