Beware, MASSIVE SPOILERS follow… Still here? Ok, good. Before the mid-season break some pretty big things happened. Namely, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) died at the hands of Ra’s Al Ghul (Matt Nable), the Head of the Demon. It turns out that he wasn’t nearly as dead as we thought.
Everyone knew Oliver would be back at some point. You can’t have a show called Arrow without Arrow. It’s just a shame they didn’t let fans squirm a few episodes longer. At the very end of “Left Behind” Oliver’s corpse is brought back up the mountain by a mysterious robed man and into a hut in order to be resuscitated. Low and behold, Maseo (Karl Yune) was the robed figure and his presumed dead wife, Tatsu (Rila Fukushima), is the one tasked with resurrecting him. Which she does. It kind of undercut a lot of the emotional development from the rest of the episode and feels way too fast. Aside from that, there was a lot to like in “Left Behind”.
He’s just taking a nap… I think
The mid-season premiere rightly focuses on Team Arrow without their leader. They are unfocused and a complete wreck, just as you would expect from an army without a point man. Diggle (David Ramsay) and Arsenal (Colton Haynes) do an admirable job stepping up in Ollie’s absence but things just aren’t the same. Though it was cool to see Diggle suit up as the Arrow at the beginning of the episode. Both of them go through their own grieving processes but none feel the weight of the loss more so than Felicity. She spends the first half of the episode denying Oliver’s death but once she gets the proof she was desperately trying to avoid she gives in and gives up. Emily Bett Rickards does a good job showing just how deep the loss of Oliver cut her. She has lost two friends over the course of the season and it has finally taken its toll (something that she brings up when trying to convince Ray (Brandon Routh) not to suit up as the Atom. Everyone gets a chance a shot at emotional material here and for the most part it’s handled well. Arrow has always been a serious show and “Left Behind” doesn’t shy away from that tone.
In addition to the sappy stuff episode 10 sees a lot of action, maybe some of the bust of the series. The big fight sequence with Diggle and Roy in the warehouse featured some really cool choreography and did a splendid job showing how capable the back-ups could be when let loose. Katie Cassidy also gets to stir it up a bit as she finally suited up as Black Canary. There isn’t as much emphasis on her loss in this episode (there was a lot to cover) but it is cool to see her come into her own as a vigilante.
Arsenal (Colton Haynes) in the middle of a firefight!
Speaking of the action, what’s a fight without a villain? Arrow newcomer Vinnie Jones does a fantastic job as crime lord Brick. We immediately get a sense of how deranged this guy is (he gives his enemies a gun at close range and tempts them to shoot him before he can kick the crap out of them… gnarly stuff). In a single episode he already outclasses a number of the villains from previous seasons and the fact that he isn’t offed by the end of it means we can be hopeful of even more development in the future. His master plan is a bit basic but it’s a nice way to unravel the world of Arrow in Oliver’s absence.
The flashback content this week served only as a way to help explain the reappearance of Tatsu at the end. Normally the flashbacks share a theme from the present timeline but with Oliver “dead” I guess that wasn’t necessary. I still can’t stand Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Amanda Waller but that is more of my issue of the way her character is written as opposed to Cynthia’s portrayal.
Emily Bett Rickards and Brandon Routh as Felicity and Ray Palmer in “Left Behind”
It was obvious that Oliver wasn’t going to remain dead for long, I just hoped that the writers would have found the courage to leave him on the side of that mountain a tad longer to let Roy and Diggle shine. It will be interesting to see how they explain his sudden resurrection, especially since the famed Lazarus Pits had no influence in the matter. There are a ton of unanswered questions at this point and with a number of key characters still yet to make their season debuts (Manu Bennet!) I’m left wondering if there is enough time to get through them all.
“Left Behind” does a great job showing how hard everyone is hit by the disappearance of Oliver only to render that emotion moot by the time the credits roll. Had they kept that reveal for a later episode “Left Behind” would have been much more satisfying.
Overall I give this episode 7/10