Posted in: Movies | Tagged: arrow, arsenal, Canary, cw, entertainment, Malcolm Merlyn, oliver queen, television

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

Published Thu, 12 Feb 2015 12:15:15 -0600

This article talks about things that happened in the latest episode of Arrow, so there is definitely spoilers if you haven't seen the show.

The most recent episode of Arrow was entitled Canaries and in a lot of ways it has created the new normal for the series. A massive change in the relationship between Oliver Queen and Thea Queen, between Malcolm Merlyn and Thea… heck even between Roy Harper and Thea. Pretty much Thea's world got rocked and I'm not talking about her hooking up with Chase… that was probably the most normal. But I'm getting ahead of myself. With this column I try to look at the big picture, not just the individual episode. The moments that will effect the overall series, not just the episode story. Here are the ones I saw last night:

1) Oliver lets Thea in on his secret and expects it to go ugly. We all expected it to go ugly with how she reacts to people lying to her. Even the 'I lied to protect you' line usually doesn't go well… so I think the audience was just as surprised as Oliver was that she was not only cool with it, but almost in awe of what her brother had been doing. The writers talk about hating the whole secret identity thing and now that's out of the way. Everyone that should know that Oliver is the Arrow now does… except for Captain Lance and I think he's just in denial.

The thing here is that her reaction pulled her closer to Oliver and created distance between her and Malcolm. Which will be interesting to watch over the rest of the season to see if the pendulum will swing back.

2) Oliver is kind of bossy at times… so him pulling Laurel Lance into the alley to talk about her being the Black Canary wasn't surprising. Him playing the addict card was a bit. And I think he was onto something with the idea that Laurel was using the rush from going out and fighting to cover the pain she felt from her sisters death. And I think she had a point when she threw it back at Oliver, that he uses being the Arrow to cover the guilt he feels for all the things he's done on the island and working for Amanda Waller. The idea of a hero motivated by guilt, revenge or loss is not new, but having it addressed like an addiction isn't a take we hear often.

3) Which leads us into Canary vs Canary or rather how it ended. Laurel was carrying a lot of pain about her sister's death, but she was also carrying a different burden. She was trying to replace Sara so that she would never have to tell her father. Laurel took on the mantle in a lot of ways to keep her father from having to suffer the loss that almost destroyed him the first time. So when she wore the mask, she was subconsciously trying to be Sara. Felicity saw that in a way and called her on it. And that put her on the path to stop pretending, to say goodbye to her sister and to becoming the Canary in her own right.

4) As part of the new normal, it was time for Oliver to be taken down a few notches. To realize that it wasn't just his crusade anymore and that the people around him were not employees but partners. This moment came when Roy stood up to Oliver after he snapped at Thea. This was a boiling pot that had been ignored for longer than just his return from facing Ra's al Ghul. As the team grew, Oliver still had the my-way-or-the-highway attitude and it was wearing thing but the team kept going. But when Oliver was presumed dead and the team found a way to keep going without him, it was no longer about Oliver which meant upon his return, he couldn't dictate what was going to happen to everyone. This had to happen for the character to continue to grow along the hero arc.

5) The next moment comes with a creepy thought. Oliver is not the only one that can protect Thea. We saw that after her romantic fling with Chase and she realizes that he was trying to poison her… that's just cold by the way… So she fights him and is losing, the Arsenal busts in and gets sent across the room flying then finally the Dark Archer hits him with an arrow before Chase kills himself with poison. First off, Thea is a poor judge of character but has a very good nose to sniff out the poison in the wine. She is obviously loved as two archers that weren't her brother came to her rescue, but the creepy thing here is… where were these two a few minutes before? Thea just hooked up with a guy on the couch while her ex-boyfriend and father just happen to be outside in case their is a scuffle? I mean the were both in their uniforms. So as much as its an important moment for Thea to get she's in real danger… it was also kind of creepy.

6) And from there we go to the absolutely heartbreaking moment that we've all been dreading. This season Quentin Lance has been in the background, just showing up to be helpful and say something about missing his daughter… the daughter we all knew was dead. It was getting more and more painful to watch as everyone lied to him because we knew that the longer it went, the bigger the fall out would be. So when the scene got started, I watched with a mix sense of relief that he would finally know and trepidation of how he would react… and then the writers gave us one more twist, Lance has figured out that it was Laurel as the new Canary and that Sara must be of doing stuff for the league… and Laurel is quiet… giving us the idea that maybe she was going to continue the lie. It seemed like a lot longer moment than it really was… then she final told him and you watched as a very proud man shattered for the second time in his life. It was a heart wrenching scene and one we all knew was coming… but the question now is who will he respond? Will he climb back into the bottle? Will he become angry and start going after costumes again? There are so many possibilities that we can't be sure what the writers have in mind for his character next.

So yeah, last night was all about setting up the new normal. Laurel is the Canary now. Team Arrow is a team that Oliver is part of. Oliver doesn't have to give lame excuses anymore. And we don't have to be tortured by everyone lying to Quentin. With all of this cleared up and ready to move forward what do you think the writer will do next? That's right… Oliver's going back to the island and Slade Wilson.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/ktGJCs7BKkY[/youtube]

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