Posted in: Movies | Tagged: arrow, entertainment, Malcolm Merlyn, oliver queen, Quentin Lance, Ted Grant, television, Wildcat

The Six Important Moments From This Week's Arrow

There will be spoilers in this post from last night's episode… move along if you don't want to know them.

There was a lot going on in last night's episode of Arrow. Uprising saw the return of Oliver Queen to Starling City and the end of Danny "Brick" Brickwell's reign over the Glades. Here are what I think were the six most important moments from the show.

1) We start with the on we'd seen in the trailers, finding out that Brick killed Rebecca Merlyn. This gives Malcolm Merlyn motivation to get involved and force John Diggle, Roy Harper, Laurel Lance and Felicity Smoak to make the choice not to team with him. This will obviously be a problem within the team when Oliver decides to train with Merlyn at the end of the episode. It also gives the writers a chance to humanize the guy who killed 503 people including his own son.

2) We also have a moment similar to the one in the Flash last night with Henry Allen knowing it's his son in the Flash suit. Here Captain Quentin Lance is meeting with Arsenal to give him the files on Brick when he calls him by name, Harper. The very good detective knows it's Roy because he runs around in a red hoodie all the time chasing the Vigilante then suddenly there's a red hooded archer working with the Arrow… which means that Lance has probably already figured out that Oliver is the Arrow but chooses not to know. Kind of the Jim Gordon / Batman theory. This was set up back in season 2 when Laurel was going to tell him who the Arrow was and Lance didn't want to know.

You also have to love the joke about Arsenal's name… "What are you guys just pulling names from a hat now?"

3) Then we have the return of Ted Grant / Wildcat and Sin. It wouldn't make sense for something this big to be happening in the Glades and not have the two of them show up. Sin was there for another important moment that I'll talk about later. But Wildcat was there for a few reasons… one is we never had the payoff of seeing him fight in his costume, we find out that he told Laurel she wasn't ready to be Black Canary yet and J. R. Ramirez the actor who plays him has been cast in another series so we don't know how much access they'll have to the character going forward… so giving him a fitting send of for now. Though it would have been nice to see him take out a few other bad guys before getting his butt kicked by Brick.

4) The key Malcolm moment of the episode was after he took down Brick, he stood over the body ready to kill him and Oliver talked him out of it by evoking the one common ground they have… Thea. This wasn't Malcolm's redemption moment, this was there to make Oliver think redemption is possible for Malcolm. If Oliver believes there is even the tiniest thread of good in someone, he will do everything he can to make that grow. We've seen it with his mother, with Huntress and even some with Slade Wilson on the island. The writers needed to humanize Malcolm just a bit so Oliver can agree to train with him.

5) The Arrow speech on top of the police wagon was an important moment as we move closer to Oliver becoming the Green Arrow. As he's grown through the seasons from The Hood, to The Vigilante and now The Arrow, Oliver has accepted more and more of the hero role. He is no longer a man trying to right the wrongs of his deceased father and checking off names on a list. He has friends, allies and now he has stood in front of the people of the Glades and accepted his role as their protector.

6) The one negative thing this season has had in my opinion has been stringing out Lance not knowing about Sara's death. You feel so much for the guy every time he's lied to because you know its only going to be worse when he does find out. And thanks to Sin, it looks like the cat is about to jump out of the bag. When she tells Lance that the Black Canary is not Sara, you see denial first and then watch as the pieces start falling into place. This is going to blow up big soon.

Bonus) Yes, one bonus important moment was set up by the team turning down Malcolm and Oliver deciding to train with him. This pushes Oliver and Felicity even further apart but it also shows us that the Oliver who headed off to fight Ra's al Ghul is not the same one that just came home.

And for those who really like spoilers… we have the regular trailer for next week and the CTV trailer which is very different and gives us a look at who is going to be getting a tour of the Arrowcave.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/ZsEDUYlmyA4[/youtube]

Not sure why CTV gets such a different trailer, but here you go. This went out on twitter last night:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/RpGh4IQa854[/youtube]

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