TV Guide’s synopsis of “Taken” will get you pumped up for Thursday’s new episode. The new character will be portrayed by Megalyn E.K. Oliver has to save his son from Darkh who wanted him to comply with his ransom demands. It made me feel apologetic [because] this takes over your life and we were only able to show that in a minute. That is what happened with “Taken”. She wonders if Darhk could be in the same situation. For a kitty with only one arm, he sure does have claws. And her impressive knowledge of ley lines. She is not disgusted about him keeping his son a secret, but that he was making another decision on his own. No one would exactly point to Samantha and Oliver’s freaky deception as a paragon of relatability, but kidnapping William was probably the best way to lay every card on the table, and I like that Arrow wasn’t afraid to overturn every side of that particular bombshell.
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Oliver has a fight ahead of him as he tries to face Darhk with the help of Vixen.
Like the one-off appearance of Constantine, this was hard to swallow as someone who hasn’t watched Vixen.
Marriage, Felicity tells Oliver once William has been saved, is about leaning on your partner. (I appreciate Mari’s own insight about William given her own upbringing, but would Oliver really take it into account over his best friend’s?) This felt like a missed opportunity to develop some of the dynamics Oliver has with the rest of the main cast.
We’re going to have some more on this episode in the near future.
An apparent end to the son drama..
First off, the previous episode horrified fans as Oliver’s secret son was kidnapped by the villain Damien Darhk. In the flash forward at the grave site Felicity is not wearing her engagement ring, but she and Oliver did show up together, does that mean they are still close but not quite mended? As played by Megalyn Echikunwoke, the character of Mari McCabe, who moonlights as the totem-powered superhero Vixen, will fight alongside Team Arrow in their season-long pursuit of bringing down Damien Darhk.
Before Oliver calls on Vixen in Detroit, he has to talk to William’s mother, Samantha Clayton (Anna Hopkins). You nearly make me believe in love again. The result is her sort of breaking down in front of Quentin: now, this could have been an interesting dynamic for the show to explore, however, it appears like it is just thrown in there to give Laurel something to do. Enraged, he walks outside and starts using magic to choke the life out of Oliver, Laurel (Katie Cassidy) and Thea (Willa Holland). As if he wasn’t the one constantly putting Thea in danger. Now that everyone is out of danger, she’s had time to process Oliver’s cavalcade of lies. When the team retreats to the lair to lick its wounds, Darhk calls Queen and tells him that the attack forces him to move up his time table.
This moment felt weirdly anti-climactic. “Get him back and take this son of a bitch Darhk out”. Or maybe I’m calling this one too early?
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Back at headquarters, Oliver gets a home from Darhk. Arrows aren’t much use against someone who can simply stop them or hurl them back with the wave of a hand.
