Arrow S3x05 “The Secret Origin of Feliciity Smoak”

WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS!

It seems like Arrow is creating the jaw-dropping, WTF plot twists at the end of every episode very well. We’ve had plenty of shocking scenes come in the last five minutes that will almost certainly have you coming back for more. This week’s episode was no exception, with the identity behind Sara’s killer being revealed to not be, as many expected, Ra’s Al Ghul, but as ROY HARPER. Yeah, that Roy Harper. The one who’s currently being trained by Oliver. However, it couldn’t be of his own free will, right? After all, he didn’t remember where he was the night of the killing so it’s pretty clear that something’s influencing him. Regardless, he now has a big hit list on his head from multiple people and it has quickly given Roy’s story new life. He seemed to remember the killing at the end of the episode, so what does he do now? Who does he tell? It’ll be pretty interesting to see what comes next, to say the least.

There’s a lot of other stuff going on in this episode as well, even if for the most part, the storyline was fairly predictable. It gave us a neat origin story for Felicity Smoak, who is a fan-favourite character on the series (I personally don’t like her as much as everyone else, but even so, this episode impressed), showcasing her character and giving a great take on how she came to where she is now. Even if, aside from the ending, this episode itself was mostly filler, it still allowed for the fleshing out of one of the characters who’s been at the side of the Arrow longer than pretty much everyone apart from Diggle.

The main enemy of this episode comes in the form of Brother Eye, an ex-boyfriend of Felicity when she was younger, called Cooper (Nolan Gerad Funk), who isn’t quite as dead as she believed him to be. With the Brother Eye alias, Cooper started to wreak havoc in Starling City using a computer virus that Felicity created when she was younger. Things escalate over time, leading to the kidnapping of Felicity’s mother. Whilst it wasn’t the greatest of Arrow episodes yet, it still didn’t stop it from being pretty entertaining with some good, cyber-warfare style scenes going on that reminded me a lot of both Watch Dogs and Person Of Interest. After all, both feature vigilantes and rely a lot on advanced computer technology.

The episode itself was somewhat clichéd in its plot, Felicity and Donna, her mother (Charlotte Ross) have their differences but with both of them being kidnapped by Brother Eye they have to work them out in order to escape. There was plenty of exposition between the two characters as well that didn’t always work, but aside from that it was good to see how everything played out.

There were other scenes in this episode as well that were a bit hit and miss. The training sequences between Laurel and Ted Grant were fun, but if you want people to get behind the most-hated character on the show then you probably don’t want her to be the reason behind inciting a riot, even if it was a way to show how out of her depth she was. The Oliver/Thea plot was fairly predictable as well.

So on the whole, The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. There were some cool moments, like some well played humour and the ending twist, but aside from that, this was mostly a filler episode that whilst entertaining, didn’t quite reach its full potential.