Arrow - The Return - Review

Arrow, “The Return,” was written by the team of Marc Guggenheim and Erik Oleson and directed by Dermott Downs, whose credits include The Flash, Gotham, and The Tomorrow People. This was a fantastic episode with a twist on the title. The present focuses mainly on Oliver’s (Stephen Amell) return to Lian Yu, while the flashbacks feature a return to Starling City for Oliver. The episode features a number of terrific cameos from people we’ve lost and the juxtaposition of past and present helps to show us how far our characters have come and illuminates what’s motivating them now.

Willa Holland (Thea) really shines in this episode, and I’m really starting to get excited about her really joining the team. She has some fantastic scenes with Amell in this episode, and it’s nice to see the show really spending some time on that relationship. Of course, it’s hard to say whether Thea will feel compelled to risk her life in the service of others the way that Oliver is once Ra’s Al Ghul (Matt Nable) is dealt with.

Oliver is impressed with how much Thea has learned in 9 months of sparring with Malcolm (John Barrowman). I loved when she whacks him and he asks, “Did he teach you to cheat?” and she replies, “no such thing. Only survival and death.” Oliver is forced to concede, “He’s not wrong.” Slade (Manu Bennett) is also impressed at the change in Thea. The flashbacks also help to emphasize how far Thea has come. The show has always emphasized that characters need to go through a crucible to be forged into something new, and the flashbacks demonstrate that while Oliver was on the Island, Thea was already dealing with a crucible of loneliness and loss of her own.

On the Island, Thea has ample opportunity to show how tough she’s become. She helps Oliver take down Slade. She also lets Oliver dislocate her shoulder to be able to open the door to get them out of the cell. Thea asks him, “What is it going to take for you to stop treating me like this tiny little fragile object?” Perhaps on some level Thea knows what happened with Sara. She’s certainly relentless in getting Oliver to tell her the truth. When Slade asks if Oliver told Thea about Shado, it was bound to make her even more relentless given how she feels about secrets. I loved when she didn’t let Slade see how it bothered her. Instead she gets right up in his face and tells him, “I figured you’re a sick son of a bitch all on my own!” I loved how fierce she was in this scene.

Oliver tries to put Thea off initially by telling her that he couldn’t tell her about Sara because Laurel wanted to keep it a secret and that Sara had secrets that weren’t his to tell. He also keeps telling her that they don’t have time to talk about it. That they need to focus on getting off the Island/away from Slade. After Oliver barely saves Thea from getting hit by one of his old booby traps – and getting a hunk of stick lodged in his own arm/chest – Oliver isn’t careful enough to keep the truth from Thea.

She tells him that she can’t focus on anything other than how Sara died – it’s distracting her and only the truth will help her focus. He tells her that Malcolm killed Sara. Thea immediately says he was in Corto Maltese with her. Holland is brilliant in this scene as she goes from sure denial to dawning reality to horror. Oliver goes on: “He didn’t kill her directly. He used someone. He put them under the influence of a drug so she wouldn’t know what she was doing.” It’s the “she” that’s his undoing. Thea says, “She? She who?” and Oliver confirms, “You killed Sara.” Thea’s first reaction is Sara was her friend and how could Oliver not tell her. But Oliver insists, “Cause you weren’t you. You had no control over your actions. You can not blame yourself.”

Thea is then full of self-incrimination. She tells Oliver, “You were right about Malcolm, okay? He doesn’t love me. I’m an idiot.” And of course, a lot of us thought she was an idiot to go with him, at least at the time. Oliver, of course, tells her she’s not an idiot. And really, given that Malcolm really did step up to save her and keep her safe during the Siege, and he is her father, it would be hard for her not to have been drawn in by him at the time. When Thea gets the gun on Slade, she is ready to take out all of her anger on Slade – the anger she’s feeling about Malcolm and the anger at Slade for killing her mother. Oliver uses the anger for Malcolm against her, telling her that “Malcolm freed Slade to prove that we are killers like him. You need to prove him wrong.” Of course, Thea doesn’t pull the trigger.

Slade however, taunts Oliver by telling him, “She’s touched by darkness. You can see it in her.” And of course, Slade has to get a dig in to Oliver about Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) by asking how she is. Slade asks Oliver, “How many people can Oliver Queen lose before there’s no more Oliver Queen?” Oliver hasn’t lost Thea, however, and he tries to keep her from losing anyone else too. He asks Thea not to tell Laurel that she was the one to kill Sara. He tells her it would hurt then both too much.

Malcolm is waiting at the apartment when they get back. He’s not at all happy that Oliver has told Thea the truth. But then he didn’t get any brownie points for letting Slade lose on the Island with them, either. Thea tells him to stop using Ra’s as an excuse for everything: “The only person that I’m afraid of right now is you. Just stop. I will work with you to stop Ra’s because that’s what my brother says we need to do. So I will be your student, I will be your partner. Even if I have to I will be your soldier. But never again will I be your daughter.” Barrowman has very little to do on screen or say in this episode, but the one shot of his face after this speech is incredible. She has definitely wounded him where it counts, and you can see the devastation on his face.

It was a mixed blessing seeing so many characters back whom we’ve lost. It’s interesting that gravestones play an important role in the episode. In the flashbacks, Oliver follows Thea to his and his father’s graves. He sees that she’s troubled and alone and she’s visited by her drug dealer, Jordan (Jesse Haddock), and Tommy (Colin Donnell)! Tommy hurt the most as he tries to be a big brother to Thea and confesses he thinks about Oliver every day. He tries to tell Thea not to grow up too fast and chases the drug dealer off. He thanks Thea for the birthday card she sent him but makes it clear she won’t be welcome at his party. Of course, when she shows up, he lets her in and then covers for her. It’s fun to watch them interact now that we know they are half-brother and sister.

We also have Thea and Oliver visit Robert’s (Jamey Sheridan) grave on the Island. Thea remarks that his grave at home always felt hollow because he wasn’t’ there. She’s also pleased because it was like Robert was watching over Oliver while he was on the Island. There’s also a powerful scene between Laurel (Katie Cassidy) and Quentin (Paul Blackthorne) at Sara’s now occupied grave.

Oliver and Maseo (Karl Yune) are in Starling City to get the bio-weapon from China White (Kelly Hu). She’s working with Peter Kang (James Rha) who has ties to Queen Consolidated. The need Oliver to hack into the computer system. Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) makes an odd comment when she says “you’re still useful to me and my superior.” I’m still thinking that much of what she does is done under coercion of some kind. Regardless, by the end of the episode, we do get to meet her superior, General Matthew Shrieve (Marc Singer). I have to say, he seems pretty friendly and agreeable, offering to drop Oliver anywhere he wants to go just as soon as he’s been de-briefed in China. Are they – or we – actually going to trust him? I think Singer is a terrific addition to the cast.

In addition to Tommy and Thea, Oliver also sees Laurel and Felicity from a distance. Felicity almost catches him when he’s breaking into the Queen Consolidated computer system. She is as adorable as ever as she mutters to herself what a shame Oliver is dead because he’s cute. I do wish they’d managed to dress her more like the Felicity we met in the first season, however.

Oliver shows up at Tommy’s party and we get a glimpse of Diggle (David Ramsey) as part of the security team with his brother, Andy (Eugene Byrd). Diggle is obviously wasting his talents with such a menial task – helping puking party-goers. He reminds us that he’s fresh back from the war and freshly divorced from Lyla. Andy tells him he should never have divorced her. It’s a nice reminder of how much Oliver has changed Diggle’s life for the better.

Oliver is planning to stay in the shadows as he was ordered to do, but can’t help himself from trying to warn Jordan off from selling drugs to Thea. We see how far he’s come as a cold-blooded killer as he quickly and silently kills Jordan and covers his tracks by tossing him off the upstairs hallway. Is it possible that between the time Oliver is in Starling and when he finally gets to go wherever he wants to that Oliver decides the only place he’s fit for is the Island? That he’s too much the killer? Which we see clearly, he no longer is. After all, he tells Thea in the present that the Island reminds him of who he has become.

When the police arrive to investigate we get a glimpse of Detective Hilton (Roger Cross). I think it’s great that so many actors were willing to come back for cameos. Clearly, Lucas was a long-suffering and good partner for Quentin. Quentin show up to the scene drunk and we see that he’s a mean drunk. Of course, this is shown in an early scene when Laurel goes to drag him out of a bar. Oliver sees Quentin being rude to Tommy, Laurel, and Thea before Maseo shows up to drag him back to Waller. I loved Lucas quipping that maybe the murderer was a vigilante just trying to rid the city of drug dealers!

It’s hilarious when Maseo gives Oliver crap for risking getting seen. Oliver says it’s ok, he pulled the hoodie-thing over his face. Maseo tells him, “that disguise wouldn’t work even if you smeared greasepaint all over your face!” And yet it does!!! Of course, it is really funny when you consider how quickly a stranger recognized Oliver. Oliver refuses to go with Maseo because he’s seen the wreckage he’s caused of everyone’s lives, and if he goes with Maseo and gets killed, he can never fix it. I really like the chemistry between Yune and Amell, so I’m hoping that he’s going to get pulled into the present storyline at some point. Though I bet Oliver is going to somehow reunite him with Tatsu and they’ll ride off into the sunset together.

Maseo tries to convince Oliver that if he wants redemption, he can start with the lives that will be killed with the bio-weapon if China White sells it. Oliver maintains those people are strangers. Maseo tells him his friends and family will be ashamed of the selfish choice he’s making and Oliver tells him they are already ashamed of him.

Oliver returns to the Queen mansion – and it was good to see this character again too! As much as I adore the set of Thea’s apartment, I miss the mansion. Oliver plays the file he found at Queen Consolidated and we have the final cameo from Jamey Sheridan as Robert.

        He’s left a file for Oliver and he tells his son: “I’m not the man you think I am Oliver. I didn’t save our city. I failed it. I did something terrible and in my efforts to make it right I ignored my conscience and made alliances with terrible people. There’s a book with a list of their names. And I told myself everything I did I did for my family. That’s a lie because what good is a family without a soul. You can right my wrongs. You can be better than I was. You can save this city.” Sheridan demonstrates why it would have been nice to have more of him on the show, and this speech demonstrates what careful writing goes into the show. It doesn’t track 100% with Oliver’s mindset when we first saw him in Season one, but it does track perfectly with the past and present storylines of this episode and season. Oliver needs to question his alliance with Malcolm and what that says about the soul of his Arrow family. It also applies to Oliver and Thea teaming up with Malcolm and it’s made more problematic by the fact that technically, Malcolm is also family.

In the end, Oliver chooses to save Maseo – I loved him arriving in the nick of time. I also loved how China White stays standing, looking bored in the middle of a hail of gunfire. I was a bit confused, however, as to who was shooting. Did Oliver and Maseo have back up with machine guns? If so, I could see why Oliver wouldn’t have been that worried about Maseo, although in the end, the other ARGUS soldiers seem pretty useless!

Finally, the flashbacks also shed light on Laurel and what motivates her. Given the resistance to seeing her as the Canary, I thought this was especially well done. As I said there are two scenes between Cassidy and Blackthorne that are particularly good. When she drags him away at Tommy’s party, he sneers at her that he’s sorry he embarrassed her. She tells him he’s only embarrassing himself. It becomes clear that he’s angry about the job she’s taking with a corporate law firm in San Francisco. Tommy’s already wondered at her abandoning her quest to save the world. Later we see that Quentin reminding her about why she became a lawyer in the first place is what got her to take the job we see her in in season one. We also get to see Tommy ask her out to dinner, once more circling us back to season one.

The final scene between Laurel and Quentin in the present is powerful. Even though he’s not drunk, Quentin still lashes out in his grief, and he does have a bottle with him. Laurel reminds him that when she was going to take the job in San Francisco, he was mad that she wasn’t choosing a life to help people. She tells him that “my whole life was heading to this” – becoming the Canary. That, of course, isn’t what has Quentin so angry with her. All along he’s felt there was a special bond between he and Laurel, that while her mother and Sara were the free spirits, he and Laurel always had each other. By not telling him – and it hurts worse when he finds out Dinah knows – she’s broken that bond. Laurel suggests that they need to go to a meeting. Quentin agrees but insists they go to separate meetings. He then hands her the bottle and leaves. Not a good thing to do to an addict, but Laurel pours it out.

Another great episode, packed with great performances and some nice fight scenes on the Island. One tiny complaint. How is Thea able to fight like that after a dislocated shoulder and shouldn’t Oliver have had some fallout from that wound? I loved getting to see all these familiar faces back. What did you think of the episode? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

About the Author - Lisa Macklem

I do interviews and write articles for the site in addition to reviewing a number of shows, including Supernatural, Arrow, Agents of Shield, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Forever, Defiance, Bitten, Glee, and a few others! Highlights of this past year include covering San Diego Comic Con as press and a set visit to Bitten. When I'm not writing about television shows, I'm often writing about entertainment and media law in my capacity as a legal scholar. I also work in theatre when the opportunity arises. I'm an avid runner and rider, currently training in dressage.