Arrow Season 3 Finale Review: Moving On
Arrow S03E23: "My Name Is Oliver Queen"
What should I say about "My Name Is Oliver Queen"? As an individual episode, it wasn't that good. Sure, it had some fun bits. There was sword fighting. Thea made her big debut in her new duds. Diggle punched Oliver (best part). Barry showed up and was very excited about encountering an actual dungeon (second best part). Felicity climbed into the A.T.O.M. suit. Little moments like those provided some pleasure, and pleasure had been in short supply on Arrow. As the Season 3 finale, well, those good bits couldn't save "My Name Is Oliver Queen" from being the only thing it could be: the end result of a lot of poor plotting and barely fleshed-out character arcs. There wasn't a way for this finale to remedy or undo this season—short of Oliver waking up and finding Sara in the shower, anyway—and so it was sentenced to tying up all the nonsense that had come before it.
The episode still contained plenty of its own nonsense to work through, including the absolute inanity of Ra's men carrying empty briefcases so as to better call attention to themselves instead of just killing themselves in public places and letting the bioweapon spread. Or Malcolm's inoculating skin graft that doubled as an exposition device (and here I thought that was going to be Barry's job!). The small pleasures aside, the finale was marked by the ineptitude that has plagued this season since "The Climb." So, I guess, points for consistency?
I'm clearly willing to roll with poorly justified premises that spur on the actions of an episode so long as the end result of that is entertaining and/or interesting. It happened in Season 2 of Arrow with Ivo's whole "PICK WHO DIES!" thing providing the kernel of motivation that would drive Slade's mirakuru-fueled insanity. Manu Bennett sold the hell out of it, and it led to some good stuff for Oliver as well. Even with a shaky foundation, the show managed to make things click. Season 3 never found a way to get over its shaky foundation, and, in fact, kept adding on more poorly fitting Tinkertoy parts to the whole mess instead of cutting its losses and recalibrating.
I feel the urge to recap the arc just to make sure I have a grasp on everything, so let's try it. Malcolm drugged Thea with mind-controlling herbs and had her kill Sara. Malcolm knew this would get Nyssa's attention and that, in turn, would bring the League of Assassins to Starling City. Oliver wouldn't let Thea be turned over to the League, so he claimed to have killed Sara himself and had to do battle with Ra's on top of a mountain. Malcolm was counting on Oliver killing Ra's so that the League would no longer be hunting him (supposedly; hang onto that), but Oliver was probably half-planning on dying because dude would rather die than come to grips with his existential crisis. Oliver came back from being mostly dead, and the League re-set its sights on Malcolm after Thea let them know he was alive. Oliver saved Malcolm because he didn't want Thea to live with being a murderer, even indirectly. At this point, Ra's decided that Oliver was fit to be his heir for reasons that remain completely baffling and unexplained beyond "A prophecy said so!" Ra's waged a campaign to destroy Oliver's credibility and then almost or completely killed Thea so Oliver would be forced to ask Ra's to use the Lazarus Pit to save Thea. In exchange, Oliver joined the League and began his ascension to become the next Ra's. At some point, Oliver and Malcolm hatched a plan to take down the League from the inside, which resulted in Oliver being absolutely horrible to everyone in his life to maintain his cover. In the end, meaning this episode, Oliver intended to die again to bring down Ra's and stop the bioweapon, but that didn't work (Oliver is really bad at dying). Oliver finally killed Ra's and became the new Ra's al Ghul only to hand the job over to Malcolm, which was apparently Malcolm's condition for helping take down Ra's. Nyssa suggested that this was Malcolm's plan all along. Of course, "all along" could mean either from the very start of all this—meaning Sara's death was just the first domino in the ultimate Rube Goldberg plot machine—or just around the time Oliver and Malcolm hatched their little scheme. Not that it really matters since it all worked out for Malcolm.
Yeah, I feel you, Oliver. And I'm pretty sure I probably missed something or got some detail wrong.
Even if I did miss or get something wrong, it still doesn't matter. Not only because of Malcolm getting what he wanted but also because all of this should've tracked along a journey for Oliver that the show didn't actually create. I've written what has amounted to too many words on Season 3's failure to dramatize Oliver's existential woes, from the show setting up Ray as a foil and romantic rival to the idea of the League and the identity of Ra's al Ghul as a way for Oliver to achieve the end goal of his crusade in a way that couldn't be done as Oliver Queen, CEO or as the Arrow. You know that spiel by heart at this point, dear reader, and I'm tired of writing about it. And yet here we are, dealing with one last bit of nonsense about the search for Oliver's identity as he decides to hang up the bow and quiver and head off someplace sunny with Felicity in a convertible.
What convinced him to do this? Only a few hours ago, Oliver was ready to die in a plane crash. Months ago, he was pretty sure he was going to die on a mountain, and he likely wanted to. Sure, he and Felicity had a talk about how he's changed in his heart because he cares about people now, and that this has made him into someone and something else. There was no arc to that conclusion, no realization that Oliver had. Hell, Oliver's cared about people before now (Hi, Thea! Hi, Moira!), so it's not as if his heart suddenly grew three sizes this day. It's not even as if Oliver didn't know that Starling City couldn't be protected. Diggle, Roy, Laurel, and Felicity were all prepared to carry on this crusade without him, and they did. He was completely aware of that after he came back from being mostly dead, and so this whole "The city's in good hands, so I can retire and find myself now" is a little specious as well. Sure, there were people who needed protecting, but if Oliver had just let Malcolm die when Thea called the League, things may've gone okay.
What I think ultimately frustrated me about this entire attempt to have Oliver get to this point—and why I wish I liked the finale's ending far more than I did—was that Arrow has consistently been about coping with trauma and figuring out how you live with it. Oliver lived with it by killing people with arrows in Season 1. He lived with it by trying not to kill people in Season 2. This season, he didn't know how to live with it and pretty much just gave up. Giving up can be interesting and dramatically rich, but Season 3 couldn't figure out how to create a story around it that also made any kind of sense on a plot or character level. Since it couldn't do that, I can't feel any satisfaction that Oliver seems ready to sort through his pain in a way that doesn't involve jumping around in a hood. It's something I've wanted for the character since the first season, so to have it happen like this is very disappointing.
It's also disappointing because this season has obliterated my sense that Arrow can do anything that rings true in a larger sense. If it can't give its main character a compelling and thoughtful arc, what reason is there to trust them to come up with a compelling and thoughtful reason for him to return to Starling City and somehow become the Arrow again (because he will)? What does that Arrow look like? How does he operate? Why would anyone defer to his authority after this? It's why the only thing that rang true in the entirety of "My Name Is Oliver Queen" was Diggle apparently stepping away from this particular crusade. That felt like an honest character reaction to everything that's happened this season and especially in these last few episodes. I do suspect that this will lead him to focus back onto Andy's death because Diggle does always need a mission; it just doesn't have to be the mission Oliver's leaving behind.
As it stands, we ended up sort of close to my dream idea for Season 4 in that Thea and Laurel are now the two protectors of Starling City, carrying on Oliver's mission. I have no idea why Nyssa went back to the League of Assassins. Obviously I would've preferred she had stayed in Starling to fight crime with Laurel and Thea. I guess she stayed so she could be close to Malcolm and wait for a chance to kill him. Then again, I don't know why Malcolm didn't just kill her right there and then.
Amusingly, Arrow had its worst season just as the era of comic book and superhero related-properties made into primetime TV series really exploded, an era it, along with The Walking Dead, helped to create. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. generally sorted itself out. The Flash spun off from Arrow and easily outperformed it. Agent Carter was a delight. Daredevil was very good to great. iZombie is something that makes me wish I didn't have to write about The Flash, and I really enjoy The Flash. Constantine was so-so-ish. Gotham... is a thing that exists. (I still haven't watched Powers, and I cannot offer an opinion on the most recent season of The Walking Dead since I don't watch the show.)
Now there's a glut of comic-book shows coming soon. Over the course of the next season. there's A.K.A. Jessica Jones, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Lucifer. There's a variety of shows in development, including Preacher at AMC, that Teen Titans show at TNT, Scalped at WGN, whatever that John Ridley-led Marvel show is at ABC, and a number of others. So even if Arrow fell flat on its face this year and decides to bury itself right there next season, there's still plenty of other options out there and arriving soon to satisfy this particular itch. So, thanks for that Arrow!
FROM THE QUIVER
– So... does Felicity still own Palmer Technology even though she quit as Vice President?
– I hate that I laughed when Ray blew up his lab at the end there, but since we know he's headlining the spinoff, the explosion just seemed sort of silly. I did like how three or four uses of nanites has him thinking about becoming The Atom instead of The ATOM, though.
– Wait a second. Now that Malcolm is the new Ra's... does he have to destroy Starling City? Or did he immediately institute some new bylaws about the whole ascension thing?
– Even more Damien Darhk set-up. Yeah. H.I.V.E. is coming, y'all.
– "Not that I'm complaining, but shouldn't we be dead by now?"
– "You guys have a hot tub? Nice!"
– "Wow. I mean, this is like a real dungeon!"
– "I handed you my crusade, my mission!" Wait. Time out. Ra's. Since when did you have a crusade? What is it? Can we discuss it over tea?
– "We trade Damien for the virus. That is remarkably ruthless and cold-blooded. I approve."
– "The city's under attack? Must be May!" Oh, Quentin. Your return to alcoholism really got swept under the rug. Like so many other things.
– "Maybe I'll call myself Red Arrow?" "I think I already told everyone to call you Speedy."
– Best episodes of the season: "Sara," "Corto Maltese," and "Canaries." That Season 3 even gave us "Sara" at all feels like a complete fluke now.
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