Arrow Season 2 Episode 15
What They Say:
The Promise – Oliver is stunned when he discovers that Slade is in STarling City; back on the island, Sara and Oliver form a plan to deal with Slade’s growing Mirakuru-induced rage.
Content:
Arrow spent a lot of time in the previous episode working through some character material, focused heavily on the whole Lance family and the issues that stemmed from Sara being back, and that worked really well. We’ve got Laurel trying to fix her life now, Quentin being shut down hard when it came to Dinah and Oliver making it clear that he’s done with Laurel while she’s in this phase because of how she was acting out. And some really good stuff between Oliver and Sara, which also bled into some bits with Felicity that felt pretty natural since she was finally feeling very comfortable as a part of the group and then threatened by Sara’s arrival. But as really strong as i felt it all was, it was that last minute when you see Oliver walk into the room at home to see Slade there, grinning like a bastard, introducing himself to him while Oliver’s mother stood by. It was cold, brutal and left you craving the next moment quicker than it could be delivered.
And that moment plays out just as beautifully as you’d want as we see Slade giving him all sorts of grins, making the right kinds of statements and just driving the knife into Oliver in a way that hurts him big but that Oliver can’t show. You have to love how Slade just revels in the situation, toying with it all between mother and son while scoring plenty of points along the way. With the two of them essentially adversaries at this point, the show plays it well by also giving us more time on the island as well as the three that were there work hard to get off of it, which includes a hellish amount of training on Oliver’s part in order to do what’s right. We’d seen the slow evolution of Oliver the frat boy into what he’d become in Starling City, so moving it forward more here definitely gives us the bit of connection that we needed after all this time.
But even though we have them working together, there’s still some potential tension there going on in regards to the Mirakuru, particularly since Oliver and Sara still aren’t quite sure how Slade is with things. But that’s almost the last of the concerns as they’re moving closer to attacking the freighter and Sara is worried that Ivo will reveal to Slade that Oliver made the choice of Sara over Shado. It’s all understandable and Sara is trying to be as pragmatic as possible, but it forces Oliver into the position of having to kill Ivo before he can reveal anything. And Ivo’s not one that will go easy into these things, nor Slade since you have to expect that he’ll want to do the deed himself and make it as painful as possible. As it moves closer to that moment, it’s definitely hard to watch those final hours beforehand where the trio get along well enough, but all that tension is there just under the surface.
The attack on the freighter, which comes with all this tension and uncertainty, also gives us Oliver wearing the hood for the first time as he takes on that persona. But we also get Slade pulling out the mask he had before from his initial incursion on the island with Billy. Not that he wears it, but it’s meaningful enough that he does hold it close and that means a lot. There’s also the connection that Slade and Oliver have that comes into play here as the two have bonded so well that even Slade makes it clear that they’re brothers at this point after all that they’ve been through together. Their plan is one that feels a little awkward at first as it unfolds, but it progresses well enough and keeps you intrigued to see how it plays out, especially with Oliver getting taken aboard the freighter after being captured. Back with old friends and all, even the rats…
Though it’s a touch convoluted, it’s fun to see the event play out with the planning that they put into it and the way they all end up on the ship. Which is also where Slade finally puts on the mask and makes it clear that vengeance will be his. While things don’t go so well for Sara for part of it, which makes sense considering she sided with Ivo for quite some time while on board the ship, we do see how Slade really does a number on the men that Ivo has there, made convenient by having so many of them down in the engine room where Oliver directed them. The chaos plays well and the show makes these some really big set pieces that stand out beautifully. It has a great flow about it as we see all three of our prime players here working their way through the ship to their individual goals. There have been moments where the show hasn’t managed to do the big pieces but here, with the ship and trying to bring aspects of the island arc to a close, it knows it has to have a lot of payoff on it.
Of course, the truth has to come out since we know Slade is set against Oliver and their relationship ended badly, though both Oliver and Sara obviously thought Slade died. That the two come to blows is expected, but it can go only so far since if Slade truly gets his hands on Oliver, Oliver would not last long. The chaos of the situation works to his advantage in the end but it’s caused irreparable harm at this point. And when Slade is intense, he’s intense. The way he uses the abilities he has now to shape the course of the ship and his own destiny is fantastic to watch as there’s a whole alpha thing going that makes it clear that he knows it and intends to be that person.
The material in the present is brief compared to what we get with the island arc, but it’s great to see how Slade gets more and more of the Queen family together with a sense of threat coming, but Oliver finds a way to clue Felicity and the others in. That gets them to make a move on the mansion and the meetings are spot on fantastic to watch, with Roy giving him a particularly strong handshake and then having Sara come in, which is one of the first real shocks that Slade seems to get. It’s a careful piece overall, though it doesn’t go down quite as Oliver thought it would, but it provides Oliver the realization of just how many things that have been going on are all part of what Slade has been manipulating. And it’s all to fulfill the promise that was made five years earlier, which has a great tie-in to the painting of the same name by Curtis Swan, a great comics reference.
In Summary:
While we knew how parts of this would play out since it does take place in the past and we’ve been able to make the obvious connections, getting the details of it and seeing the nature of the intensity of what Slade does and how he handles it is fantastic. Some of the best episode of the series are the ones that are heavily focused on the island and this one is just like that. We get a lot of things cleared up and we get the present side of the ready to move forward in a big way now that everyone is aware of at least most of the pieces on the board. Oliver and Slade have been a great pair of characters to watch on the island, to see the evolution of their relationship, and while there’s still a lot more to come with the ship portion of the story, I’m excited to see more of the present play out. Manu Bennett is totally owning this role in both forms but there’s something extra intense with him in the present, and the tension between him and Stephen Amell definitely just elevates it. Great stuff.
Grade: A