So ... that happened.
I have many issues with this episode and the season as a whole, but let me start with the biggest one - Oliver would not "quit" saving Starling City and Felicity, the real Felicity, would not let Oliver quit trying to save Starling City.
Whatever else happened, I cannot buy Oliver abandoning Starling City completely to run away with Felicity. Sure, maybe a brief holiday, but not a permanent "I'm done here, you other people take over saving this city while I bask in the wonder of Felicity's magic vajajay which makes good men do stupid things".
I also cannot buy Felicity letting Oliver abandon Starling City. The man that Felicity supposedly fell in love with was a hero on a mission. That mission hasn't been completed (after all, the city will need saving again next May).
It would have been a thousand times more logical and more fitting for the characters if Oliver had acknowledge that he can't return to being the Arrow because everyone in Starling City believes that the Arrow aka Roy Harper was killed in prison. Instead, Oliver should have said that with financial help from Thea (using Malcolm's inheritance), legal help and political advice from Laurel and the support of Diggle and Felicity, Oliver planned to fulfil his mother's legacy by running for mayor of Starling City. Oliver would pledge to continue his quest to save Starling City, but as Oliver Queen not the Arrow!
That is a "happily ever after" scenario that I could support. What I can't support or understand is Oliver, after repeatedly telling the residents of Starling City that he would never abandon them, abandoning his city all because he can't be the Arrow and have a relationship with Felicity.
It's as if Oliver is blind to the fact that Diggle and Lyla somehow manage to have a relationship and raise a daughter despite the fact that Diggle fights just as much crime as Oliver and Lyla was, up until recently, a super secret agent! Oliver has plenty of time to date Felicity during the day and then they can save lives during the evening! Or keep the whole thing as an office romance.
My other quibbles, both major and minor:
- Oliver defeats Ra's. Quite easily. Actually, way too easily. Ra's must have put Oliver through one heck of an intensive training course during his time at Nanda Parbat.
- Felicity as ATOM. It's taken numerous episodes for Ray to learn to control the ATOM suit. We've seen him struggle almost every time he puts it on. It was part of his journey. Yet thanks to the wonder of bad writing, Felicity wears the ATOM suit for the first time and can masterfully control it. As ... silly as it was to see Felicity in the suit, it was even more foolish to depict as being able to pilot it perfectly. At the very least, she should have been really struggling to control it and only just managing to save Oliver and to land it safely without killing them both.
- The cure. I completely missed how that was hand-waved away. So, Oliver didn't find out that Ra's had the Alpha Omega until he was appointed Ra's heir and basically imprisoned at Nanda Parbat under constant surveillance. BUT, Oliver somehow got in contact with someone (was it Barry or someone else) and gave them a sample of his blood to create a cure for the A) which could be administered by a magic glove worn by Malcolm (because no-one in Team Arrow would think it was odd when Malcolm went around touching them all on their necks or faces since that was their only exposed skin). Or was it the constantly flip-flopping Maseo who developed the cure for Oliver. Except it can't have been Maseo since he had the cure himself and wouldn't have needed Oliver's blood. So, it must have been Barry and Team Flash even though it was never mentioned by anyone on that show.
- I also fail to see how Oliver found the time to leave Nanda Parbat to help the Flash defeat the Reverse Flash. I also find it ludicrous that instead of calling the Flash and asking for help when Ra's, the AO, Oliver, etc were still at Nanda Parbat, Oliver apparently waits to contact Barry until after the plane has taken off all because of Oliver's brilliant plan to crash the plan and kill everyone on board! The timeline of the cross-overs was a real mess.
- And Oliver is back to being a murderer now? Don't get me wrong, I think it's only logical that someone who fights crime with a bow and arrow is going to have to kill sometimes (possibly a lot of the time), but after his endless declarations about never taking another life he killed what could have been an innocent man to prove his devotion to Ra's and then openly killed Ra's. Yet, apparently refuses to kill or even imprison Malcolm?
- Nyssa. Poor, poor Nyssa. Such an awesome character with so much potential. I also refuse to believe, even for a second, that Nyssa would serve in the LOA under Malcolm as the new Ra's Al Ghul. At best, I could see Nyssa leaving the LOA (either with or without Malcolm's permission), but planning to kill Malcolm and assume control of the LOA in due course.
- Similarly, Tatsu! We get a few minutes of kick azz action in an awesome costume and then she just runs off? So, Tatsu agreed to help Oliver because she didn't want to see the AO released in another city. Yet, when their initial plan fails and it appears imminent that the AO will soon be released in Starling City, Tatsu bails on Team Arrow to ... go back to solitude? I would have preferred to see Tatsu killed in combat against the LOA in Nanda Parbat or Starling City instead of being written out of the episode (and possibly the series) in such a terrible way.
- And Thea. So, Thea was rightly mightily peeved that Malcolm forced her to kill while drugged, yet on her very first outing as Red Arrow/Speedy, she puts three arrows into a LOA member? And no-one comments on Thea becoming an active and willing murderer despite Oliver's big quest not to murder, Oliver's over-protectiveness of Thea, any possible concerns about her willingness to murder being a possible side effect of her time in the Lazarus Pit, etc. It's just glossed over because she has a cool costume and everyone, even Oliver, happily accepts that she'll just start roaming the streets fighting crime from now on! What the? The same Oliver who agreed to fight and more than likely die at the hands of Ra's to "protect" Thea from harm is now happy to see her run around on the streets where she is very, very, very likely to suffer some form of harm!
- Malcolm. Oliver should have killed Malcolm. If not, then Oliver should have imprisoned him on Lian Yu. If Lian Yu can now hold metahumans with all sorts of funky superpowers, then it can hold Malcolm. If not, then paralyse him and imprison him. Or remove a leg and imprison him. But, do NOT appoint him as head of a purportedly powerful league of assassins!
- Poor Ray. What little character development he received this season could have surely been summed up in about five minutes of the opening of Legends of Tomorrow. Such a wasted character for this show with no real legacy for the characters on Arrow. And his constantly demonstrated incompetence was capped off by showing him blow himself up.
- Much like Oliver being broke and unable to afford to continue being the Arrow was forgotten, will Felicity's new status as billionaire owner of Palmer Technologies, formerly Queen Consolidated, also be ignored next season? Or were the title deeds (or whatever that document was) blown up along with Ray?
- I'm glad that Diggle will finally be getting a costume. Diggle was regularly shown on TV and captured in photos with Oliver when serving as his bodyguard. Given all the press Oliver has repeatedly received after being suspected of being the Arrow, it's incredible that no-one has ever made the connection between Oliver Queen's bodyguard and that guy who is always seen fighting crime with the Arrow on the streets of Starling City!
- And does Laurel even work any more? If so, how does she manage to juggle long working hours in a high pressure job as District Attorney with spending her nights fighting crime or training to fight crime?
- Are they setting Captain Lance up to quit or be fired now that he is drinking again? After flouting the law when he arrested Oliver Queen for being the Arrow based on the word of some random guy in an alleyway, I'm surprised that he hasn't already been fired.
- I'm so looking forward to watching Oliver's "flashbacks" of backpacking around the world next season. NOT. Maybe they'll ditch the flashbacks since it's clear that they don't know what they're doing with them. The flashbacks in season 3 were essentially pointless and the few relevant plot points could have easily been condensed in a single episodes worth of flashbacks or maybe a single episode set in the past. Not to mention that all of the characterisation in the final episode was bizarre. Akio dies, so Oliver ties up the General, heads next door for the cremation, comes back a few hours later (and no-one has untied the General or rescued him or whatever), tortures the General nearly to death, is found by Tatsu and Maseo even though he was only a couple of shops away and they surely would have heard the General's screams and Maseo kills the General. But, then Maseo says that he's a bad person for not killing the General (?) and decides to abandon his wife while their son's ashes are still fresh in her hands and take the AO to the LEAGUE OF ASSASSINS because that seems like a good idea at the time!
Look, I only complain so much because I want to like this show. Heck, I want to love this show and all the characters on it. I want it to be good. I want it to be at least as good as season 2 if not a LOT better (especially since Slade's motivations in season 2 were dubious at best). I get that it's a comic book show and that there is a certain suspension of disbelief required when watching, but this season has gone far beyond that for me.
Honestly, with The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, iZombie, etc, I'm really not sure I can be bothered with a show that treats its characters and by extension its fans so poorly.
