ARROW: Season Six Episode Twenty 'Shifting Allegiances' Review!
This weeks episode of Arrow puts Oliver in a difficult position as he attempts to continue his fight against Diaz all alone while focusing too much on NTA.
This week has some good aspects, however, this episode all-in-all was quite flawed as the story lacks any real intensity. Arrow has been struggling this season with its character, as well as a good villain and unfortunately 'Shifting Allegiances' doesn't do much to rectify the issues that Arrow has been facing. So here are our overall thoughts of episode twenty.
A lot of people have noticed this but season 6 has been filled with mediocrity all throughout. The similarities between the quality of Arrow's sixth season and Flash's third season are quite obvious in terms of storytelling. The difference is Flash delivered some fun episodes back in season 3, whereas this season of Arrow has been quite dull and predictable. The episode pretty much starts with Green Arrow in Russia as he is doing some favours for Anatoly in the hope that he'd shift allegiances and that's actually smart. While it doesn't work immediately, Anatoly does help Oliver later into the episode and comes to the realization that Ricardo Diaz is a dishonourable man who shouldn't be trusted. That's well and good, I didn't mind that part of the story but my issue comes with the side story which quickly felt like the main story.
New Team Arrow or whatever they're called are hunting Diaz and they find out that he's in bed with the Quadrant, this is done by the help of John Diggle and some useful intel from Mayor Lance. However, the issue is that the new team are simply not compelling to watch. They made the episode quite boring and while the side arc with Rene's PTSD was somewhat decent, everything else revolving NTA was just plain boring. Interactions between Diggle, Dinah, Curtis and Rene weren't exciting and came out quite weird. Instead of focusing more on scenes between the main hero and villain, the episode shifts its focus constantly, making it feel rather messy at times.
The arc with Mayor Lance and E-2 Laurel Lance continues to be perhaps the best part of this season. The scene in the Mayor's office between Lance and E-2 Laurel was really good, especially as actor Paul Blackthorne never disappoints. Katie Cassidy was quite good too here, she played the role of being distressed for her "father" really well and made it all too believable as her voice would tremble in certain scenes. The scene between Diaz, E-2 Laurel and Lance felt really uncomfortable as Diaz was touching Laurel inappropriately in front Lance as to implement the power of fear, that was quite a good scene too as it shows what kind of person Diaz is and essentially shows how Diaz will be controlling both E-2 Laurel and Mayor Lance for the rest of the season by the looks of it.
Now, essentially because Oliver "lost" the fight, he was required to leave the city but Diaz changed his mind and basically moved up the court date for Oliver's case of being Green Arrow. Next episode will give us two returning characters which are Tommy Merlyn and Christopher Chance who was also Human Target in season five. Human Target was Oliver's ploy last season when he was initially assassinated by the assassin that Tobias Church hired. It seems obvious from that and the promo for next episode that Christopher Chance will be imitating Tommy Merlyn so I don't think we'll be seeing E-1 Tommy Merlyn in this episode. Another theory is that Black Siren might've gotten E-2 Tommy Merlyn to help Oliver but that would seem unlikely.
The interactions between Oliver and Diaz were oddly funny? Oliver was being quite smug when Diaz was attempting to hurt Oliver as he was chained up which wasn't something I was expecting but I did enjoy it as it shows how Diaz doesn't really affect Oliver much in terms of physical fighting. When I was trying to compare what Oliver and Diaz have each gone through I ended up realizing that Oliver has gone through a lot more pain than that of Diaz so it didn't make much sense for Diaz to say he was born in hell... rather, it made him look weak as he considers what his gone through hell but Oliver has went through quite a lot more.
Concluding this review, I didn't enjoy the episode as much as I thought I would and again it was just mediocre with only some parts of the episode actually being good. The constant shift in focus was weird in the episode and other than the story of Oliver vs Diaz and the Lances basically being in danger from Diaz, everything else was boring and dragged the episode down badly. I ended up giving the episode a 6/10 as it focused too much on NTA and for me they were honestly the worst part so the writers focusing too much on that team didn't help the episode at all. What'd you think though? Be sure to let us know down in the comment section!