Oliver wants to put his broken family back together and since there is only one other person left in it, he’s bringing Thea home! Felicity is able to track her and Merlyn down in Corto Maltese. So Oliver and Roy pack their bags and head to Europe. This episode is the Harvey Dent of all Arrow episodes. Everything with Thea is pretty awesome, then there’s the Laurel story.

Arrow Corto Maltese 01The Good

-Corto Maltese. Love it. A fictional country that has been referenced in some other DC Comics works like Tim Burton’s Batman, Smallville, even The Dark Knight Returns!

-Ted Grant shows up, they are using this as a way to train Laurel. Just what this show needs, more men running around without their shirts on.

-Ray Palmer comes off as a super cool boss, but by the end of the episode we have some doubts about him.

-O.M.A.C.! What does this all mean for our super team? What does Ray Palmer have to do with it? For once, the guy gets pretty serious.

-Diggle tags along with Oliver and Roy by Lyla’s request to track down an ARGUS agent, Mark Shaw, who has gone dark.

-Shaw ends up being a bad guy, but at the same time he is only following orders from Amanda Waller. As we all know working for Waller doesn’t exactly have its perks.

-We see some cool flashbacks to Thea’s training. Including one where Merlyn acts like an evil Mr Miyagi. While his messages and teachings are pretty cool, I really liked the tea scene, he is still a psychopath.

-Merlyn seems like an “OK” dad, when he sword fights Thea so that she can prove that she’s ready. He lets her win of course, but it’s pretty badass! She heads back to Star(ling) City.

-Nyssa shows up looking for Sara. This isn’t going to go well.

-Felicity comes up with a reason that she has to go to Central City. See you on next week on The Flash!

Arrow Corto Maltese 02The Bad

-“There’s a fire inside of me”, seriously?! This is how you are going to treat the origin story of one of my favorite DC characters and a vital one to this world? REALLY?! I could go on for a bit with this one, but I’ll let someone else do it…

Arrow Corto Maltese 03

And this week: The Ugly!

I’m going to let fellow Towelite, EMac, tell you what she thinks about the Katie Cassidy story line that took a drastic turn this week!

“My only issue with this latest Episode of Arrow was Laurel Lance’s new story line.  We all knew it was coming – her inevitable transformation into the Black Canary – so why am I having such a hard time buying it?  Either the writers really dislike Katie Cassidy, and gave her one of the cheesiest sets of lines that I have heard in a very long time, or her delivery of those lines was atrocious.  Either way, they’re going to need to do a much better job at convincing me that the prissy and uptight lawyer now suddenly has enough “fire inside of her” to become a badass.  We’ll see.  I really hope that they can pull it off, but my faith is a bit shaken at this point.”

Next time on Arrow: “The Magician