Arrow "Blood Debts" Review

I told ya Felicity wasn't gonna be the one killed off! Like Flash, Arrow has returned this week after it's mid-season hiatus, we last left off with Felicity being shot and believed to be dead, now it turns out she's not dead but she is paralysed from the waste down. Because just as soon as Oliver stops behaving like Batman we had to get Felicity to be Oracle...whoopitydoo. Oh also Anarchy is back and Thea deals with more blood lust issues.

Where do we begin? Well how about with Oliver going into a state of denial after Felicity's accident, refusing to visit her in hospital and throwing himself into his work. To be fair it's not a bad angle to tackle it, people deal with grief in different ways and...I actually think they handled it fairly well. Granted there's nothing here too strong to create emotional drama, but there's also not anything bad about the way it was handled, it was a decent enough story point and i don't have any issues with it. I also like the fact that Oliver saved Darhk's family and in return he offers him a few more weeks to live, it shows Darhk isn't beyond compassion but, you know, he's still a bad guy, he's gonna try and kill ya eventually. It was just a nice moment. Then Felicity herself, though not given much to do is made the emotional anchor of this episode, Oliver praising how she's the strongest of them all due to her pure and loving nature, she helps keep Oliver out of the dark. Cute yet, but i don't think it's as impactful as they would hope it is because of course it's easy for her to remain good-hearted, she doesn't experience the same dark tragedies that you or Diggle or Laurel do. I'm not saying she hasn't experienced any of she isn't fully aware of what others have to go through, but i feel like if she went through the same experiences that Ollie did, she'd be broken as well, so it's not really a fair comparison to make.

Then there's Thea's story arc which i've now realised i am completely bored with, her bloodlust is getting repetitive, her on again-off again relationship with bland-face is not interesting in the slightest and oh my god Anarchy is such a generic villain! And no, I don't believe this man is skilled enough to take on Green Arrow and Speedy at once with no problem, for that, I call bullshit! Also there's Diggle and his brother, again, this is feeling repetitive, some development was made in this episode but honestly i just didn't care at this point, there are so many plots in this episode and none of them got as developed as they should have done.

So yeah, this episode was pretty meh, nothing too good, nothing too bad. 5/10.

-Danny