Arrow 2x13 - "Heir to the Demon"

[coffeeandink]

Spoilers look good in a long black coat

• Guys, if you don't love Nyssa al Ghul, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore.
  
  She is a lesbian assassin who tries to lure her lover back by poisoning her lover's family, but can't actually bring herself to kill any of them! My love is assured.
  
  (Also, to be honest, I didn't expect the show to do any better on the casting. I was just expecting them to cast white instead of $random brown ethnicity.)
  
  In the real world, I would tell a friend to run away from their violent ex. But somehow this violence falls into the superhero story heightened reality category for me, as opposed to Roy Harper's violent outbursts, which are much more uncomfortable for me. Nyssa refused to kill Sara, and despite her threats, she did not actually seriously harm Sara's parents. You can't tell me a highly trained assassin couldn't have taken out both Quentin and Dinah before Oliver could stop her. For someone raised by a supervillain assassin, she's doing really well!
  
  I am hoping her supervillain assassin dad will turn on her for setting Sara free, and then she can get recruited by Amanda Waller and be the morally grey ex with whom Sara has periodically consummated sexual tension.
  
  
• Arrow's record for terrific fight scenes and its record for casting actors capable of pulling off terrific fight scenes remains unblemished. And the airport scene is a great character intro. How perfect was it ending with Nyssa picking up her luggage handle and wheeling her suitcase out of there?
  
  
• You know what's surprising? Arrow has a gazillion balls in the air, but even when one doesn't appear in an episode, or even several episodes, I trust they haven't been dropped. And the trust is fulfilled. This is actually more about the plots that didn't appear in the episode than the plots that did. I'm not worried that they're forgotten.
  
  
• Well, okay, I'm worried that Diggle is forgotten. For at least three episodes, David Ramsay has had nothing to do but exposit or be Oliver's conscience. My major consolation here is the ARGUS mentions in the past two episodes, first Amanda Waller and second the ARGUS alert flashing across Nyssa's passport photo. (I love that she has a red passport. Matches her outfits.)
  
  Anyway, so far ARGUS has connected to the show more through Diggle than anyone else, so I hope the resumption of that plotline will involve him. I would also love to see Lyla again; she and Diggle have great chemistry.
  
  
• It's heartbreaking how happy Laurel is to see the "hallucination" of Sara, and how angry she is at the real Sara. And I am so glad of it. One of the major problems with the Laurel/Oliver relationship was the writers' unwillingness to allow Laurel to remain angry at Oliver. She couldn't even get through the pilot episode without trying to make a rapprochement with him. It is gratingly unrealistic.
  
  Maybe they will let her be angry at him now.
  
  
• This episode is hitting the family theme pretty hard. The Lance family reunites, but it's still fragmented. The betrayal already hidden in the ostensibly idyllic past is still a breech. The Queen family cracks. Felicity alludes to a troubled history -- we are meant to be more curious about her mom than her dad, and it works. Leaving and lying are what people find hard to forgive.
  
  I should probably find Oliver's response to Moira lying more hypocritical than I do, because, uh, Oliver has been lying to his entire family for over a year. But it does actually make sense to me that this would hit him that hard--though if he's agreeing to hide the truth from Thea, it's a tacit admission that Moira is actually hiding Thea's paternity from her for the same reason Oliver is hiding his identity as the Arrow from her. (Given the fall out of all the family lies this episode, I hold out some hope that the show is aware that they are both wrong.)
  
  I am not convinced Oliver's break from Moira is permanent, since he has consistently been unable to make permanent breaks from people he loves who have tried to kill him.
  
  
• Speaking of:
  
  OLIVER: I don't trust her.
  SARA: Then trust me.
  
  This is a really nice follow-up to their confrontation over Ivo a few flashbacks ago.
  
  And to the way trust is developed as a theme throughout the episode. Felicity can't trust Walter and Oliver can't trust Moira. But Oliver can trust Felicity and does trust Sara.
  
  
• Oliver/Sara doesn't convince me as endgame, but I'm not sure it's supposed to. It's a healthier recapitulation of Oliver/Helena -- both Oliver and Sara are desperate for home and for a family that they can't reach, Oliver because of anger and Sara because of guilt. They may connect partly out of damage, but part of it is also out of love and shared experience: the crucible of the island; being killers; being former killers. (Recovering killers?)
  
  
• That is so not going to help out anything with Laurel.
  
  
• Of course, I also don't see Oliver/Sara as endgame because I am all about the
  
  ♥ ♥ ♥ Oliver/Felicity ♥ ♥ ♥
  
  Oliver is so focused on his own anger and frustration that he doesn't notice Felicity is upset, and then he does, and doesn't let it go. He notices the tension between Felicity and Moira and doesn't let himself ignore it. He doesn't even get impatient about talking to Felicity when he's right in the middle of a family responsibility. (Because, seriously, awful timing. Awful.)
  
  I love it for more than the demonstration of caring, though. Oliver, who has been so torn between Oliver Queen and the Arrow, and "Oliver Queen" and Oliver Queen, is becoming a lot more comfortable with having multiple commitments and multiple relationships. In "Tremors," the man who freaked Diggle out by talking about himself in the third person, told Diggle and Felicity, "The Arrow couldn't get through to Roy--but I could." Not "Oliver Queen," not "Thea's brother": I. The man who was visibly shaken by the terrible choice of supporting his mother and saving his friend was comfortable with both bonds, instead of torn between them. I'll grant that your mother's conviction and possibly sentence of death vs. a drug dealer murdering your friend is a harder choice than your mother getting ready for a speech vs. your friend being visibly upset by something. But, slowly, Oliver has been pulling the different pieces of himself together.
  
  And what happens with Sara -- however it develops -- is part of that. They are both trying to merge the people who have survived and who have done terrible things with the family members and friends they used to be.
  
  
• How great were both Stephen Amell and Susanna Thompson in that campaign announcement speech? Oliver's slow, grim start. Moira going stiff as she realizes he knows. Oliver's sidelong hidden glare, and the kiss he presses to Thea's forehead. They didn't even need to have the argument later, really; everything was right there.
  
  
• I was puzzled by why Felicity didn't start off by telling Oliver about Tempest, instead of Walter, but it's justified by the end -- her unwillingness to confront Oliver with hurtful information and possibly already a half-formed thought that it might be better for Moira to come clean on her own.
  
  
• I do love seeing Moira be ruthless with Felicity and Sebastian Blood.
  
  
• I'm so glad Walter didn't take out a hit on Moira's OB/GYN.

cups brewed at DW