For the first few episodes of its third season, Arrow has been somewhat inconsistent. After a season premiere in which a whole heck of a lot happened, the subsequent installments have had to try to deal with the implications of each twist and turn. Diggle’s daughter was born and he benched himself. Oliver and Felicity’s relationship took a romantic...that ultimately proved catastrophic as Oliver ended their relationship before it had a chance to start. Quentin Lance—whose first name Team Arrow genuinely seems to believe is “Detective”—was promoted to captain and now rides a desk. Laurel handled the legal side of vigilante justice. There was plenty of material in the first 40 minutes of the premiere to get the season off to a promising start.
Then, in the final two minutes, an off-screen entity drove three arrows into Sara’s abdomen, knocking her backwards off of a rooftop and rather conclusively killing her. Sara died at Laurel’s feet, and Arrow has been scrambling to strike a conceivable balance ever since.
The most unfortunate effect has been the marginalizing of the original Team Arrow, whose unlikely comradery has long been one of the biggest draws to the show. With Olicity on the backburner and Diggle preoccupied by his infant daughter, the dynamic was altered for the worse. Last week’s episode—“The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak”—was a return to form on the Team Arrow front as Oliver and Digg gleefully met Felicity’s mom. Olicity was on the mend, and the Digglette was incorporated into the story without issue. Even Roy began to feel less like the summer intern and more like a member of the team. “Secret Origin” was a huge upswing in the quality of characer interactions, and fans everywhere began to hope that a new trend for the season was finally beginning.
Well, maybe “Guilty” will be an outlier.
Sadly, much of that dissonance can be attributed to Laurel’s plot. As the nominal female lead who nevertheless has gotten far less focus than Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity, Katie Cassidy’s Laurel felt unnatural in the sudden spotlight, and she was done a disservice by the construction of the episode. Instead of writing Laurel into the plot and immersing her organically with the other (and much more popular) characters as established at this point in Season 3, the show wrote the plot and characters around Laurel, and everybody felt a little bit…off.
Although Laurel spent about as much time with Ted Grant, her interactions with Oliver received the most attention in “Guilty.” As has become his modus operandi over the past few years, Oliver regressed into his least likeable self as he tried to deal with Laurel. A control freak even at the best of times, his determination to keep Laurel in the “Civilian” circle of the bizarre Venn diagram that is his life prevents him from allowing her much agency in her attempts to deal with Sara’s death in a way that does not correspond with his wishes.
On the other hand, Laurel continues her trend of hearing Oliver’s words without actually listening to them. Yes, he has wronged her in the past, and he certainly does spend a fair chunk of the episode being unattractively hypocritical in his attitude toward vigilantes not bearing the Arrow stamp of approval, but Laurel’s refusal to absorb the seriousness of Oliver’s warnings about vigilante life makes her look foolish to the extent that it’s difficult to sympathize with her when her plans go awry. We’ve seen the (occasionally self-inflicted) suffering and loneliness that Oliver endures in his crusade, and so we are able to forgive his rough lectures. With Laurel, we’ve seen her efforts to do good stemming from self-interest, and so her frequent trips to the hospital elicit eye-rolling more than empathy.
Laurel’s interactions with Ted Grant were better, although that is largely because he had not existed as a character beyond a few lines and a glistening torso before “Guilty.” Their relationship has the potential to be healthy and effective as mentor/mentee in a way that Oliver and Laurel never would. Of course, her determination to establish Ted’s innocence led to some serious abuse of power from her position in the District Attorney’s office, but we can’t have everything. Dare we ship it?
Fortunately for the much-maligned Laurel Lance, the individual most out of character in “Guilty” was actually mostly isolated in the Roy plotline. While Felicity’s skillset was once again conveniently expanded to include digital autopsies and forensic analysis, she remained more or less consistent on a personal level. No, the character least recognizable from his Season 1 and Season 2 self was the formerly steadfast John Diggle.
Long serving as a guide for Oliver who had followed a similar trajectory and come out intact, his behavior regarding Roy in “Guilty” was difficult to reconcile with his past role in Team Arrow. Upon hearing Roy’s broken confession that he believed himself responsible for Sara’s murder, Digg’s first instinct is to physically restrain the young man. When Oliver overrides this particular move, Digg changes tack. Despite knowing that—if Roy had indeed been guilty—Roy would have been under the influence of Mirakuru and therefore not culpable for his actions, Diggle argues that the only just response to Roy’s (as yet unconfirmed) crime would be to cut him loose and abandon him. Season 2 had unequivocally demonstrated that Roy does not do well when left to his own devices in an emotional state, and no one on Team Arrow had ever believed Roy morally responsible for the death of the police officer. John Diggle had been a soldier who did not believe in leaving any man behind. For him to campaign for abandoning Roy in Season 3 insults the character that had been established over two years and reeks of contrivance.
“Guilty” was not an awful episode. The boxing glove arrow alone is worth a rewind or five, and it fulfilled a few requirements for the third season to move forward. Laurel needed some screentime to bridge the gap from the damsel in distress who wears white coats to break into buildings to the leather-clad vigilante that we seem unable to avoid at this point, and the thread of the cop’s death at Roy’s hand had been left dangling at the end of last year’s finale. This episode was necessary. It just could have been executed far more enjoyably.
But next week looks awesome!
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