Arrow S1E10 “Burned” review, Season 1 updates, and E11 “Trust But Verify” preview

Ollie and crew are back from mid-season break and DFAT is back with your weekly review! This week we got ‘burned’ by Bat-villain Firefly, aka Garfield Lynns, played by Andrew Dunbar. After the ass beating Ollie received from the “Dark Archer”, who I will refer to as Merlyn (cuz that’s who he is), our hero is on the down and outs about his role as a hero in the city. The feeling of defeat has thrown him off his game and no matter what Diggle has to say, Ollie isn’t listening to any of his motivational speeches. After a bit of moping and feeling sorry for himself, Ollie decides to help Laurel after she decides to swipe the cell phone Ollie had given her father and call “The Hood” herself. You see Laurel is trying to help her friend deal with her co-worker’s brother’s death, who was murdered at the hands of “Firefly”. After some detective work Ollie is able to figure all of this out and in the end Firefly fails at his mission and The Hood saves the day, show Starling City that he is not just a vigilante and finally starts to receive the credit he gets for being a “hero”. This episode has some important plot set-ups for the remainder of the season so if you aren’t caught up I won’t ruin it for you.

This is another of one those episodes of Arrow that I call convenient, not that it’s a bad storyline, I just feel that things are just kind of following a pattern in a few of the episodes this season. A pattern of killing off big name villains that should not be dying. This follows the same formula that a lot of superhero movies do as well, killing the villain, something a TV show doesn’t necessarily have to do. How is a hero supposed to build a stable of super-villains who will consistently return in rotation to give the hero a problem to solve. The good news is that I believe, aka read on the internet somewhere, (spoilage ahead) that Deadshot will be returning later this season for a team-up with China White. So one villain can return from the “dead”, so who really knows. This is the comic book world after all! Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this episode and I am so happy that the show has returned. Arrow is my favorite new show of this season and I look forward to more to come. The thing that Chaz and I discussed to tonight and agree on about this show is that we want to see an island-centric episode one of these weeks!

First Looks!

Want to see what characters will be crossing paths with our emerald archer this season? Check out this stills! The first offers up our first look at Seth Gabel (Fringe) in his Count Vertigo get up. The second is of Colton Haynes (Teen Wolf), who will portray Roy Harper aka Red Arrow, on the set!