In last night’s episode, “Taken,” all of Ollie’s secrets come out, as the team tries to rescue his son William from Darhk’s clutches. A lot of stuff happens, including one plot development that revitalizes the season—and one shot that misses the mark.
Basically, Ollie loses everything. He loses his bid to be mayor, he loses his son, and he loses Felicity. He even loses his arch-nemesis. Darhk has a totem from which he gains strength, and when the team break the totem he’s depowered. This last is a great plot development. We were all sick of seeing the Arrow team rush out to fight Darhk and immediately be defeated by magic over and over. (Even Darhk remarked how repetitive it was.) Now we don’t know what will happen next, and it’s exciting.
But Arrow makes one mistake—not with the story but with the directing. Here is the first scene of the episode.
And here is the last.
This episode is, in many ways, Felicity’s story. It’s Felicity who goes from happily trusting her fiancé to realizing she can’t be married to this man, it’s her struggle to walk that bookends the episode, and it’s her face we should have seen as she walks out. I don’t know why missing that shot was so important, but it is. We should have looked at her.