Arrow Season 2, Episode 22 “Streets of Fire”
Written by Jake Coburn & Ben Sokolowski
Directed by Nick Copus
Season finale airs Wednesday, 5/14 at 8pm ET on The CW
The last few weeks have seen a dramatic crescendo on Arrow, with Slade’s plan to destroy Oliver’s entire universe coming to light (or reveling in new found darkness, however you’d like to put it). With it has come a host of changes to Arrow‘s world: the death of Moira, Laurel learning the Arrow’s identity, and Thea’s disenchantment with her family and love life, major shifts in world dynamics that needed to occur to both push its characters into new stages of development, but also to neatly arrange the dominoes of the season’s endgame. “Streets of Fire” exists in the shadow of that endgame, an hour attempting to maintain momentum heading into the finale – but outside of a few inconsequential developments, mostly exists as an extended tease of what’s to come in next week’s “Unthinkable.”
Of course, the most obvious example of this is the oddly-inserted moments of redemption for both Sara and Blood, which come at inopportune times for the story (especially for Sara, who randomly reappears to help Laurel) and its dramatic build-up. The former of these isn’t wrong-headed – it’s just awkward, a very thin attempt for Arrow to quickly dismiss Sara’s struggle over her conscience, by her sister calling her assassin name “pretty” and having her save a child from a burning building. Maybe it’s the chemistry between Lotz and Cassidy (which seemed fine in “Birds of Prey”), but their conversation in a Starling City alley is one of the season’s most awkward, a weird exchange of sad faces by Canary and encouraging smiles by Laurel, that felt tossed-in, more a distraction from more pressing issues at hand than a brief, rewarding detour into Sara’s damaged psyche.
Blood’s “redemption” feels equally rushed: what did he actually think Slade was going to do with his army? If Blood ever thought he was in control of anything since Slade’s shown his face in Starling City, he’s an idiot that deserved the two katanas Ravager placed through his chest. Much of Blood’s story has been around his quest for power: his proclomations about “loving” the city and only wanting to protect it, can only go so far when he knowingly allows Slade to build an army of psychopaths to level the city that Oliver Queen loves. It’s certainly believable that Blood would want to save the city that created him; that’s just not the character we’ve really watched for 21 episodes, driven by a hatred of his father (which turns out to be fear of his father, detailing the origins of his mask design to Oliver and Diggle) and a desire to level Starling City and rebuild it.
And when that starts happening, he revolts because Slade’s taking it too far? He’s doing exactly what he said he’d do: and after repeating it once again to Sebastian, Slade kills off Blood in anti-climatic fashion, his last act an empty redemptive one (he gives the Mirakuru cure that might not work back to Oliver, begging the question why Slade still trusted him with it at all, unless he planned for that response). Blood did not “die as he lived” as the saying goes, his character doing a complete 180 in his final minutes, flying in the face of everything he’d said previously this season.
It certainly makes for an odd end to the story line: after aspiring to work alongside Slade in order to use a Mirakuru-enhanced army to control the city, Blood dies trying to stop the exact same plan. And as the big focal point of the episode’s second half, it makes for a very head-scratching development in the final hour: a confusing climatic moment in the vein of Thea shooting her father Malcolm, right after he saves her life and makes a pretty convincing case as to why she shouldn’t kill him. This could very easily be a mislead heading into the final hour (I’d be willing to bet it is), and it’s an unnecessary one: with so many other more pressing, consequential events happening elsewhere, Thea’s post-teenage angst takes up space that could be better used elsewhere.
Then again, “Streets of Fire” exists in the shadows of next week’s episode, which sets itself up in the final minutes as a very Dark Knight Rises-esque scenario: A.R.G.U.S. waits outside of Starling City, a drone waiting patiently until sunrise, when it will level Starling City and the 550,000+ residents living in it. Amanda Waller finds herself in a very tough position (though I’d argue an army of 50 isn’t worth leveling an entire city… again, unnecessary stakes), which in turns put Oliver in a very, very difficult position, tasked with defeating an army and his biggest personal enemy, all in the confines of a standard hour-long network drama. “Streets of Fire” isn’t necessarily the most encouraging precursor, but after a season full of ambitious story lines and exponential growth, “Unthinkable” presents Arrow with a huge opportunity to once again redefine itself, and firmly establish itself in the upper echelon of television dramas.
Other thoughts/observations:
– who does Oliver love “the most”? This episode does a lot to set up a debate between Felicity and Laurel, but leaves Oliver’s current girlfriend (I guess not really, at this point) Sara holding the short stick here.
– Ravager apparently doesn’t know about Shado… dum dum dum!
– Felicity and Oliver share a beautiful scene, carried by Emily Bett Rickard’s affecting performance. She’s so fucking good in those moments, it completely redeems the heavy-handed nature of the scene.
– the fact we haven’t seen Sara’s first “death” makes me nervous they’ll parallel it with another one in the finale. Here’s to hoping that doesn’t happen; Canary’s been more than a pleasant addition to season two.
– Laurel, stepping the fuck up: “I don’t need you right now; everyone else does. Go save the city.”
– If Oliver never has to say “I failed this city” again, I will be a happy Arrow viewer for years to come.
– on the island, Oliver gets promised Russian speaking lessons, and gets caught (with Sara) by Slade and his men.
– There’s an opening for District Attorney in Starling City – will Laurel get the job, or be passed up yet again? That’s where the real drama is at, folks.
— Randy