I know I pitched Thea as the Big Bad for Season 4 of Arrow, but I have a new, better idea. What if Oliver becomes Ra's al Ghul and makes appearances every now and then, while Nyssa finds a way out of this unnecessary call back to the Ra's and Batman mythos marriage thing, and then Nyssa, Laurel, Thea, Felicity, Lyla, and Diggle all fight crime together in Starling City? When they're not fighting crime, they can hang out with Baby Sara or get milkshakes, or just be lighter on the angst. Malcolm stays on as like, I don't know, Bosley on Charlie's Angels or something. We can figure that out later.
I suggest this because, right up until the last 10 minutes or so, when the show veered back into tedium, "Al Sah-him" was actually kind of entertaining. Having a sort of an answer about the state of Oliver's soul—it's gone now, replaced by Al Sah-him (or is Oliver conning everyone?! Probably, but I don't really care)—gave the rest of Arrow's ensemble stuff to do. I don't just mean characters fought other characters; I mean that they were able to talk to one another about their feelings and about what they needed to do. Actors other than Stephen Amell got some juicy material to dig into, even while Amell—helped with a new haircut—continued to find new ways to express different facets of this one man. Basically, with Oliver's existential dilemma resolved for the time being, one of the black holes that has been sucking the energy out of Arrow this season was gone, and the episode was better for it.
I know that sounds like I'm saying Arrow would be better without Oliver, but it really means that Arrow would've been better with a more aggressive Oliver. All season, he's been paralyzed by this existential crisis and whether or not he can be both Oliver Queen and the Arrow, but he's been even less willing to do something about it than Hamlet trying to figure out if he should kill Claudius or himself or both. However, it's one thing when your protagonist is indecisive for 3 or 4 hours. It's another when that indecisiveness is stretched across 18 or 19 hour-long episodes. The romantic pining, all of the one-off bad guys, and all of the secrets were just distractions that Arrow inflicted on itself instead of committing to showing Oliver exploring what his dilemma meant for him, for his comrades, and for Starling City. Now that there's actual momentum, now that a decision has been made, the show's a little livelier. That it took us until the third to last episode to get here is really ridiculous, and this season has been too lousy for "better late than never" to be uttered in any way except for the most eye-rollingly exasperated way.
Of course, even this momentum is tainted by all the nonsense that preceded it. To complete his ascension to the Demon's Head, Al Sah-him must destroy Starling City using the Alpha-Omega bioweapon. I should've expected the bioweapon to show up somewhere in the present day, but I let loose a frustrated groan at not only its sudden arrival but that Arrow decided it wanted to do what will probably turn out to be another "city-threatening/race against time" finale. It makes sense, sure, because Arrow has done this two seasons in a row, and if anything will represent Al Sah-him's return to being Oliver Queen, it'll be the decision not to destroy his beloved Starling City.
It's the big moment of truth that the show loves to do in finales, but this season lacks the foundation to make the moment really matter. I already don't care about most of what's happening, but even if I was still somehow invested, the struggle for Oliver's soul between the League of Assassins and Starling City hasn't been dramatized well enough to really make an impact. At this point, it's just a hurdle to clear to get to what I hope will be a bit of a reorientation in Season 4.
The notion of clearing hurdles may explain why I've developed a slight bit of tolerance for certain sections of the show since last week. I can see the end of the season on the horizon, and I'm just ready for all of this to be over. I could also be running out of ways to discuss how much of the dramatic action of this season—especially since the show returned from the mid-season break—is essentially a house of cards built upon quicksand and desperately looking for something, anything, else to focus on. So when an episode gives me Laurel and Nyssa getting milkshakes together or Felicity and Thea joining Lyla, Diggle, and Baby Sara for dinner, I'm game for this version of the show.
Nyssa and Diggle were both the highlights of "Al Sah-him," though. Nyssa hasn't been entangled in all of Team Arrow's recent drama, so she brought a healthy dose of outside perspective to everything. Calling out Laurel for her secret-keeping? Aces. Bringing a healthy dose of pragmatism to the debate about Al Sah-him's demands? The best. Her choice to die where Sara died? Poignant. All of this had me wishing that Nyssa and Laurel's time together since "The Offer" had been shown on screen prior to this so that the extent of Nyssa's happiness and her determination to reject it as not being worthy of it—how very Sara of her—rested on more than just one scene of her enjoying dipping a french fry into a milkshake.
See? Even when I find something to like, Arrow somehow undercuts it for me.
While Laurel, Felicity, and Thea all got their moments to grapple with Oliver's transformation into Al Sah-him, the episode gave a little more weight to Diggle's reaction. As a fan of Diggle and David Ramsey since the show's very first episode, I was happy with this decision. After the disappointment of "Suicidal Tendencies"—seriously, Diggle and Lyla's wedding couldn't have been the bulk of the episode?—I needed a bit of a Diggle showcase, and "Al Sah-him" ended up being that showcase. I loved the idea of Oliver's conscience being Diggle, and I like how the episode ended up breaking that bond on both sides through Lyla's kidnapping. Diggle had faith that there was a way to break Oliver out of the mental conditioning Ra's and the League inflicted on him, and then that broke, and we got an actual sword fight between the two men to complement the drug-induced one in the cold open.
The break thrusts Diggle back into the leadership role that he was wary of taking when they all thought Oliver died after his duel with Ra's. There seemed to be a more... accepting attitude about this time around. Maybe it was because they already went through this power vacuum once, or maybe it was because the idea of Oliver as a different person is somehow easier to accept than that he's dead. Again, there was a sense of forward momentum in the episode since Oliver wasn't around to give orders and to provide a focal point for all other character interactions. Oliver's absence allowed for fresh dynamics to play out that enlivened the hour in a way that the show just hasn't been able to achieve until now. It makes you wonder why the show doesn't do more to showcase the really strong ensemble it has.
FROM THE QUIVER
– Wow, Ra's, thanks for laying all that H.I.V.E. and Damian Darhk groundwork for next season! So, are we calling it already that Darhk is totally going to be Felicity's dad? If he's not Darhk, he'll at least be involved with H.I.V.E. in some way, right?
– "John, what's the house rule?" "No Glocks on the dinner table."