Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: arrow, Captain Lance, cw, entertainment, oliver queen, Ra's al Ghul, television

The Six Important Moments From This Week's Arrow – The Offer

I may be running out of clever ways to say SPOILERS HERE… or I may just be tired. Either way… SPOILERS HERE!

After a few week hiatus Arrow is back with the new episode The Offer. It is, of course, all about the offer made to Oliver Queen by Ra's al Ghul to take over the League of Assassins. This episode also introduced us to the Flash rogue Murmur, who is a pretty interesting character but the episode is more about Oliver's decision than the new villain.

And before we get to the moment, I noticed something interesting last night… Ra's al Ghul has a tough name to say and there seems to be two different schools. Now Denny O'Neill one of the creators of the character says it one way and I'd take him as the authority… but in Arrow, his name is pronounced both ways depending on which character is saying it. Oliver and Team Arrow refer to him as "Rahz" with a long A like Rah Rah and a Z sound at the end. Those in the League of Assassins call him "Raysh" with a short A like Ray with a SH sound at the end. That oddly seems very real to me that different people would pronounce it differently. O'Neill pronounces it "Raysh".

1) The show opens with Ra's taking Oliver around Nanda Parbat, making a sales pitch about how what Oliver is doing now is only a fraction of what he could do by leading the League. How life as the Arrow will always be unfulfilling and alone. How the city and the police will turn on him and he'll never have the woman he loves. Its as if Ra's was being played by executive producer Marc Guggenheim… It's a good sales pitch and one Oliver considers especially when Ra's lets him leave with John Diggle and Malcolm Merlyn with all blood debts cleared. So you know there had to be a catch.

2) Oliver returns and does the whole "I'm keeping it all to myself" thing and puts Malcolm on the couch at the loft. This of course doesn't sit well with Thea Queen who wanted him dead. She goes from wanting Nyssa to kill her to wanting to kill Malcolm to ending up back in Roy Harper's arms. She is not having a good time with this and seems to be the only one blaming her for Sara's death. But this may be the path for her to come out of it as Roy seems to truly lover her and wants what's best for her.

3) A really important moment here is when The Arrow drops off the thieves to the police station and Captain Lance tells him off. In the past Lance dealt with Sara's original death by climbing into a bottle, but this time he's turned his pain into anger and it's focused at everyone who lied to him. And it's growing. Add in what we see at the end of the episode and it will push Lance to go back to hunting the Arrow and by now he has to know who is really under the hood and will use that knowledge to get him.

4) Nyssa has a pretty interesting arc in this episode as well that starts with her deciding to not kill Thea, losing a fight to Laurel Lance and Roy… that had to hurt the ego… going home to find out that her father has chosen Oliver over her… didn't Sara do the same… and end up with no where to go. She's having a bad day and it leads her back to Starling City and Laurel, a reminder of Sara. She's there when the police station is attacked and helps fight off the thugs. In the end she makes peace with Laurel and offers to train her. I mentioned this a few time before that I was expecting this to happen. Laurel needs to be trained like Sara if she's really going to be the new Black Canary and Nyssa can do that.

5) This episode is as much about Oliver figuring out why he's the Arrow as it is about Ra's offer. Unlike the Oliver of the past, he opened up to Diggle about what Ra's said. Also, when he found out about Felicity Smoak and Ray Palmer, he didn't get angry and go passive aggressive… he was hurt but was accepting of it. It was awkward and he was shutting Felicity out at first… but the woman has her ways and in the end helped him discovery why he still wears the hood. This also led him to his decision to turn down Ra's… which will open up a whole new can of worms.

6) If you read William Shatner's tweets while Arrow is on, he refers to Oliver as "Hoarse Hoodie" because of the voice he puts on. He calls Roy "Little Hoodie" since he's the sidekick. Well, as soon as we saw Ra's wearing the Arrow costume Shatner tweeted out "Evil Hoodie" and that is exactly what we got. Ra's doesn't like taking no for an answer so he's going to make his prophecy come true by destroying Oliver's life and that starts with making The Arrow a killer again. Match that with an angry police Captain and things are going to start getting ugly for Team Arrow. If you've seen the sizzle reel from PaleyfFest there is a clip of Lance leading a team of officers into the basement of the Foundry. Stephen Amell said at Planet Comicon that they recently had to say goodbye to a set they've used for years… looks like the team will be looking for a new home soon too thanks to Ra's and Lance.

Bonus) Probably the only interesting thing to come out of the flashback this week was the very end when Oliver ran into a woman that looked like Shado. Now if this is Shado, then it makes for an interesting thought of "Why didn't Oliver tell Slade that Shado's death wasn't his fault?" It always seemed shaky to me that Oliver blamed himself. He dove between the gun and Sara because that is who it was pointed at, it was Dr. Ivo the decided to kill Shado. So now we might get another chance for Shado's death to be Oliver's fault.

Next week we get the return of the Suicide Squad and Ray Palmer finds out that Oliver is the Arrow… could be fun.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/cI0pIGHMyq8[/youtube]

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