Arrow 7x05 "The Demon" Episode Review
Major Spoilers are included in this episode review. Please read with caution.
This episode moved the plot and pushed Oliver’s character development in one swoop. The title of this week’s episode should’ve been obvious that The League of Assassins had some connection or sway in Slabside Maximum Prison, but I wasn’t expecting Talia Al Ghul to return from the grave… Her return was really shocking and a disappointment to the whole “season five cliffhanger”… We thought she died, but Talia managed to survive courtesy of Ricardo Diaz’s drugs.
How she ended up at Slabside? “An old foe from Gotham”. The allusions are getting stronger as we progress closer to the Elseworlds crossover.
On a serious note, Talia Al Ghul’s return enhances Oliver’s current dilemma and readdresses how his former mentor taught him about separating his two identities. She reminds him that keeping them separate made him stronger, but now that world has seen him as both Oliver Queen and the Green Arrow, he’s losing sense of his identity.
Not just from a moral standpoint either… The psychiatrist from last week’s episode is revealed to be doing illegal experimentation on the prisoners. He is robbing them of their identities in order to erase violent tendencies. Oliver and Talia hatch an escape plan from Slabside, but only if they save the prisoners too. Oliver’s one condition…
There was an awesome callback to the season three finale when Oliver declares he is not Inmate 4587 but rather “My Name is Oliver Queen” right before making his getaway! Such a great time to find his self-worth and a better reason for Talia to make her return to the show. Oliver and Talia fight their way through prison guards and even pull out an awesome hallway fight scene… which is nowhere as glorious as Daredevil’s season one hallway fight scene, but it was impressive.
In the end, Talia escapes but promises to give the hard drive of evidence to Felicity. Oliver decides to stay and serve out his sentence, as running as a fugitive will not help his family.
Oliver effectively shuts down the illegal level two and is returned to level one with his best friend Stanley. This is where Stanley passes on the message: “Felicity has a lead on Diaz”.
Felicity teams up with Laurel E2 and Dinah after discovering Oliver is nowhere to be found. Level Two is not in Slabside’s records, so the ladies try to find evidence of illegal activity to expose the operation and save Oliver from being erased. I thought this little team up worked for the most part, mostly for Laurel’s sass… Katie Cassidy made the entire thing work through her sass, let me process that for a minute.
Anyway, Felicity and Friends… I mean “Team Felicity” managed to give Slabside a crazy PR nightmare after using the evidence to expose the criminal activity. Laurel also suggests that they use this situation to their advantage by trying to free Oliver from prison, after she offers to share a pizza with Felicity.
The “Curtis” side-plot was the weak link of the episode. Without diving too much into it, he is asked to go undercover for ARGUS but ends up freaking out because of the trauma. Yeah, the show gave him second thoughts about being Mr. Terrific after everything that happened in the last season… I do respect the writers for giving Curtis something to work with, but it fell short when he overcome it by the end of the season. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as Oliver and his former mentor kicking ass on level two.
Ricardo Diaz is making his power moves by the last minutes of the episode… starting with Anatoli. I’m scared for the man. Let us see if he survives into next week’s.
Elseworlds trailer also got released… What are we all thinking? Comment/Discuss.