Some people say that becoming a politician means painting a big bull’s-eye on your forehead so that everyone can take their shot at you. Right or wrong, successful or failure, a good chunk of the population will reward you with nothing but hatred for your public service. Not to mention that through the marvels of social media, your haters can make up pretty much anything about you and people will believe it. So why do people do it? For at least some, it’s because they genuinely want to make a difference, to help people’s lives. In this week’s Arrow, we meet someone with just those political inspirations but in Star City, the forehead bull’s-eye is much less of a metaphor.
The Candidate – When Oliver’s family friend is inspired to run for Star City mayor, anarchy immediately becomes her opponent. Felicity returns to Palmer Tech in financial crisis but a new friend may be her way out of it. Thea’s blood lust finally goes too far but Laurel’s offer to help harbours an ulterior motive.
So in this season’s sophomore offering, the general theme is doing things differently, echoing Oliver’s adoption of his new persona but also discovering that’s a lot easier to say than do. Many of the characters get their own individual arc in this respect. Felicity returns to running Palmer technologies via more than a video conference screen only to find out the city is fairing no better than the rest of the city and spends most of the episode being George Clooney from Up in the Air. This becomes a great medium for her character as her surroundings naturally generate situations for her awkwardness-driven comedy rather having to inject it. It also sees her cross paths with one Mr Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum – Ben and Kate) aka Mr. Terrific, and the pair immediately get on like they were separated at birth. Holt presents a more socially-advanced version of The IT Crowd’s Moss, and the techy kinship between them actually makes them feel similar to Ray and Felicity’s relationship last year. Only this time, Felicity’s role is reversed to the boss figure and Holt’s mentioning of his husband makes it seem unlikely they’ll have any romantic entangling. So instead, Felicity now has her very own Cisco to play with, which is just awesome. The “6 months to astonish” bluff/gamble implies we’ll see a lot more of the pair working together. As for what their revolutionary business saving tech will be? The obvious choice seems some variant of the T-Sphere’s or Mr. Terrific’s comic persona that will, in turn, lead him adopting the said alias late in the season just like Ray Palmer/The Atom before him. A final thought on Ray: Anyone who’s seen the trailer or knows anything about Legends of Tomorrow knows he isn’t dead just “teeny tiny”. Did anyone else like to imagine he was actually in some of Felicity’s scenes, just too small to see?
As for Oliver, the way he does things different comes into his desire to help save the city rather than being judged as making things worse. The catalyst for this becomes his family friend Jessica Danforth (Jerin “Seven of Nine” Ryan) applying for Star City’s equivalent of the drummer in Spinal Tap: the mayor (the last 3 serving mayors were all killed). Most of these events are purely designed to lead Oliver towards adopting a very major comics story, but they’re very effective in laying the mental stepping stones towards that big decission (comic book fans will see it coming a mile away but no spoilers, just in case). It’s the themes and ideas that many will recognise from The Dark Knightin the identified necessity for a “White Knight” character, “What this city needs is someone willing to stand up in the light of day not a guy lurking around in the shadows”. This story also raises a few interesting questions about certain other characters. Danforth seems a bit too gullible when Oliver explains his skills saving her as self defence classes. That could imply she was actually in league with Damien Darhk and candidacy was designed to be a moral crushing quick failure for the public (she’s mentioned as being an old friend of Moira which could imply she was part of The Undertaking). Speaking of Darhk, he fuels a serious fan theory regarding his back story. His approach so far has been clinically ruthless with little regard to collateral damage. Yet here, he’s bitterly appalled by the kidnapping to Danforth’s daughter, “There are lines you do not cross”. He clearly has a daughter of his own that he cares for, and the rumour is we’ve known her for a few years. If true, that will be an incredible story development.
This episode sees the rise of someone that’s being labeled as this season’s second tear villain, Anarky. Arrow has taken the classic character name, Lonnie Machin, but delivered their own version of his origins. It’s nicely fitting into his base anarchist concept that both heroes and villains have a hand in his creation. Darhk rejects him from HIVE, and a momentary error from Team Arrow sees his remaining humanity go up in flames. His presence bodes well for the season as even operating by himself, he’s shown as a competent schemer, a proficient close combat fighter, and more than a bit sadistic. While it feels more likely he’ll eventually be wielded by Darhk to bring about some city wide chaos, hopefully we’ll see him stay as a more independent party, keen to spoil whoever’s day he feels like.
After its hints last week, Thea’s Lazarus Hot Tub side effects become public knowledge. At first, it feels like we’ll just be suffering an angry angsty Thea for a while, but the ultimate goal is not for Oliver and ourselves to realise Thea is out of control but Thea herself accepts it, which makes a better story. While the Queen Vs Queen fight is cool, it's Thea’s final act scenes that really land the blows as she comes to understand not just why she’s out of control, but that despite all of it, Oliver was still saving her out of love. Even without seeing Calista Flockhart in a black bodice at the end, as soon as Laurel hears of the pit, there is no doubting her mindset (and like Ray Palmer, it’s known fact for Legends of Tomorrow), so it makes little sense to draw it out, “No of course he didn’t... he would do anything to save his sister”. Their girly road trip should be interesting as it reunites us with Nanda Parbat, The League of Assassins, Merlyn, and hopefully Nyssa too.
The flashback storyline is still getting going but delivers an interesting setup. We’ve met the main villain, Reiter (Baron Blitzkrieg in the comics but definitely not here) as Oliver infiltrates what looks like some speciality drugs operation. The purple flowers the workers are growing feel reminiscent of the Batman Begins hallucinogenic blue flowers. Given that this story will show Oliver’s past experience with mysticism, it’s likely they’ll be a component for something.
The Candidate is feels a much more solid effort than last week’s Green Arrow and sets some great stories into flight. It’s littered with good laughs like Felicity’s very logical codename requests. It has ood action and fights like the opening mass brawl and the full team roof entrance. The connection between Damien Darhk and Captain Lance is still the most tantalising mystery over just why Quentin, even if reluctantly, is cooperating with him. We know daughter threats are idol.... unless they’re implying the opposite. Maybe he’s has promised Quentin his own way of bringing Sara back? For now though, all such things remain in the Darhk.