Arrow Review: 1.17 – “The Huntress Returns” – aka The Verdant Arrow?

Before I begin today’s analysis, does anyone know what Verdant means?  I had no clue, so one trip to Google fixed all that.

Verdant:  1.  Green with grass or rich vegetation.  2.  Of the bright green color of lush grass.

Oh, I get it.  The Green Arrow!  I suppose that’s better than him being The Verdant Arrow and his nightclub being called Green.

Right, on with the analysis.  You know how much my heart jumps every time I see Guy Bee in the credits as director.  It’s no secret, I love the man’s work.  I’m especially excited to see he got the huntress episode, because there was plenty of great action in this one.  There was also plenty of character thinky stuff, which very likely will be relevant later.  At least I hope.

Helena is back, and she’s more psycho than ever.  In this episode, we saw a very obvious difference between her and Oliver.  There was no grey lines this time.  She is a stone hearted killer that will put anyone in harms way to get what she wants, while Oliver is vehemently against innocents being pushed into this.  Sure, he takes that stance when all his friends are the ones being threatened.  But that’s beside the point, he’d protect other innocents as well if Helena had put them into the line of fire instead of Tommy and Felicity.

Helena’s main role in this episode was to push Oliver back to reality.  He can’t be the vigilante superhero and not put the people he loves in harm’s way.  He can’t have a relationship either where he maintains his double life in secret.  McKenna was a cop after all hunting the vigilante!  There was no way that was going to come out well.  She was either going to have to find out, or there would be a sad way to get her out of the picture.  Enter the latter scenario.  I’m not sad to see her go.  Everyone knows that Oliver’s true love is Diggle!  (I know, stop pushing the bromance).
Oliver was in a no win situation here, no matter what he did.  He didn’t want to get involved, but Helena forced him into it, especially since she knows the secret.  When he did get involved, he couldn’t even let Helena go to jail when she was caught.  He had to bail her out to protect her secret, but by doing so he let a crazy psycho out on the street.  Then when he finally chooses to stop her by killing her, that fails and now she’s on the loose bitterly knowing that Oliver wants her dead.  This puts Oliver and everyone in his life in a very dangerous predicament.  Why do I sense that the next spectacular character death is coming at the hands of Helena?

It’s also good to know that the Bertinelli’s are at least more dysfunctional than the Lance’s.  I get that Quentin doesn’t want to reopen old wounds, but those wounds are still gaping, open and infested!  He eventually came around though, and I do have to admit, I’m really interested to see where this one goes.  The Lance family working together on a mission!  One thing was bugging me the entire time the Lances were together.  Laurel’s mother’s name is Dinah?  Ooh, so is she the Black Canary?  It would explain why she up and left.  Or is Sarah possibly the Black Canary?  I’m sure there are many great theories out there.

Poor Tommy.  The bland guy is growing on me.  He honestly looks like a man who’s puppy got kicked.  The one thing I didn’t like though was Laurel not understanding what was bothering Tommy.  Um hello, he just went through this thing with his father almost being killed?  Why didn’t Tommy mention his dad come to think of it?  I know he was smarting over Oliver, but his Dad is still recovering from very bad wounds somewhere.  Ah well, at least he’s coming around slowly to the idea that his best bud is a vigilante killer.  He certainly took pity on Oliver’s mope over losing McKenna.  What do you say to a best friend though that realizes that he can’t be happy because he has a greater responsibility in this world?  It’ll all be better tomorrow?  Tommy is struggling just as bad as Oliver right now, and isn’t sure how to help.  That’s where I think Malcolm is going to come in.  The boy is about to experience more harsh realities.

Thea did something with the new guy, and it was all kind of a blur.  I’m glad she’s moving out of whiny brat phase, but this who thing with Roy isn’t exactly at the whirlwind stage yet.  It’s still filler that may or may not go somewhere, but after finally getting a payoff with the Merlyn’s I know I should probably pay attention to this.  Things are happening for a reason.  Ditto with the island story, which didn’t offer much, but at least I have Manu Bennett to ogle over in those scenes.

The best scenes to me in “The Huntress Returns” were the action scenes and the club scenes.  The motorcycle chase scenes were exciting and really ramped up the action in a show that often lags behind when relying purely on character interactions.  Seeing Oliver and Helena fight was pretty darned good too, even if it was too short.  As for the club scenes, they were just so well shot!  The lighting, the energy, the DJ (awesome guest appearance from Steve Aoki), it looked and felt like a real nightclub this time.  Go figure.

Mostly though, this episode was a decent follow up to “Dead To Rights” even though it didn’t come close to matching that kind of breathtaking drama.  It was filler, but filler done right.  It kept the interest, and is continuing to build the story toward the season closing events.

Stay tuned here this weekend as I cover Arrow’s appearance at WonderCon on Sunday, March 31st.  I’ll have interviews with the cast and producers, as well as some snippets from the panel.  It’s going to be the best Easter ever!