This was another disappointing episode for me.
Once again, although the story somewhat made sense given everything that has happened this season, on the whole it remains nonsensical.
I personally have absolutely no investment in "Olicity" and writing them as doomed, star-crossed lovers does not feel genuine for me. I can completely understand Felicity crushing on Oliver. He's handsome. He's heroic. And he's a (former) billionaire. But, he's also extremely emotionally messed up. He's stupidly secretive. He's a killer (albeit for the right reasons). And he has an absolutely terrible history when it comes to dating. Truly terrible. As such, I still cannot buy Felicity's crush on Oliver moving into full-blown love. The fact that their relationship supposedly developed during the break from season 2 to season 3 and was therefore never really shown on screen makes it even more implausible.
As for Oliver loving Felicity, even that doesn't feel genuine to me. Oliver seems to regard Felicity in the same way he does Thea - as a sister/as a family member. There is no question that she's attractive. And there is no question that she is loyal and supportive. But, that isn't really enough for me to believe that Oliver fell for her. Especially when he's so closed off and guarded emotionally. I would find it far more credible for Oliver to truly live up to his (former) playboy reputation and bed random women from time to time than to see him supposedly fall head over heels in love with Felicity.
The fact that a large portion of this episode was devoted to the ideal of "Olicity" just makes it all the more unbearable for me. Sure, Felicity is awesome. Sure, the actor who plays Felicity appears to have chemistry with pretty much everyone on screen. But, that's really not enough to support "Olicity", especially given the much better (at least on paper) pairings between Felicity and Barry or Felicity and Ray.
Everything else was pretty much nonsense. One "speech" from Diggle manages to turn around Maseo, even though Maseo was happily framing Oliver for murder just a few episodes ago?
And I still can't believe that Ra's would put so much faith into a "prophecy" when choosing his heir. I can understand Nyssa not living up to his expectations, whether because of Sara's influence or otherwise, but I can't understand Ra's playing along with the prophecy. The *only* way I can rationalise it is to believe that Ra's wants to "retire" (or die) because he's tired of his long life and of being the head of the LOA, so he deliberately inflicted non-lethal wounds on Oliver and allowed Maseo and Tatsu to "heal" Oliver all so Ra's could declare Oliver to be his heir. Otherwise, Ra's is clearly ineffective because if he was trying to kill Oliver and failed, then he's a pretty darn terrible assassin and really should be exiled from the LOA for his incompetence in being unable to kill an unarmed, injured opponent.
And I'm tired of seeing Malcolm on screen. Everything to do with the character is a joke. From memory, he was responsible for the death of Oliver's father, stranding Oliver on the island and for everything that happened to Sara, from being held prisoner by Ivo, captured by the LOA and her eventual death. He is also responsible for Tommy's death and the death of hundreds of other people in the Glades. That's on top of however many people he murdered as part of the LOA or of his own volition. He also preyed upon his biological daughter when she was emotionally fragile and then manipulated her into murdering Sara (her friend/somewhat sister) all to protect himself. He then declares that he will protect her, but let's her be murdered by Ra's (not to mention not identifying DJ Assassin as a member of the LOA until it was almost too late).
Somehow, despite all of that, he can declare that he has Thea's best interests at heart and Oliver believes him and agrees to allow Malcolm to continue to "parent" Thea after she emerges from the Lazarus Pit despite being told that Thea will be particularly emotionally/mentally fragile/messed-up from the experience. It defies all logic and credibility. Malcolm should be handed over to Lance for trial. If Oliver truly belives that the Starling City Police Department would never be able to hold Malcolm, then hand him over to ARGUS to have a bomb implanted in his skull and assigned to the Suicide Squad. Or imprison him on the island along with Deathstroke and Captain Boomerang (and improved ARGUS security). Or if all of those options are supposedly impossible because Malcolm is so very awesome (although he was too scared to confront Ra's directly), then at the very least keep him away from Thea, whether by revealing that he's alive to the public and forcing Malcom to go on the run or by physically hurting him until he gets the message.
The flashbacks are also at the point where they're so dull and repetitive that I completely tune out. How many times are we going to see Oliver, Maseo and Tatsu searching for something/someone in same "Hong Kong food alley" set this season? How much longer are they going to drag out the death of Maseo and Tatsu's son? All those flashback scenes could have been used to try and address some of the questionable characterisation and decisions/actions by the remainder of the cast.
I really hope that the final three episodes somehow turn this all around. The two bright spots in season 3 were Roy getting some minimal development, although he's now been sent packing and some relatively credible character development for Laurel, although she's also repeatedly sidelined. And although I like Ray, to date the reason for his inclusion in season 3 is unclear, unless he was shoe-horned in solely to set up another spin-off. I thought he might have been mentored by Oliver. Or maybe he would somehow help Oliver to take control of Queen Consolidate. Or maybe support Oliver in a bid to run for mayor. Or maybe he would upgrade Oliver's equipment and hideout. Or something.
