‘Arrow’ season 4, episode 8 review: The life and death (and life?) of Vandal Savage

“Arrow” wrapped up its epic crossover event on Wednesday night with “Legends of Yesterday,” an episode that we can definitely describe as being one of the more eventful hours that we’ve seen of the show. It also happens to be one of the most polarizing thanks to a few decisions.

Let’s begin with what is the biggest game-changer of all for Oliver Queen: Realizing now that he has a son in William (not Connor Hawke), a young Flash fan whose mother Samantha is letting him see the kid on one clear condition: He doesn’t tell anyone, including his kid, that he is the father. She is worried about something upsetting what is an ordinary life for him, which is a sentiment we understand. We also get Oliver agreeing to her condition, given that he wants to ensure that he has some sort of life with someone he just learned actually exists.

Now that we’ve said all of this, does it really make sense for him to keep it a secret from Felicity? What matters more to him, lying to her or lying to Samantha? We just don’t understand the motivation for him to keep this, since Felicity would surely do what he asked and the two could go on to live some sort of happy life … with it being possible that the truth will someday be able to come out more publicly. This is just such a huge bridge to cross, and while it could’ve been worse, we never love it when a show makes a character lie after having done so many times over the years with no good results.

Luckily, this was one of the only weaknesses in what is otherwise a really great episode. Vandal Savage is about as terrifying as they come as a villain; as a matter of fact, we actually saw him kill not only Hawkman and Hawkgirl, but Oliver and the rest of Central City. It took Barry Allen running back into the past to make certain that none of this actually stuck. Sure, this is a convenient device, but for some reason we don’t mind it since most shows don’t even show us things going badly at all. It took Cisco tapping into Kendra Saunders to prepare her for the fight, while it took Oliver being more focused to ensure he didn’t let his guard down.

The only critique we have of Vandal is that if he can destroy entire cities with that staff, why he just doesn’t do that for the heck of it if he knows that Kendra and Carter Hall are nearby. Does he have to be right next to them to tap into their life force, or are they a source of his power? The team managed to defeat him the second time around, not that it matters altogether much since Malcolm Merlyn for some reason brought him back to life at the end.

We leave the crossover with many questions, but we also cannot dispute that we really enjoyed watching it. Maybe sometimes this is just as good as being bored and no confused. Grade: B.