Tonight wrapped up the current predicament that Ollie finds himself in. When you think about it, they could have stretched things out with the trial, but didn’t. Even though we don’t know if it’s actually over, I’m really happy they didn’t drag it out.

Arrow is a superhero show. At the risk of sounding like a meatball, I want to see action, and I think most folks would agree (maybe). While I like seeing different angles and takes on our heroes, I don’t necessarily want to be drawn into a drama-filled snoozefest of legal jargon and a slow court proceeding. That’s why I was happy that the writers chose to move things along fairly quickly tonight and package everything up in about 45 minutes—again, if we’re really done here, which I think we are.

The episode seemed to move well and had some nice twists and turns. I had to laugh a bit during the intro, though. I mean that could possibly be the worst band of commandos (or whatever they are) that we’ve ever seen on TV. A small army wiped out by one man in broad daylight? Granted, it’s John, but they didn’t even come close to him.

Alas! Something I really enjoyed was that despite having anger towards Ollie, everyone went to bat for him.

Well…everyone except Rene…

To his credit, though, he tried. He just lost it when Diaz came in with his daughter. That was quite possibly the fastest I’ve ever seen someone turn on their game plan, though. He was so charged up before he took the stand, then instantly crumbled. But I get it. Diaz was in the driver’s seat at that point, and I have to respect a dad doing the right thing and trying to keep his child safe. In the end, Rene took some pretty big strides tonight in the fact that he recognized that a lot (if not all) of what was happening was due to him and he wanted to try to rectify it. That’s really outside of his character’s comfort zone.

I think the two biggest moments of the night belong to Laurel (can’t believe I’m saying that) and Christopher Chance AKA the Human Target (obviously).

Let’s start with Laurel first. While she’s a bad character—in terms of being a villain/bad person—she did the right thing tonight. To her, Ollie is an enemy, but she has realized that Diaz is the worse of the two. When it came down to it, and it really mattered, she made the right move by not outing Ollie—even at though it means putting her life on the line. In the end, she knows Diaz is the true evil. Props to her.

Now let’s jump over to my favorite part of the episode: Christopher Chance. I thought it was an awesome plan to have him disguise himself as Merlin and fake being the Green Arrow. Truthfully, I didn’t really know how they would go about figuring out a way to get Ollie off the hook, but this ended up being a pretty solid way in my opinion. I just love the idea of that character and his abilities—there’s so much you can do with him, but they’ve used him sparingly throughout the series so far and that’s probably a good call.  

Tonight did have me wondering a bit…while they were able to conclude this trial fairly quickly and cleanly, how will things end with Diaz? I mean, his web stretches so far and he pretty much owns everyone in Star City. Ollie and his team are intertwined in everything he has going on—how can they even take him down?

There’s no clean way. I can’t think of a scenario where they’re able to get rid of Diaz without it getting messy. The guy has so much on them and I’m sure everyone around him knows the truth about Ollie. Then there’s the Quadrant. I have to believe they’ll be getting involved at some point. I’m wondering if they’ll get everything wrapped up before season’s end, or if there will be some carry over into next season. What do you think?

Cheers,
Matt
 

Matt Ross covers Arrow as a part of the #DCTV Couch Club. Catch new episodes of Arrow Thursdays at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. CST) on The CW.