Arrow has returned after a long Olympic hiatus, but it returns with a great episode called Time of Death. This week introduces Starling City to classic DC villain William Tockman, aka The Clock King. The great thing here? The Clock King is an original Green Arrow bad guy! For a hero who doesn’t have a large stable of bad guys to choose from, it’s nice to see another one show up on the show, especially since they killed off Count Vertigo.
The show starts off with a heist, at Kord Industries no less. I really like that they keep bringing in this famous name, and I really hope to eventually see Ted Kord show up on the show! Clockman has sent in two goons to steal a device that can crack any bank vault, but they must always be conscious of the directives the he is giving them, “timing is important”! The goons of course become impatient and they end up not listening to Tockman’s orders and a security guard sees them, so they have to shoot him. This action puts the heat on the whole operation by the police and of course team Arrow! The goons getaway with the device and so now Clockman can start breaking into banks.
I liked Robert Knepper (Hunger Games: Catching Fire) as The Clock King. Compared to the other villains on the show thus far, his motivations are different. It more or less reminded me of the way Mr Freeze operates in the Batman world, with a purpose. Clockman’s sister is sick and he is paying for her care, bank robberies seem like the quickest way to do so, right? Clockman himself also has a very rare disease, one which actually helps Felicity to track him down quickly. What disease is it? MacGregor’s Syndrome, a fake disease that we first heard about in the Batman and Robin movie. Great detail here from the writers, who also throw in a fake Blue Devil movie poster on the side of a bus! The easter egg references that this show makes week after week makes me smile.
There is a lot of tension between the females on Team Arrow, well from Felicity’s side of things. We see this during a training session with Oliver, Diggle, and Sarah. Sarah gets injured which leads to everyone comparing scars. Felicity is starting to feel more or less unneeded now that Sarah is here, especially since Sarah is such a badass. But we see that Sarah also knows her way around computers and a lab, so Felicity feels threatened. The biggest problem for Felicity is that Clockman is a genius hacker and able to break through her firewalls and cause all sorts of trouble for the team during their pursuit of him. He even blows up all the computer equipment in their hideout from a remote location! Felicity eventually decides to take matters into her own hands and when the team decides to set a trap for Clockman at Starling Bank, Felicity decides to go on site to battle him, despite everyone knowing of course. In the end, the team stops Clockman and Felcity actually takes a bullet for Sarah and stops Clockman herself by exploding his cell phone the way he set off her lab! In the end Felicity gets a scar of her own and Ollie tells her that she will always be his girl. How sweet.
The other story line this week is the Lance family drama. With the return of Sarah, Laurel has not taken it the way that everyone would have expected, instead she is quite angry. After the blow up at the end of the last episode, how will Detective Lance bring his family back together? Well he believes that his ex-wife Dinah is interested in him again, so Laurel seeing how happy it is making him agrees to have a family dinner to patch things up. Well of course that goes badly when first Sarah shows up with Ollie and then Dinah drops the news that she is seeing someone in Central City. Once again Laurel has an emotional explosion and walks out. Oliver confronts her in the hall and tells her that he is done chasing her. Something he says fixes everything because by the end of the episode Laurel goes to see Sarah, who is now the bartender at Thea’s club, and apologizes and they make up. Not only that, Laurel shows up at AA, much to the surprise of her father. It is nice to see her finally coming around.
On the island this week we find out the origin of Sin. It is nice to actually know why this character has such a strong connection to Sarah, and now we know why. Sin’s father was flying over the island when his plane was shot down, he of course dies, but before that happens he shows Sarah a picture of his daughter. With no mother or father now the kid has no one, so Sarah decides, when she returns, to take care of her.
The plot of Moira running for mayor doesn’t evolve too much this week, but at the end of the episode we get a major bombshell! Thea who has noticed there is tension between her mother and brother, sends a text to Oliver to get home ASAP. It ends up only being a trick to get Moira and him together, Moira is in the middle of a meeting. With who? Slade Wilson! What a great ending to the episode as Wilson introduces himself to his old friend. I can’t wait until next week!
Arrow S2E14 The Promise
~CynicNerd
