‘Arrow’ season 3, episode 12 review: Malcolm’s past; Felicity takes a stand
As much fun as it has been at times to see the other members of Team Arrow running around Starling City on their own, let’s face it: “Arrow” is best with Oliver Queen in Starling City.
It is with this in mind that we are very much grateful for what we saw at the end of the episode, given that this is when the Arrow officially returned, despite his limp and still needing some more of that medication. He also returned just in time to stop Malcolm Merlyn from killing Danny Brickwell, who he was set to murder for the loss of his wife Rebecca. The entire pull of “Uprising” was that all along, Merlyn has thought that everything he did was to ensure that the Glades would not claim any more victims like Rebecca. This including trying to nuke the whole place and start again. The show may have went a little too far at times trying to redeem a guy that is hardly redeemable; then again, this is why Felicity Smoak is our voice of reason here.
While Roy wanted to use Merlyn in order to kill Brick, she stood firm, saying that working with him is not what Oliver would have wanted. So for her to learn at the end of the episode that Oliver wanted to train with him to defeat Ra’s al Ghul, she was out … possibly completely. Is Olicity officially over? We’re not going that far; as a matter of fact, this may have been exactly what the two of them needed. This is the moment where she stops pining over him, and he actually has to do something to win her back for a change.
While we are still somewhat annoyed by the lack of explanation in regards to Tatsu and her herbs, the rest of the episode was still pretty great. The Black Canary is becoming more effective as a hero, though we’re pretty worried about the state of her teacher Ted Grant after Brick beat him to a pulp. Meanwhile, Roy is becoming a much more interesting character, and one of our favorite moments of the entire episode was when Captain Lance called him “Harper” while he was wearing his full Arsenal costume.
“Uprising” was a pretty tremendous episode overall; we closed the door on Brick for now, but we’ve got Oliver in Starling City again, and we also have a good Oliver / Felicity story now that feels real and puts him in a great place to win her back. We have some nagging issues here and there, but this was the best episode of 2015. Grade: B+.
We’ll have a podcast up for this episode tomorrow, but for now we recommend just heading over here to sign up for more TV updates via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: The CW.)