It’s time to return to Starling City and this week’s episode Blast Radius continued the events of the mid-season finale. We find Felicity gone for part of the episode as she is off seeing Barry Allen in Central City. His “tragic” lightning bolt incident has put him into a coma and so at this point there is no Flash. Picking up his hunt for the “Man in the Skull” mask, Ollie is hunting down and interrogating the scum of the streets looking for answers. But Sebastian Blood isn’t going to giveaway his identity that easy, not while he is running for mayor of course! Laurel has a bad feeling about him, which everyone thinks she’s crazy because of, especially her father. So she starts to do some detective work of her own.
This week’s villain is Shrapnel, who in the comics was a Doom Patrol villain and eventually ends up in the Suicide Squad. Seems like we are seeing a lot of members of this famous team show up on Arrow, hoping that at some point we will see the return of Amanda Waller. In the episode he is played by Firefly alum Sean Maher, who of course looks nothing like his comic book counterpart. In Arrow, Shrapnel likes to blow things up, ALOT. While I really like Maher as an actor, I just found his character to be a little bit underwhelming as a villain, a decent threat but still underwhelming. But that could be that he kind of takes a backseat when you know Deathstroke is out there somewhere and Brother Blood is really the main threat. Shrapnel is very tech savy and he is even able to outsmart Felicity at one point, something that Ollie associates with her Barry Allen distraction. Ollie of course accuses Felicity of not having her head in the game, and this causes a lot of tension on team Arrow throughout the episode. After blowing up a few buildings, team Arrow is able to track down Shrapnel’s alter-ego Mark Scheffer, who actually runs a toy store believe it or not. He sets a trap for Arrow, and traps him in the store under the the threat of exploding. Stuck at the store Ollie is not able to get to the square where Blood’s rally is being held, Shrapnel’s true target. Arrow of course escapes with the help of Felicity and he heads to the rally where Diggle is already on the scene looking for the bombs.
Ollie is of course very concerned about the fact that someone in Starling City has control of Mirakuru, which of course leads to some pretty meaty flashbacks to the Island. Slade is slowly losing his mind thanks to the injection of the stuff. So much so that at one point he grips Ollie around the neck with one hand and lifts him off the ground, nearly crushing his throat! Sarah saves him by hitting Slade with a log, jogging his memory and making him realize what he was doing. And Ollie thinks that he should tell the guy the truth about Shado, YEAH RIGHT! Of course Ivo still wants the Mirakuru for himself and radios an ultimatum to the trio, give up the serum and they can go free, of not his men will come to the island and take it from them, of course capturing them alive so that Ivo can experiment on them. During this time Slade has slipped away with the Mirakuru, probably going off to settle things with Ivo, the more violent way. It will be interesting to see how things go from here, especially since we know that Sarah somehow meets up with the League of Assassins.
The climax of the episode is when Blood decides to hold a rally in the midst of these terrorist acts by Shrapnel. Against everyone’s advice. even Arrow’s, Blood still puts himself and everyone who attends the rally in danger. He wants to give everyone the clear message that Starling City is not afraid, and that bombs or earthquakes will not tear them apart. You know, I could like the guy if I didn’t know that he was a villain, he puts on a good show! But just when he thinks he has Laurel fooled with the story about his parents, she tracks down a lead (from a bill on Blood’s desk) on his Aunt who is in a psych hospital. Blood has been paying her bills, what a nice nephew right? Wrong! Laurel goes to visit his “Aunt” only to find that Sebastian’s story isn’t true! His father was never shot by his mother, Sebastian killed his father and had his mother committed! Well it looks like Laurel has a lot of convincing to do now that she knows the truth, especially now that Arrow backs the mayor so they can “save this city”.
In the end at least we get a “heartfelt” moment when Oliver apologizes to Felicity about what he had said. He tells her that she is his partner and that he could never do what he does without her and Diggle. I love team Arrow. We also see that Roy is starting to experience the changes effects associated with his injection of the Mirakuru, which Thea knows nothing about. There is even a very poorly written scene where Roy ends up with a piece of glass in him and he actually heals right up from his wound, something that makes Thea very suspicious, especially after the scene where he saves Moira from being crushed by a lightpole at the rally. Only a matter of time before we get to see who he ends up being in the show, Red Arrow or Arsenal. Looking forward to it. Check out the promo for next week’s episode and Deathstroke’s new look!
Arrow s2E11 “Blind Spot”
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8pmEST on The CW!
~CynicNerd
