Arrow - Year's End

Before breaking for a Winter hiatus Arrow delivers its first Christmas episode when Oliver (Stephen Amell) decides to throw a big party after learning Moira (Susanna Thompson) and Thea (Willa Holland) stopped celebrating the holiday when he and his father went missing five years ago. Meanwhile Green Arrow has his hands full with a copycat archer who has begun killing off members of the list. Despite realizing the recent murders aren't the work of Green Arrow, Detective Lance (Paul Blackthorne) is ordered by his superior (Brian Markinson) to hide the fact that there is a second archer on the loose.

With the help of Detective Lance, who is thrown off the case after refusing to follow orders, and Queen Industries IT specialist Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), Ollie traces the rival archer through his custom-made arrows only. This almost gets him killed when the vigilante walks right into a trap. With the the first attempt to kill Green Arrow fails, the copycat kidnaps hostages and demands the vigilante turn himself over.


The episode returns Oliver's flashbacks to his early days on the island when he learns more about the history of the island and his mysterious friend (Byron Mann) before watching him carted off by Deathstroke (Jeffrey C. Robinson) and Fyers (Sebastian Dunn). Walter's (Colin Salmon) continued investigation into the list forces a frank talk behind husband and wife and new threats from Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) warning Moira that if she can't stop Walter's investigation then he will.

Although the battle of archers works well, it certainly feels rushed. However, I do like the choice of the man under the hood which certainly sets the stage for Merlyn (Colin Donnell) to become far more like his comic book counterpart given enough time. A wounded Oliver's improbable escape, even with Diggle's (David Ramsey) help, under the nose of the police is troubling at best (all of which takes place during a commercial break), but the episode ends with some definitive answers as to Malcolm Merlyn's involvement in Oliver's shipwreck and a timeline, if not the details, for his big plans for Starling City (which, coincidentally, figures out to be right around the time of the show's First Season finale).