“Restoration” gives us exactly what it sounds like it will give us. After the turbulence of last season, the show irons out its rough edges and sets the stage for the next big thing. while positioning several more potential “big things” for us to anticipate.
Felicity Pounds the Pout Out of Her Guys
Hey, when people were discussing what they wanted to see in the next season, was there anyone anywhere who said, “I really hope to see Dig and Ollie be mad at each other for a long time”? No, of course there isn’t, because that sucks as an idea. To the show’s credit, the writers know that that, and uses the show’s most well-liked character as a mouthpiece.
Felicity is visibly disappointed with Ollie and Dig’s behavior through the first third of the episode, and when their antagonism nearly gets them both killed—Dig by the entourage of Mina Fayad, the woman who hired Deadshot to kill his brother, and Ollie by a third-rate evil Gambit—she demands they resolve their differences. And they do. It’s back to fun banter by the end of the episode! Hurray!
Not that the resolution does either character much good; Evil Gambit just goes to prison, while Mina gets killed by Darhk for not being effective enough at killing the Arrow gang. But there will be other opportunities. And in the meantime, we see Dig reach into a HIVE agent’s mouth and pull his whole tooth out. That was crazy, am I right?
Felicit-He
Or should I call him Felici-T? Mister Terrific has made T-balls. They explode. I like that Arrow got right down to it. The guy is going to be a superhero. Why be coy?
Also, did Arrow just explain the fact that a guy can rip playing card tattoos off his skin and turn them into metal because of the metal oxide that allows homing pigeons to sense that earth’s magnetic field? Did it? God, I love this show!
No, wait. Felicity just used a machine gun. Now I love this show.
Barrow-MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
No, wait. John Barrowman is in this episode. Now I love this show.
Yes, the Man Most Likely To Be Imagined As A Centaur (by me) is back on television, and he’s enjoying himself every single second that we see him. Nyssa wants him to die. Laurel wants him to restore Sara to life. Thea wants him to help her figure out how to contain her bloodlust.
He decides he will “help” only one of them. He tells Thea that she has traces of all the killers that have ever bathed in the pit, and that she will feel bloodlust until she kills “the one who hurt her.” (Convenient wording alert.) Since the original Ra’s is dead and that can’t happen, she’ll just have to kill people every few weeks to control the cravings.
It’s not that I don’t understand Thea’s anger with him. It’s just that Thea doesn’t come in any flavor other than brat. So somehow when she screams in his face about how she wants him to be a normal father, she comes off looking like the bad guy. He, meanwhile, looks briefly mad enough to vomit up a plague of frogs, but instead vomits up a completely unbelievable story about a mountain sage who can help her. Then he sends a couple of men to attack her so she can kill them and feel better. (And I have to say, she looks full-on demented when she slits the second man’s throat. Perhaps I underestimated her.)
Finally, in a last-ditch effort to get her to like him, Merlyn revives Sara. And, look, I know that that black cleavage-baring outfit was Sara’s uniform, but who buries their sister in a bustier? That is the least classy-looking corpse I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a billion sexy zombie costumes this month alone.
And what happens? What we all knew was going to happen. Sara’s back, people! She’s a slavering beast, but it’s all going to be okay. Or, maybe it isn’t because Nyssa destroyed the Lazarus Pit. Either way, it’s going to be entertaining.
The Wig-less Report
Dear Diary,
It has been only seven days since my Artificial Samson has been Delilah-ed, and yet each of those days has been as dismal as the expressions on the faces of the captive drug harvesters that Ollie oversees on Lian Yu. Each heartbeat is as uninspired as the name of the drug—Slam—that the slaves are harvesting. My every hour is as tortured as the suspects Oliver knocks around in order to figure out who stole some the product that they’re growing.
I try to tame my racing mind, and yet I cannot help but hope. Could it be that, like the woman Oliver Queen supposedly executes for the theft of the drugs, the wig is merely faking death? Could it be that Stephen Amell only pretended to bury the wig in a shallow grave in the Canadian island woods? Could it be that they’re in league with each other, biding their time, waiting for an opportunity to reunite? It seems foolish, but sometimes I truly believe I will see that minimally-refurbished shag carpet again, in this season or the next!
I cannot continue. The tears blind me.
-Esther Inglis-Arkell