Arrow Review: “Beacon of Hope”

Team Arrow experiences difficulties with both bees and a H.I.V.E.– and the fact that Mr. Terrific is, for a multitalented genius, kind of a doofus.

Title: “Beacon of Hope”

Cast and Crew
Director: Michael Schultz
Writer: Ben Sokolowski and Brian Ford Sullivan

Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen / Green Arrow
Katie Cassidy as Dinah Lance / Black Canary
David Ramsay as John “Dig” Diggle / Spartan
Willa Holland as Thea Queen / Speedy
Echo Kellum as Curtis Holt / Mr. Terrific
Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak
Emily Kinney as Brie Larvin / The Bug-Eyed Bandit
Paul Blackthorne as Quentin Lance
Neal McDonough as Damian Darhk
Jimmy Akingbola as Baron Reiter
John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn
Adrian Glynn as Michael Amar
Elysia Rotaru as Taiana
Charlotte Ross as Donna Smoak
Eugene Byrd as Andy Diggle
Chenier Hundal as Paul

Premise

The Bug-Eyed Bandit brings High Camp to Star City, while less ridiculous villains scheme in the background. Curtis Holt joins Team Arrow.

High Points

The episode had a sense of fun too often missing from this show, yet its strongest point remained the dark or, rather, the Darhk. Damian is dangerous even without his magic totem.

Low Points

I suppose that we have to accept that Ollie turns his back on Baron Reiter on the island after knocking him out, instead of, you know, shooting him. While the flashbacks play some part in the current story, I really hope this season is the last we’ll see them.

The Scores:

Originality: 2/6 While the episode wasn’t particularly original, it amounts to a change of pace, at least, that Team Arrow faces a Flash sort of threat while maintaining a Flash sense of humor.

Effects: 5/6 The Bee-Grade Destroyer conjured by Brie worked passably well.

Acting: 4/6 I know this week’s villain is supposed to be campy, in a Flash Rogues Gallery kind of way, but she be annoying more than anything else. She receives one serious moment; the rest of the time, she’s wasted as a character, and serves only as a Villain-of-the-Week and an apiary of bad puns.

Story: 4/6 The story holds together fairly well, even if it’s based on that hoariest convention of comic-books and conspiracy theories, the single prototype of a piece of high-tech that is put into instant use, has not been duplicated and then utterly fails to change the world in the way that it should.

In the end, Brie proves easy to defeat. The real danger lies elsewhere.

Emotional Response: 5/6

Production: 5/6

Overall: 5/6 The same week that saw a somewhat more serious Flash delivers us a lighter Arrow, and tha’’s not a bad thing.

In total, “Beacon of Hope” receives 30/42

2 replies on “Arrow Review: “Beacon of Hope””

  1. I really like Brie Larvin and her Bee-utiful puns. Perhaps it was all that time I spent in a punnery, but I think they’re the Bee’s Knees.

    Curtis was a nice change and I know it’s silly but I always get a buzz when new characters discover or get read into the “secret” on shows.

    My biggest stinger with the whole plot was that if Brie had just asked, they probably would have actually helped her. Once she talked about her motive/reasoning, Felicity could have easily bee-fused the situation by showing some sympathy and offering to help.

    Also, TV/Movie writers really need to get over the whole “stealing the blueprints” gag when they’re stored electronically. There’s no reason they couldn’t have just given her a copy of the data on a thumb drive. Or she could have hacked in and found all that herself in most cases (yeah, yeah, they stored the McGuffin on an isolated hard drive in a warehouse… why?) Though a lot of fun, those plots seem very contrived, as if they couldn’t come up with a better motivation. But now I’m droning on…

    The Bee-stroyer was cool, though it seemed a bit too overpowered. Between it and the self-replicating bees, I was reminded heavily of the replicators from Stargate SG-1. I guess they had to do something to tie up the non-technical heroes when a tech genius villain is around.

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