Arrow: Unchained recap S4, Ep. 12

February 4, 2016 Jeffrey Lyles Arrow, David Ramsey, Emily Bett Rickards, Katie Cassidy, Paul Blackthorne, Stephen Amell, Willa Holland

Season 4 has been a rough road thanks to some inconsistent characterization and questionable plot choices that continually have derailed this year just as it starts to build some momentum. Tonight was another roller coaster ride of highs and lows leading to another ultimately frustrating episode.

More on that in a bit, but first let’s discuss the episode highlights and while I had some significant issues with some areas, there were definitely some great standalone moments tonight.

Despite my best efforts at playing Credits Roulette, I managed to look down at the credit scroll to see both Katana and Shado were going to be making an appearance tonight. Fortunately I missed Colton Haynes’ name showing so when Roy was revealed as the mysterious cat burglar that was actually a surprise, but the showrunners really need to delay those reveals so as not to spoil those moments in the episode.

It was great seeing flip-kicking Roy back in the Arsenal suit tonight and being used as a reluctant pawn of The Calculator (Tom Amandes). That conclusion to the big battle with Arsenal avoiding the building explosion was one of the best action shots this season. As Oracle’s arch-nemesis it made sense for Arrow to borrow him and watching the Overwatch/Calculator computer trash-talking hacking duel provided some thoroughly entertaining scenes.

As far as Felicity’s other subplot, it was nice to get a reminder that she’s still in charge of Palmer Tech, but Felicity doubting her presentation abilities just because she’s in a wheelchair seemed like an unneeded step back for the character. Especially since she just got over her pity party last week. Thankfully, corporate Felicity’s storyline got a necessary jolt with the reveal that The Calculator is actually her father.

Roy skipping town again wasn’t a surprise, but the Team Arrow dynamic even in this brief moment just clicked better with Arsenal as a member instead of Speedy.

I still contend that most of Season 4’s problems started with the trashing of character development and logic to resurrect Sara Lance so she could be used for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Nevermind the fact that the showrunners could have had the best of both worlds (literally in this case), by simply using the Earth-2 version of Sara. That would have allowed Caty Lotz to return to the DC CW universe, not undo the significant character progression of Laurel and provide a more sensible reason why Canary wouldn’t want to be around her father, sister or girlfriend.

The need to quickly get Sara fully rehabilitated and back to normal resulted in some messy resolutions to previous storylines. Namely why Oliver didn’t call in his pal John Constantine to help Thea with her blood lust issue, which is now slowly killing her. It’s a ridiculous stretch to assume Constantine was able to restore Sara to her complete faculties despite being a corpse for months and now can’t cure Thea just as easily. Even if it was a throwaway line someone really needed to mention they can’t contact Constantine to explain why he didn’t immediately come to help.

Making Oliver a mayoral candidate hasn’t paid off much by way of compelling subplots. Of note this week, Damien Darhk’s wife entered the race to prevent Oliver from running unopposed and with as little investment we have in that storyline, it’s hard to anticipate it suddenly becoming a major focus going forward.

More of a time-killer than usual this week, the island flashbacks were somewhat silly. Hallucinating from Baron Reiter’s interrogation, Oliver conversed with Shado, who tried to help him learn to forgive himself and tell the woman he loves — Taiana — that he killed her brother. Even in a dream, that sounded far-fetched.

Further stretching the numerous plots covered this week, Nyssa al Ghul was rescued from League of Assassin custody by her loyal followers (led by Natasha Gayle). As Nyssa traveled to confront Katana, I was convinced the show was killing off the final member of the Arrow version of the movie Suicide Squad characters like I mentioned last week. Fortunately, Katana and Nyssa seemed to work out their differences.

After re-establishing their truce, Oliver thanked Merlyn for his assistance just in time for Nyssa to propose a cure for Thea’s bloodlust if Oliver kills Merlyn. On one hand, this is a nice full circle play on the whole Merlyn/Thea/Oliver/Ras al Ghul storyline from last season, but this doesn’t fall in line with Nyssa’s vow to get revenge herself. Why would she suddenly use an ally as her instrument to kill Merlyn instead of doing it herself?