Arrow S2x21 “City of Blood”

Warning! Major Spoilers!

We’re entering the final three episodes of Arrow’s second season and it’s going to be sad to see it go on a break in three weeks time – pretty much every episode of Season 2 has been really strong and although some like Birds of Prey have failed to impress as much as others, they’ve shined better than most of Season 1 and demonstrate just how much this show has improved.

City of Blood opens with the aftermath of Moira’s death and the funeral. It was a shocking moment that took everybody who hadn’t been spoiled by surprise, as Moira was in my opinion, one of the stronger characters on the show. In the wake of her death it’s interesting to see how the show handles it.

As it turns out, Ollie deals with deaths from going into hiding. He went back to the Island after Tommy’s Death, and he heads to a secret backup room that not even Felicity and Diggle know about in Season 2. So Diggle and Felicity call upon Amanda Waller for help, whilst in the meantime, Laurel discovers that Sebastian Blood knew Moira’s death was going to happen. Whilst Slade may have made it seem like it was Oliver’s choice – it was in fact, all a plan. Slade was never going to kill Thea.

With Blood now in office, he’s going to unleash his plan for the city sooner or later and that comes towards the end of the episode. Whilst the trailers billed it as being a major part, much like Seeing Red, it’s not – with the fallout from the funeral taking up the majority of the show.

One of the highlights from this week’s episode was the Oliver/Blood confrontation. Kevin Alejandro really shone as Blood and has been consistently one of the better actors since his introduction early on in season 2. Oliver’s reveal of him being the Arrow was great – and it came to an entirely unexpected person, as following the trailer reveal I expected it to be to Thea.

Laurel also had a big week this week, coming clean to Ollie about that she knows he’s the vigilante. Whilst it was an improvement for the character and it shows signs that they’re setting her up to be the eventual replacement for Sara as the Black Canary – I still liked how she was left behind in the Arrow Cave when she wanted to come with Ollie, Felicity and Diggle on their next mission – especially given what happened the last time she was involved with something important, which lead to Tommy’s death. However, she goes anyway, which is all too predictable, with the show allowing us to pull a good cliffhanger on us as it sets the stage for the final two episodes.

One of the best lines this week went to Felicity during the scene where she and Diggle interrogated Blood’s henchman. Felicity’s quip “Bitch with Wifi” was easily one of her strongest one-liners of the show to date and had me chuckling when I saw it, proving that the writers can handle comedy and dramatic moments well indeed.

The flashback episodes suffered this week. Whilst they’re usually strong and these were entertaining to an extent, they felt out of place and disrupted the pace of the storyline. That wasn’t the only problem of the episode, Summer Glau’s character – specifically the costume that she now dons as Ravager, doesn’t translate as well as Deathstroke’s did, which is a shame but is only a minor issue.

Even though the ending also felt a little too abrupt, it served as a good cliffhanger regardless that sets the stage nicely for the next few episodes. The wait for next week is going to be one hell of a ride – and it should be interesting to see where it goes. I certainly can’t wait.