‘Arrow’ season 5, episode 13 review: Oliver Queen, as Mayor and the Green Arrow, gets cornered

After last week’s fantastic if unusual episode of “Arrow” entitled “Spectre of the Gun,” we got a chance tonight to see a little more traditional episode of the show. There were three returning villains, even more relentless action, and then also some opportunity to build towards the big reveal of the season: The search for Prometheus.

Before we get around further to that, there is another issue that the team needed to take on, one that Oliver Queen was too close to in order to properly take on: Susan Williams. She asked Oliver if he was the Green Arrow, and the more that Thea and Felicity dug around, the more that it was clear that the reporter had enough information on Oliver’s alter ego that she could be dangerous. (One quibble — why make it clear that Susan has a password of “1234”? While this may be a common password for many people, we want to believe that she in particular isn’t an idiot given her job.)

Well, Thea’s plan to discredit Susan led to her getting fired from her job, which potentially put a nail in the coffin of their relationship not too long after she first got together. Oliver wasn’t exactly pleased with it, to say the least. This was the most intense conversation we’ve seen between Thea and her brother in a long time, and he made it clear that she should’ve come to him before now.

Is this the Star City Legion of Doom? – Three villains are better than one, and tonight we saw Cupid, China White, and Liza Warner break free from Iron Heights like a billion other villains before them. They were storming through the city, mostly with the goal of taking some money left behind by Tobias Church. Oliver was eager to take them on, but the problem was that at one point along the way, he learned that the Star City Anti-Crime Unit was coming after the Green Arrow. They wanted him for the death of Detective Malone, and this led Oliver to a dilemma: How much should he tell the people involved?

At first, he balked on the idea of telling the Unit anything about what really happened, but eventually he came clean, saying that the Green Arrow “told him” about what really happened with Malone and how he had killed him on accident. this conversation may have been at the very least enough in order to ensure that he had a little bit of time to go out in the field and try to take the team down.

The conversation did work, at least well enough for Oliver to go out as the Green Arrow and ensure that Liza and company were brought in and arrested. This was a pretty cool fight scene, but it was almost a complete waste of the Cupid character in particular to not give her much personality at all in here, no?

Dinah gets her mask – While this wasn’t a huge part of the episode, we also don’t want to diminish the moment of Felicity giving her the mask. With her getting a new job with the PD, she needed to figure out a way to conceal her identity. Dinah made it clear that she doesn’t quite know if she is ready.

The cliffhanger – Well, it turns out that Susan — or someone else — may have had their revenge. A news report in the closing minutes made it clear that there was a falsification of Malone’s autopsy reports, which means that the entire Queen administration may be over sooner rather than later.

Flashbacks – Well, they happened! There’s really nothing that interesting to see here.

Overall – A very solid episode of the show in terms of politics, but somewhat lacking in terms of huge character moments or villains that make sense. The three-villain team up especially proved disappointing. Grade: B-.

Next week – Get ready for a showdown with Vigilante like no other. You can learn a little bit more just by heading over to the link here right now. (Photo: The CW.)