Arrow S03E06: Invasion Of The Pod People

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.

Arrow: S03E06 Plot Summary And Promo

Ted Grant is accused of murder when a body is found strung up in the Wildcat gym. In flashbacks, Maseo asks Tatsu to help jog Oliver's memory so he can remember where an informant for China White stashed key information; and Roy shares a secret with Felicity. x

"Guilty" airs on 12 November 2014 at 8PM EST on The CW. 

"The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak," or, "Why Not All Heroines Need Masks"

On November 5, the long-awaited episode of Arrow entitled “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak” finally aired. After first watch (which will probably be followed by a rewatch or three), I'm fairly certain that it will go down as one of the best in the show’s entire run. Comic, dramatic, and tragic all at once, the episode centers on everybody’s favorite hacker as her troubled past comes back with a vengeance.

Despite being a fan favorite since the first season and emerging as the hero's lady love to in the third, Felicity Smoak was the main character with the least available backstory. Fans knew that she hated kangaroos and loved mint chip ice cream, but we had to fill in an awful lot of blanks for ourselves. The concentrated dose of Felicity as promised in this installment was one that plenty were anticipating even more than last week’s milestone fiftieth.

Fortunately, “The Secret Origin Of Felicity Smoak” was a pretty great hour of television on all fronts. None of the characters were sacrificed on the altar of shoddy plotting. Unlike Oliver’s frankly baffling decision in “The Magician” to alienate the League of Assassins for the sake of protecting mass murderer Malcolm Merlyn, the events leading up to this week’s climax progressed naturally, and Felicity was able to save the day in her own episode without marginalizing the rest of Team Arrow’s roles. Nobody had to look bad for her to look good. Felicity and her mother would likely not have made it to the end were it not for Diggle and Roy taking care of the criminals outside and Oliver defying gravity to destroy the automatic targeting weapons inside. Without the brawn of boys, our brainy girl would not have survived.

And that’s okay.