Arrow S03E04 – Review

It’s been a while since we’ve heard about Ollie’s no-kill policy. I daresay we’ve even come to take it for granted, especially after he chose not to kill Slade Wilson in the second season finale. And this is a man who killed Ollie’s mom, estranged him from his sister, and damaged his other loved ones and city in any number of ways. Sparing that kind of man pretty much seals Ollie’s commitment to being a fully-fledged hero.

Obviously, this will create some tension with less likeminded folks, especially when the person being spared is as vile as Malcolm Merlyn. Thea may somehow be able to set aside the fact that he’s a mass murderer, but nobody else will, especially Dinah (who lost her boyfriend to Merlyn) and Nyssa (who thinks she lost her girlfriend to him, besides the family grudge). Both women demand Ollie to reverse course for Merlyn, slippery slopes be damned.

Even the most principled people can probably agree Merlyn deserves to die and wouldn’t mind if Ollie was the one who did it, but there are reasons besides principle why Ollie is right to refuse. On top of the icky factor that he’d be killing his sister’s biological dad, once he executes Merlyn, he’ll be on the same road he was in Hong Kong. Even though he acts out against Waller afterward, the fact that he did assassinate a man upon her orders, smoothly and no questions asked, shows he was already losing his boundaries for killing. That’s the vigilante he was in season one; he can’t risk regressing even with one well-deserved death.

But that’s not the way he frames it to Dinah and Nyssa—not that they’d be on board even if he did. Still, you imagine he’d be on slightly better terms with them if instead of emphasizing that Merlyn’s under his protection, he turned the villain over to the cops (more likely, A.R.G.U.S., since Merlyn knows his identity) for whatever Merlyn has coming. It’s actually hard to understand why Ollie doesn’t do this, unless it’s narrative necessity; locking up Merlyn would put an untimely halt to his and Thea’s creepy father-daughter relationship.

Speaking of which, Thea has officially joined the lying game after denying to Ollie’s face any contact with her dad. But that’s fine, because Ollie hasn’t entirely kept up his promise to be more forthcoming, either. He insists he’s making an effort even by informing Thea that Merlyn’s still alive and looking for her, but baby-stepping won’t do. Merlyn’s right when he says Ollie is so focused on the Arrow work that he loses sight of his family. The thing is, Ollie’s been through this scenario before, with Diggle, Felicity, Dinah, Roy, etc., and he only got past it by bringing them into the Team Arrow fold. He needs to do the same with Thea and it’s weird that after declaring he will last episode, he’s decided to keep the secrets going a little while longer.

These two shortsighted decisions are bound to unleash a lot of trouble for this coming season. Thea is more attached to Merlyn than ever after her kidnapping incident, not realizing it’s her brother who actually rescued her. Ollie’s refusal to turn over Merlyn also serves effectively as a declaration of war against Ra’s, which will bring an entirely different level of enemy to the show. It’s this latter development that’ll be compelling to watch, as Team Arrow is still pretty small-time to be thinking it can take on someone of Ra’s’ stature.

– Minhquan Nguyen