Review - Arrow Season 3, Episode 10, Left Behind

Arrow appeared at its mid-season finale to be going in a more interesting direction, having ostensibly killed off its main character. And, to be fair, at the beginning of episode 10 we get a little taste of the sort of show that might have arisen were the series to have stuck to its guns, with the Arrow-family teaming up to fill the void left by their friend and mentor, trying to honor his work while still letting the criminal element of Starling City - and incidentally, the hinted name change to the more source-appropriate Star City cannot come soon enough - know that the Green Arrow never truly left.

What we get instead is a great deal of dreary is-he-dead-or-is-he-not wavering, both from the characters and from the show itself, as it stretches out a disappointing reveal over the full runtime of the episode. Spoilers, I suppose, though anyone who has not figured this out probably does not have much of a future in comics media - Oliver is not dead, and a figure from his past looks set to repay a life-debt to him by nursing him back to life. At the very least, this means that we might have a couple more episodes before Mr. Myfault McHumblebrag makes his inevitable return to the city, allowing us to focus on the more interesting characters in the meantime.

To this end, the oddball work relationship between Ray and Felicity is given a nice wrinkle by the disappearance and presumed death of Oliver, as Felicity tries to work through a grief that Ray has had much longer to adjust to since his own seemingly obligatory personal trauma. That said, Brandon Routh and Emily Bett Rickards have probably the two most compelling characters on the show and remain perhaps its two most engaging screen presences, to the point where if the show was announced to be retooled entirely around them it might have a chance of surpassing The Flash as best DC show on the air right now.

Despite all this negativity, I am interested to see where the show is going with all of this, particularly with the introduction of new supervillain mastermind Brick, played by Vinnie Jones doing his best impression of Vinnie Jones. As with The Flash, Arrow is taking advantage of a lull after a mid-season blowout to pick up its plot threads in preparation for a spirited dash for whatever end-goal it has in mind. That, in my view, is reason enough to keep watching for a spell.