Arrow
Episode Title: “The Offer”
Channel: CW
Director: Dermott Downs
Writers: Beth
Schwartz and Brian Ford Sullivan
Genre: Action,
Adventure, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Runtime: 42
min
Rated: TV-14
Original Air Date: March 18,
2015
It's been over a month since the
audience saw Ra's make his offer to Oliver. For me “The Offer”
was met with excitement and anticipation. Sure, we all knew Oliver
was going to say no, but surely there would be consequences for his
refusal. Ra's, I'd imagine, is not used to being denied and the
wrath of a functionally immortal assassin must be terrible. Ra's
instead allowed Oliver to take Diggle and
Malcolm back home to Starling City as some sort of peace offering
while Oliver reconsiders his answer. He also told Ollie that it was
preordained that he'd take up the mantle of the Demon's Head, his
city would turn against him, and that the resources of the League
would allow him to do far more good than he has up to this point.
This
lead to Oliver questioning what he's actually accomplished up to this
point. When you consider; most of the guys he's gotten locked up
were released a few episodes ago, Quentin Lance has decided to hold
it against the Arrow that he knew of Sara's death, and that he walked
in on Felicity and Ray 'having a moment,' it's not a whole lot. The
threat of a new bad guy, Murmur, equipping himself and his thugs with
diamond-tipped cop killing ammunition gets team Arrow into the field
and offered a welcome respite from the pity party.
Oliver's
not the only one. He stashed Malcolm at Thea's home while Merlyn
recuperates. She spends most of the episode fantasizing about
killing him, and realizing that she's probably a bad person because
of that. At one point she lamented to Laurel that she can't even
remember who she was before her mother died. She says this as if she
were some upstanding citizen previously, which she most certainly
wasn't. Back in Nanda Parbat, Nyssa is having her own problems
understanding what Ra's is doing, offended that he would offer his
title to an outsider. After she halfheartedly attacks him I
understood him to say that if she didn't like it, go do something
about it. I expected to see her trying to undermine the Arrow's
working in Starling City, but instead she's befriending Laurel and
offering to train her. I'm truly confused by that bit of the story.
To
wrap up the episode the audience is shown a man in a costume
identical to Oliver's shooting and killing a few thugs. The man
tells the sole survivor to go and tell everyone what he saw. The
camera panned around and we see Ra's in the costume. While it wasn't
a total surprise that Ra's had a plan to make sure the city turned
against him, it was a surprise to see him doing the dirty work
himself. He seems like the kind of guy that would send an underling
to do that kind of work, I think it would have made more sense to
have Maseo doing the killing. Maybe Ra's is just bored and looking
to get out of the house.
You'll
probably notice that there's been no mention of the flashbacks. Over
the last few weeks the flashbacks had been improving, but this week
they were a waste of time. Oliver and Akio running through random
spots trying to avoid goons. I suppose the lack of anything of
substance was supposed to be redeemed by the one important thing to
happen, “Shado! What are you doing here?” but the reveal seemed
so cheap that it's certain to be a ploy. If it's not than a lot of
the important events in the last two seasons are completely
undermined.
Conclusion:
This was not the way I expected Arrow
to come back from its break. “The Offer” just lacked the big
moments necessary for a mini-premiere. Half of the characters
doubting their place in the world and what they stand for might work
during a run of consecutive episodes, but it failed to deliver here.
It was lackluster enough that I found myself thinking jokingly that
it's time to use some of that shared universe mojo, show Starling
City being affected by Barry Allen's jump back in time and lets get a
do over.
Rating:
6.5/10
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