Arrow S3x17 “Suicidal Tendencies”

WARNING! SPOILERS!

Arrow’s Season 3 has really come back in an incredibly strong way following last week’s episode. Suicidal Tendencies saw the return of a revamped Suicide Squad, and a renewed focus on Deadshot, as Diggle and Lyla’s wedding got interrupted for what should have been a simple hostage situation mission. However, nothing was as it seems, and the end result was played out incredibly well, shining a fantastic light on Deadshot’s character, before ultimately, killing him off.

Of course we have to bear in mind that we didn’t see Deadshot’s body, and on this show, even people whose bodies we see do have a tendency to come back, so it’s worth pointing out that just because the building blew up didn’t mean that Deadshot’s necessarily dead. However, it was a great way for him to go out, because this episode really was Floyd Lawton’s hour to shine. He was one of the first characters that Arrow introduced who played a major role in the comics and his subplot throughout his episodes in each season had been really fun to see. However, it seems that with the upcoming Suicide Squad movie, there’s going to be less of a focus on them than in Arrow, which is a shame, because they have been one of my favourite factions in the series so far.

The other plot of this week’s episode, back in Starling, built up to a good old hero vs. hero showdown, which as we all know, is what everyone should expect between superheroes at some point after their first encounter. We’ve had it before, earlier this season with The Flash going head to head against Ollie, and now it was Ollie and Roy’s turn to go head to head against Ray. Ray initially had the upper hand on them in his Atom suit, but once that got taken out of the picture, he was useless. This was a cool way of getting Ray onto Oliver’s side when he spared his life, and came to a mutual understanding that the Arrow was being framed, but I couldn’t help feeling that Ray had accepted Oliver’s innocence a little too easy for someone who was originally hellbent on bringing him down. But that didn’t bother me too much because the fight was still handled pretty well.

There was a theme running through this episode concerning the fact of whether or not you can be a hero and still have a personal life. Oliver seems to fully believe that you can’t have both, with Ray believing that he can. We also got to see what other outcomes of this were in the Floyd Lawton-focused flashbacks, with Floyd being angry at his child and his wife when he returned home and getting a restraining order put out on him. And then there was also Diggle and Lyla, with the latter of whom deciding that it was time to abandon the Suicide Squad and her work with Amanda Waller in favour of looking after her baby. So the way this theme was brought to the forefront in this episode was handled pretty well to say the least.

Whilst the wedding I felt was overshadowed this week, with the opportunity for potential humour (aside from Ray’s revelation that he’s a minister) largely ignored, Suicidal Tendencies otherwise remained a solid episode of Arrow as things are kicking up a notch as we get towards the final few episodes of the season. The ending cliffhanger was also pretty cool (if it’s unlikely that Felicity will die in the next episode), and it’ll be interesting to see what we can look forward to in the upcoming weeks, especially with the hints that have been dropped in the PaleyFest Trailer for both this show and The Flash.