Arrow: Disbanded

March 30, 2017 4:18 AM - Season 5, Episode 18

Diggle and Felicity are shocked by Oliver's decision to call on the Bratva to help take down Prometheus.

*AV Club recap - Arrow is great once more, with a little help from his friends
*CBR recap -Oliver Chooses His True Brotherhood
*IGN review - Can the Bratva succeed where Team Arrow failed?
*Den of Geek review - Arrow delivered another strong episode as the Prometheus chess game reaches a fever pitch.
*EW recap

posted by oh yeah! (9 comments total)

Oliver's turnaround toward redemption was too easy. Although I was impressed by the way his breakup was handled with the Susan. The scene was treated with maturity and the people involved were adults. That's always nice to see.

Felicity and Curtis should know better than to attempt a break-in without wearing disguises: just because the guard was knocked out doesn't me he can't ID after he recovers.

I really, really hate where they went with the Bratva/Anatoly storyline. I know he's the very definition of a bad guy, but I think he was a good character to have in the writers' toolkit to be used when Oliver needs a harsh reality check.
posted by sardonyx at 1:04 PM on March 30, 2017

As an aside, I have no idea how poor Ted Kord keeps his company in business what with all the technology thefts, and hacks and industrial espionage. His insurance premiums must be a killer. I guess that's why he's too busy to build a super suit.
posted by sardonyx at 1:07 PM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

I really want all of the Kord thefts and hacks to be a long game setup leading to another "Well, let's just break into Kord and steal their new thing again" and then when the team waltzes into the Kord lab, guess who's waiting there in a fancy super suit? Punchline.
posted by Servo5678 at 4:42 PM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh, that would be so sweet! And if a certain blue and gold time traveller happens to be there to, I'd be perfectly okay with that. (It's not as if time travel doesn't exist in this universe.)
posted by sardonyx at 6:10 PM on March 30, 2017

from the blurb of "other media" on wikipedia, Ted Kord was a possible character in the third season, but they went with Ray Palmer instead, which they thought worked out better. but Kord industries does get repeatedly robbed, as the wiki points out.
posted by numaner at 2:04 PM on March 31, 2017

ok I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I would have really liked to see Oliver successfully keep the team distracted while Bratva actually kill Chase (probably during that ambush scene), and have the show deal with the fallout afterwards. Felicity could still discover that surveillance photo and decrypt it. Bratva makes a statement saying they found out Chase is the "hood" that was disrupting their operations in Russia all those years ago. Oliver admits he was being blackmailed by Prometheus to denounce the Green Arrow, the leverage being he wasn't always on Lian Yu the whole time, that he was captured by Bratva and corroborate that he used the "hood"'s interference to escape (the captain tattoo is gone anyway so no need to explain that). So he reinstates Green Arrow as a good guy (but this doesn't happen for a little while until he feels like going back to crime-fighting) and the SCPD stops pursuing him. Meanwhile the team is still disbanded, everyone is bummed because Oliver is like "evil", and basically is letting Bratva run around Star City killing people, but it's like some other guys because Anatoly completed his deal and left, but can't come back to control rogue Bratva because reasons. The series gets much darker and we get more brooding and conflicted Stephen Amell which I think is his best acting and omg is this why people get into fanfic because I totally wanna write a whole season now.
posted by numaner at 2:16 PM on March 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

It has always been said around the Internet that Beetle (Kord) and Booster were off limits to the Arrowverse people because DC had other plans for them. What those plans are or might be has never been revealed.

I don't know if it's funnier, sadder or more prescient, but I made the post about the Kord thefts before watching this week's Flash episode, where, sure enough, Kord Industries got raided again (along with Stagg).
posted by sardonyx at 3:18 PM on March 31, 2017

I have to say I'm really enjoying Josh Segarra's performance as Adrian Chase. He does that arrogant, smug, menacing thing really well.

It's quite a change from his character Billy in Sirens. When I saw him in that I wondered if he was just that guy, but in Arrow he's proving he has some range. If you haven't seen Sirens, here's a reel of Billy moments. There are some I remember that are funnier than what's in that reel.

I think Arrow's stuck in a rut with their big bads, and I have not really shared the general opinion of this season being back on-track, but I think they're getting there as they wind this season up.

As always, the fight choreography is awesome and some of the stunts they do are remarkable.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 10:27 PM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

This episode felt really tedious to me. What a dull conclusion to the Prometheus and Bratva stories. Or rather, non-conclusion. Seemed entirely unimaginative.

I'd thought maybe this was the end of season 5 but no, they're just taking a month break. Wikipedia promises 5 more episodes. Also Season 6 is already renewed, so there'll be even more to come. I wonder if I'm going to make it.

I miss Neal McDonough and weirdo Darhk magic.
posted by Nelson at 8:37 AM on April 10, 2017