Arrow: You Have Saved This City
May 13, 2019 8:57 PM - Season 7, Episode 22 - Subscribe

In the Season 7 finale, the battle between Oliver and Emiko comes to a boiling point, which brings back some familiar faces and leaves others in dire jeopardy.
posted by oh yeah! (8 comments total)
 
The last ten minutes work. The thirty minutes before that needed two maybe three episodes. I feel like there was enough fat in the last half of this season that six episodes could have been taken to turn this into a serious arc instead of what felt like an episode of Mutant X or some other over-wrought '90's syndicated TV series. I still want to see some kind of emotional connection between Oliver and Emiko that does not feel like just a rehearsal session. We needed an episode of Oliver and Emiko as civilians doing civilian things. Possibly one in which Oliver tries getting Emiko recognized as his sister legally. We needed at least two episodes of them working together, both to establish a real sting of betrayal on the turn, but also to see the seeds of doubt planted if the denouement to her story was to mean anything. The actors needed real screen-time together to develop some chemistry. And the Ninth Circle needs to be more than a poor man's League of Shadows but with a profit margin.

Given that this was clearly meant to be the ending of Arrow as we knew it, with the next season promising to be something very different than what we have spent the last few years watching, I was hoping for something a little more emotionally engaging and satisfying. Arrow deserves a ending that reminds everyone who has been watching it why we connected to it in the first place.

I can imagine a scene in which Oliver shows Emiko the scars he acquired on his odyssey. He shows her the stab wounds Wintergreen inflicted on him, "that was your hand too, wasn't it," he tells her. The scars from the Amazo fights, the Bratva tattoos, each piece of his story a piece of her displaced vengeance. Each life he took, her's to carry just as he does. "We all carry the consequences of our choices. The sins we drive others to do are our sins as well. But we can allow ourselves to carry them and not drown in them. We can be responsible for the rage and the darkness without surrendering to it. If you kill these people you commit to your own Undertaking and doing to countless others what was done to you. If do this you won't shame our father, you'll become what he was before he got on the boat." Something like that, ideally more polished. A way in to really mirror his transformation with a strong callback to the themes of the series.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 4:13 AM on May 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


I couldn't agree more, ignorantsavage.

Intriguing possibilities for the shortened final season this fall.

The Arrow creative team could do worse than watch the current season of Lucifer to see how that show tightened up their storyline to fit into ten episodes.
posted by plastic_animals at 5:38 PM on May 14, 2019


Actually the Arrow team could do worse than hire Ignorantsavage to plot and write for them.

Seriously, Ignorantsavage, you not just summed up my thoughts on the episode perfectly, but script for Oliver connecting with Emiko is exactly what this series needed at this point in its existence. That's exactly how it should have been done. We really needed more than a Flash type of "tell the bad guy what's in your heart and everything will be all better" moment between Oliver and Emiko. We needed to see her gradually accept the hand Oliver extended and come to terms with the possibilities of living a different kind of life.

We also deserved to see Oliver reconcile with his past in a manner similar to the way you described: that would have rewarded the viewers for the support they've given the show and honored the legacy of this show, which anybody has to admit is pretty remarkable. I don't know of many other TV shows that have this kind of a legacy of spin-offs and universe building. (J.A.G. is maybe the closest, as it led to NCIS, NCIS:LA and NCIS New Orleans).

I wish I had enjoyed this season more. I wish there had been better development of Emiko and the Ninth Circle. I wish I could get behind the flash forward, because I can see the potential it has--they did a really good job with casting the young heroes and creating their characters but I'm just not one for dystopian future sci-fi type of programming.

As much as I've griped about this show over the years, I still look forward to it, and I think it still has so much potential. We never got to see happy, joke-cracking, goatee-wearing, lefty/socialist Ollie, and I would have liked to see Amell's attempt to pull that off, at least for a couple of episodes.

At this point I'm kind of dreading the upcoming Crisis because everything about the upcoming season will likely be geared toward building up to the event, and we won't get much in terms of advancing the characters or wrapping up this show. I think this episode is all we're really going to get of that, and somehow it isn't enough. I still want more.
posted by sardonyx at 3:33 PM on May 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


I actually kind of enjoyed it. I didn't care about Emiko at all and I don't think the show did much either, but it was nice to "end" on a happy note.

I will miss Felicity, who has apparently...decided to die to go see Oliver in the portal afterlife? What? Well, I guess that's kind of sweet and sad. Their farewell was very touching and even I choked up a bit.

If the show wasn't ending in such a different/dramatic fashion I'd quit here, but I guess I can live through 8 more episodes, especially if they are something vastly different from the rest of Arrow that I have felt generally meh about. I did enjoy the future bits quite a bit, especially the kids.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:51 AM on May 17, 2019


I kind of wonder if they're somehow not setting up Felicity as the Crisis Harbinger* (not to be confused with Lyla's code name.) Yes, time travel would have to be involved, but that shouldn't be too insurmountable a challenge when you've got a Monitor and at least one speedster involved.

*See this is why this shows shouldn't just rip off character names without thinking about the long-term consequences and the histories of said characters, e.g. comic book Felicity Smoak is Ronnie (Firestorm) Raymond's step-mother.
posted by sardonyx at 9:08 AM on May 17, 2019


The Crisis on Infinite Earths will be five hours long and include every Arrowverse show (Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Batwoman) and will apparently be broken up by the CW's mid-season break.
posted by plastic_animals at 10:23 AM on May 17, 2019


I saw that article the other day. I hadn't been planning on watching Batwoman, but knowing for sure that the show is playing a part in the crossover has me reconsidering. I don't really want to devote a half a season to it, but it would be nice to have a bit familiarity with the characters before they all get thrown into the big mess.

I'll likely make my decision to watch based on the comments from the regulars who post on the Arrowverse shows. If you guys are all in and watching, I'll probably wind up joining you.
posted by sardonyx at 12:02 PM on May 17, 2019


That was a neat and nice farewell for Felicity. I think she's asking the Monitor to take her to where he took Oliver, probably right before his last moments during the crisis. So we might have Emily Bett Rickard making an appearance before Arrow's really done.

I didn't care much about Emiko either, and I was actually more invested in the future stuff. I think the issue was actually the actress, who I felt like didn't do a good job of humanizing Emiko before her betrayal.
posted by numaner at 3:22 PM on May 17, 2019


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