Arrow - Seeing Red

With Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. riding high with the HYDRA fallout from the Captain America: The Winter Soldier I thought this might be the week that Marvel's show might out-perform its rival DC's weekly super-hero action-drama. Nope. Arrow's strong Second Season continues with an episode with lasting fallout not only for the season's remaining three episodes but well beyond. This, as they say, is one of those episodes that changes everything.

"Seeing Red" revolves mostly around Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), who Team Arrow found and rescued from Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett) last week, and the uncontrolled rage boiling inside him caused by the super-soldier serium derived from the Mirakuru that makes him a threat to everyone including Thea (Willa Holland). After setting up Slade's continued hallucinations involving Shado (Celina Jade) both on the island and in Starling City, the episode gives Roy some of his own as he's creepily visited by a vision of Thea begging for him to take her life.

Moira's (Susanna Thompson) mayoral campaign is another big thread of the episode as she seriously considers conceding the election to Brother Blood (Kevin Alejandro) to put all her efforts into salvaging her damaged relationship with her daughter. Eventually Ollie talks his mother out of her decision in a sequence that reveals an important fact about Mr. Queen which Moira admits to knowing since the events of the Undertaking.


The two storylines converge with an out-of-control Roy, who has already attacked dozens of people and murdered a pair of patrolmen, shows up at the campaign event. While Sara (Caity Lotz) attempts to put Roy down for good, an injured Green Arrow (whose knee was severally damaged by Roy earlier in the episode) finds a way to save his sister without taking another life. The friction between the pair, and Sara's realization that she made the wrong call, causes the Black Canary say farewell to both Ollie and Sin (Bex Taylor-Klaus) before leaving to search out "an old friend."

The loss of Sara will definitely be felt, and I'd expect Roy's storyline to be wrapped up before the season's end (perhaps with a cure leading to a new purpose as a sidekick next season?), but the ripples from the episode's final sequence will be felt for some time to come. Making his first appearance in the episode, Deathstroke attacks a broken but mending Queen family and recreates the scene on the island leaving Ollie one less family member and another with all kinds of unanswered questions heading into the season's final three episodes involving Slade's new army, a likely final showdon between Green Arrow and Deathstroke, and (from the preview of next week's episode) the first appearance of Ravager as well (be it Summer Glau or someone else).