Arrow Review: “The Offer”

“It’s the League of Assassins: that is not the name of a nice group.”

Arrow returns, with Ollie’s answer. Is Ra’s accepting it?

Title: “The Offer”

Cast and Crew
Director: Dermott Downs
Writers: Beth Schwartz, Brian Ford Sullivan

Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow
Katie Cassidy as Dinah “Laurel” Lance / Black Canary
David Ramsay as John “Dig” Diggle
Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak
Willa Holland as Thea Queen
Paul Blackthorne as Quentin Lance
Colton Haynes as Roy Harper / Arsenal
John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn
Katrina Law as Nyssa Raatko
Brandon Routh as Ray Palmer / Atom
Matt Nable as Ra’s al Ghul
Karl Yune as Maseo Yamashiro
Celina Jade as Shado
Adrian McMorran as Michael Amar / Murmur
Brandon Nomura as Akio Yamashiro
Darren Moore as Mouthpiece

Premise

Ollie returns with everyone in tow, including Merlyn, and emotions run high. Meanwhile, a new adversary flashes into Starling City: a man monikered Murmur.

High Points

Hero shows often work best when the villains have complexity. There isn’t much to say about Murmur (har!), and the crowded episode could hardly handle more, but Ra’s Al Ghul emerges as an interesting opponent, with greater depth than we’ve seen before.

Low Point

In the end, I suppose, the audience enjoys the mix of Fox soap operatics with DC superheroics, or they don’t. Arrow has decent emotional/personal material with which to work but, all too often, it gets lost in histrionics.

The Scores:

Originality: 3/6

Effects: 5/6

Acting: 4/6 Some of the acting feels particularly strained this week—Willa Holland’s in particular. Of course, few people have the necessary experience to draw upon when playing a woman who wants to kill her supervillain father. Emily Bett Rickards fares better as Felicity, but she has a far easier task.

Story: 4/6 The writers connect Ollie’s decision with Detective Lance’s anger and the new villain’s appearance. The flashback sequence really feels shoehorned. Arrow seriously needs to drop the flashbacks after this season.

Emotional Response: 4/6

Production: 5/6 The Nanda Parbat scenes with Ra’s look impressive. The production company makes effective use of what I suspect are borrowed / rented costume and set pieces.

Overall: 5/6

In total, “The Offer” receives 30/42

Observation

In addition to playing both Starling City and Central City, Vancouver (unless I miss my guess) has also been standing in for Hong Kong.

3 replies on “Arrow Review: “The Offer””

  1. To me, Murmur felt shoe-horned. “OK, I’m back, let’s find someone’s ass to kick” essentially, but he turned out to be pretty troublesome. You’d think that police station would have better security as many times as people have stormed in and shot up/destroyed the place.

    I suspect the HK flashback was supposed to tie in with the kid’s father and whatever was up with him seeing Shado but it was a bit off. It felt like there were pieces missing or it was incomplete. We’re probably in for at least another season of flashbacks as I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of Oliver’s Bratva background they haven’t milked much yet.

    I saw the ending move from Ra’s coming but I didn’t think he’d go through the trouble of doing it himself, but his last line seemed familiar. Hmm.

    If the change in Nyssa‘s status means she is going to be on the show more often, I’m all for it.

    And the Lazarus pit coupled with the casting of the spin-off leads one to believe that Sara will be coming back both know from the dead, at least in body if not the same in the mind.

    I strongly suspect by the end of the next episode that Captain Lance and Ray both know Olliver is the Arrow.

  2. I was disappointed by this one. The mid-season finale set up a lot of tension, and this episode just let it go in the first few minutes. Then we get a generic bad guy of the week, and relationship histrionics.

    Flash’s return was much better executed.

  3. Am I the only one who questioned Oliver’s definition of a successful mission given that he failed to show up in time to save a dozen or so cops?

    And I appreciate he’s good with a bow and grappling, but since when can he shoot an arrow into the air and go flying off into the night sky?

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