Welcome to the Legion!

Legion contributor Andrea Levine is recapping and reviewing Arrow for us this season. Follow her on Twitter @wysefyre!

Guess who’s back? Back again. Cayden’s back. Tell a friend.

That’s right. Cayden James has come back to bite Felicity in the butt. In case you need a reminder, Cayden James is the guy Felicity helped Helix break out of ARGUS last season. There was no way that job wasn’t going to have consequences. But before we get into that, let’s see how the rest of Team Arrow is doing. I’d say calling the episode Reversal is a pretty on the nose description about what the episode is all about.

You know what? Let’s not. Cayden James is way more important. How do I know? Because Felicity is called away from a date with Oliver to help catch Black Siren, but then is called away from THAT to help her former Helix buddy, Alena, deal with Cayden James.

And just what is Cayden James up to? He wants to destroy the internet. Yeah, I’m right there with you. How do you destroy the internet? Apparently it’s conveniently housed in a vault, and Cayden James has had Black Siren kill the only three people on Earth who can open said vault.

Luckily, Felicity, with Oliver stepping in as Overwatch to assist her, is able to stop Cayden from overloading the vault and destroying the Internet. Of course, Cayden escapes to wreak havoc on Team Arrow another day, and what’s this? His plan wasn’t to destroy the Internet? It was really to upload some code, but he needed to deceive Felicity, so she would lower the firewall? Color me surprised. Not really.

One of the great things about Reversal is instead of the episode being from Oliver’s perspective and all about him and Felicity getting back together, this is more about Felicity and everything going on in her life and how she handles it. When Oliver asks her if this is how she felt when he used to run off, we see he really understands what’s going on. It’s nice to see him supporting Felicity instead of the other way around as it usually is.

We also get to see some of the changes happening within Team Arrow. Now that Diggle is in charge, he’s running things a little more organized and militaristic. Attack patterns now have code names. I’ve been waiting for this.

It’s also revealed that Cayden James is the person who rescued Black Siren from Lian Yu. No big surprise there, but it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. Right now, she’s very much a sidekick, but what’s going to happen when she decides she wants more control and power?

Oliver struggles with keeping his distance, and accidentally screws up Felicity and Alena’s plans to get their hands on a ghost drive, which was going to help them get to Cayden and uncover his plan, but they eventually get it, and Oliver realizes his mistake. This is what leads him to being the support in Felicity’s ear instead of actually being right there with her. Seriously, Oliver has grown up so much this season. It’s a little unnerving, because what’s going to happen when he has to pick up the hood again?

Other points of interest

~ Felicity has been struggling to come up with a name and idea for her startup with Curtis. Alena helps her. She suggests they focus their startup on the spinal implant tech, that got her walking again and kicked out of Palmer Tech. She also pitches herself as a future hire. We’ll see how that goes. And Felicity tells her she’d like to name the company Helix Dynamics. I think it has a great ring to it.

~ On the legislative side, early polling suggests around 70 percent of the people are against the Anti-Vigilante Legislation.

~ Curtis does an excellent job filling in for Felicity, while she’s off with Alena. He has his ups and downs, but overall, he does well. He figures out how to track Black Siren’s sonic scream, which I’m sure will come in handy in the future.

~ The date Oliver and Felicity kept trying to have was to celebrate the anniversary of their first date. It seems so long ago.

~ Felicity feels guilty about her role in helping Cayden James escape (as she should), and stressing about everything happening in her life. She wonders how Oliver did everything on his own. Oliver points out he didn’t. He had her. Aaaaw

~ Oliver and Felicity finally make it to dessert on their date, but it’s interrupted once again. This time, it’s Slade Wilson. He needs help regarding his son.

First things first, how great is Michael Emerson? Seriously. I adore his ability to be so quietly cold and menacing. He makes me want to know more about Cayden James. How did he become the man he is today? Was it ARGUS or something else? How many more people are going to die? Why does he really want Black Siren around? What’s he going to do to her when she inevitably turns on him? I usually have these kinds of questions, but with Michael Emerson, he makes me excited to get the answers.

If you couldn’t tell, I really enjoyed watching Arrow from a perspective that wasn’t Oliver’s. Oliver is great, but I think the show is sometimes stronger when he takes a backseat, and the other characters are allowed to breathe.

How exactly does one destroy the Internet? Is there really single vault that contains all access to all things internet? I highly doubt it, and if anything, that was one of the weaker parts to Reversal. I can suspend a lot of belief, but this was over the top, and I would think people as smart as Felicity, Alena, and Curtis would know better. This is probably my biggest issue with the episode. I don’t appreciate Felicity, Curtis, and Alena (even though she’s new) being treated as though they are dumb.

Overall, Reversal is a solid episode, and if the past few episodes have been any indication as to what’s to come, then season six is shaping up to be one of Arrow’s stronger seasons. What do you think?

                        

About author View all posts

Andrea Levine

Andrea Levine is an East Coast based geek, who has more fandoms than she cares to admit. When she isn't talking about the latest geeky news, she's obsessing over musical theater. Her dream is to successfully bring geekdom and musical theater together (I'm looking at you, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark). You can read more of her exploits as Wysefyre over at [insertgeekhere].