Bratva – When General walker escapes military custody, Oliver and the team follow him to Russia to prevent him selling a nuclear device. Along the way, they’ll run into Oliver’s Bratva past and in the flashbacks Talia convinces Oliver to take up his father’s mission, but before settling things with Kovar.
It’s become common practice on Arrow for characters or stories form the flashbacks to eventually in the present day events. That usually involves people turning up like the Spanish Inquisition in Star City but this week’s episode took a much better approach by bringing Team Arrow to Russia and introducing them to Oliver’s Bratva familiars. It felt much more organic to the existing story even linked nicely back to Oliver’s prior season tables in Star City’s Russian gangs. Alongside that, it was also our first good (mostly) full team adventure in a while with Digggle back in the fold and surprisingly Dinah Drake already in the field. Although despite of nuclear weapons and being in the land of AK47s, the episode is lighter on action than expected and much of that sees the gang out of costume so that nobody conveniently links their trip to seeing Star City heroes in Russia (it doesn’t quite go to plan though). In fact the best action comes from the opening flashbacks sequence of Talia’s and Oliver’s beta test of The Hood.
Could this be the beginning of the Dark Felicity Saga? Because following on from last week, it almost feels like she is replicating Flashback Oliver’s path of taking more militant action and in her own words fighting fire with fire. It’s definitely a good character arc. Not only does it discourage her overly used weepy scenes, Emily Bett Richards makes quite the convincing badass and seeing that side of Felicity is highly entertaining. The Russian club extortion scene works particularly well by pairing her with Curtis and Rory to easily play more comedic roles, making her look more stronger and by comparison. This also echoes well into Diggle’s story as his guilt and drive for revenge over General Walker overrides his better judgement. It compounds into a larger theme of the supporting Team Arrow members embodying the qualities of Oliver’s older vigilante state, like meeting Oliver was their Queen’s Gambit incident and now 5 years later they’re becoming the same hard believing killer he was upon returning to Starling City.
Not only is it awesome to have Paul Blackthorne and Quentin Lance back but I really like what they did in pairing him with Wild Dog. The pair has some great chemistry together with Rene’s cocky quips bouncing well off Quentin’s stern and serious persona when they’re working on the interview. Rene alluding to their past connection was also a nice touch that added sentiment without feeling forced. There’s an idle reference about Rene becoming Quentin’s assistant as Deputy Mayor, and I really hope that happens. Not only will it keep the pair together but it brings Rene into the Mayor’s office stories. Speaking of which, for the first time in five episodes, we actually get at least a respectable helpfully of Mayor Oliver Queen material. This is what the show should be doing. We want to see the problems and drama of Oliver living this double life not spending an episode entirely with one persona or the other.
Is Greg Berlanti and co. building a team line up behind the scenes? There has been talk of a new CW/Arrowverse show debuting this autumn. This week’s Supergirl wrote Miss Martian out for the immediate future. Now, Arrow has decommissioned Rag Man. Yes, this is heavy speculation (because we’re geeks... that’s we do) but this could be early stages positioning characters for a new Teen Titans/Young Justice style team-up show of younger characters like this pair. By then, The Flash will have Wally West’s Kid Flash ready to make such a jump and Colton Haynes has expressed interest in returning as Red Arrow/Arsenal. Keep your eyes peeled for any further surprising character departures.
The longer running story of Oliver and Susan is definitely more interesting as her research connects further dots. There’s certainly a possibility the show is heading towards a public reveal of Oliver’s identity. For now though, Bratva is a good episode that links Arrow’s past and present storylines well while giving us a field trip break from the norm. Although Flash and Legends are taking a romantic week off for Valentines night, like Supergirl, Arrow will still have a new episode next week.