Lost Souls –The team discovery a still tiny Ray Palmer is being held captive by Damien Darhk and make a desperate rescue attempt. As Sara adjusts to being herself again her Lazarus Pit bloodlust kicks in, Felicity is afraid she’s lost herself in being with Oliver while in the flashbacks Reiter hunts for a new mysterious object on the island.
So although getting Ray back presents the more literal title meaning, the episode does expand this into many aspects of character examination as different faces discover that they’ve lost parts of themselves in their own journey. The biggest is Felicity as she realises despite getting all she wanted in being Oliver’s love, that in doing so she’s inadvertently sacrificed other parts of herself and blames this on not discovering Ray’s SOS sooner. Now this looked like would devolve into the kind of “Olicity” drama some fans dislike about the show but in actually becomes more interesting when Felicity takes a negative perspective against their relationship rather than having issue with Oliver himself... so it’s actually an anti-Olicity. Plus Brian Sullivan & Oscar Balerrama’s script manages to keep things from getting to sappy by wrapping everything in comedy. This is catalysed by the ever ill timed return of Felicity’s mother, who becomes a hilarious point of conflict by Felicity’s frustration at Oliver’s inability to say no to her. Felicity’s playground-like nicknames for Oliver are just brilliant (“My name... is Chatty Cathy). The episode also easily manages to shift any sombre relationship notes into a lighter tone. Immediately after the token “maybe break up” development we get great kicking back guy talk scene between Oliver and Diggle and that’s something we really haven’t seen in the best part of a year! It’s a nice symbol of the show’s more upbeat approach this season. A similar scene last year would seen both men straight faced and hanging their heads rather than relaxed and grinning wide like we get from them here; it’s a definite improvement.
Elsewhere in the lost capacity we see Thea beginning things with Alex to re-find her lost normalcy. This is very predictable. From the moment Alex asks her out early on we know she’ll say yes by the end. The pair seems compatible enough but aren’t lighting the screen yet. Then we have Sara encountering her blood lust. This is really a lose/ lose scenario for the episode; even if it handles the emotional impact on Sara well (which it kinda does) it will still feel highly repetitive of Thea’s story these past few episodes (which it definitely does). It’s a hit that must be taken which why it’s good that the episode doesn’t overly dwell on it. In fact part of it feels nicely captured from Thea’s perspective rather than Sara’s. Her lingering look of shock over Sara’s first rage against the henchmen is almost an out of body experience for her; to finally see the bloodlust effects from the outside and understand how Oliver must have felt seeing her like that. It feels like a point for Thea’s development as it’s another reason to fight back against her own problems.
The action delivers this episode, helped by the expanded team. The civilian inclusion of Curtis is a great touch. His joke about having too many hobbies is another nice little nod to his multi-skilled nature and his comedy plays well to take the edge of the drama. However, the most welcome feature is that this episode gives us the closest thing the show has ever come to a Birds of Prey offering. Despite titling a late season 2 episode (that was basically Black Canary Vs Huntress), this is first time we’ve seen an ensemble female fighting outfit (with Thea, Sara and Laurel) as their own team. As they all take on The Ghosts together and produce a great spectacle in the process and you could even say symbolise Felicity’s back at base role as Oracle. It’s awesome to see Caity Lotz suited and black booted up one last time and all three ladies impress, especially during the circling melee shot. Despite Sara’s heavily expected departure to assume her Legends of Tomorrow starting position (maybe via a Flash episode if she’s in Central City), hopefully we’ll see Arrow do more of this in the future.
This episode also begins to tease over Damien Darhk’s bigger plan. Throughout the episode he makes comments about bringing “new life” into the city and the world. This could be interpreted as descriptive terms for a revolution or more of a League of Assassins philosophy of letting the city die so it can be born again.... but someone his delivery makes it feel far more literal; that he means new actual life into this world. Given the magical and mystical elements of his character this could be some form of demon or spirit (Constantine introduced the spirit world last week). Yet there is also the presence of tech to his plans, symbolised this week by the his attempts to get Ray’s ATOM suit tech. So maybe it will involve a bit both as implied by Darhk’s mystical object box folding out into what heavily resembles circuits. There’s also one other big, if more unlikely possibility. Comic fans might notice that the object bares some notable visual resemblance to a Mother Box. Could Arrow be venturing into New Gods territory? It feels like too big a leap right now but you never know.
Lost Souls is definitely Arrow’s most constrained episode of the season to date with Legends of Tomorrow firmly behind the wheel and not steering as well as they’d like. It still has a lot to offer though. Just having Ray Palmer (and Brandon Routh) back in the fold is a celebration in itself. His euphoric James Bond reference reminds us just how much his geeky charms have been missed. Lost Souls actually becomes more homely advice for Arrow than intended. As the Arrowverse expands and it becomes so much more arrow must be careful that along the way it doesn’t lose itself.