statsgirl

That's a bit too meta for Guggenheim though. I"m hoping it's because she put a tracker on him. Slipped something into his pants during the forehead kiss. Barrowman said he hadn't read ep 3x10 when he was getting ready to film the mountain scene. But whether it's in 3x09 or for a later episode, there must be some reason why Malcolm is on that mountain. Since Oliver couldn't defeat Malcolm himself, Malcolm would have known that Oliver couldn't defeat Ra's, in which case Malcolm would still be on Ra's hit list.. Then why set up this elaborate plot? Zombie Tommy sort of makes sense but not if Ra's is still trying to make Malcolm pay for the Glades and he was in 3x04, Ra's didn't care about Sara's killer, he wanted Malcolm. I'd go with Oliver as a protege, especially given the summer spoiler that Ra's thinks Oliver could be better if he didn't have his humanity, but he seemed to be definitely killing Oliver there, especially with that prayer which sounds like a benediction for someone about to die. Do we know Oliver is back in Starling City in 3x12, or could that be an appearance in Nanda Parbat? Or will we have flashbacks later in the season to what Oliver did during his missing months? So many questions..... I hope they don't screw up the answers.

I'm just hoping that Roy and Laurel really screw up in the field, especially Laurel. And then Diggle can come in and clean up. In that clip, Barrowman says that he's got one more scene to film for 3x09 and it's high up and cold. He also said that he doesn't read the script for the next episode (3x10) until he's finished shooting the last one. Given that he wasn't in the mountain scene in the cut that was shown, does that mean that it's his body we see in the promo?

I think if anybody should believe that Oliver is really dead, it should be Laurel, and secondarily Roy, who have the least experience of people coming back from the dead. Then they can go out saving Starling City as vigilantes while Diggle and Felicity work behind the scenes. Just because Felicity isn't actively looking for Oliver shouldn't mean that she believes he's dead -- maybe she ups the work on the ATOM suit so it can go find him. LOL that they are now promoting 10, 11 and 12 are Roy episodes. I expect them to come up with stuff for Ray and his suit next. What did they expect? It's not like people, from critics like Mo Ryan and Alan Sepinwall to ordinary viewers, haven't been saying they watch for O/D/F Team Arrow. I'm in the minority but I'm excited that Marc Singer is coming on. I've had a crush on him since I was a kid. (And he played Petruchio in the San Francisco Rep Theatre production of Taming of the Shrew which is the one that makes the most sense of a problematic play I've ever seen.)

I agree that it was sad, the way he kissed her, but I don't think it was about Ray, it was about Oliver himself and and how he was feeling about what he was going off to do. Unlike in the scene last season when he went to offer himself to Slade, I don't think Oliver was giving up and going off to die here, I think he was going to fight as hard as he could for life but there was the very great probability that he was going to die, unlike what he told Diggle, Roy and Felicity, unlike what they were all pretending. A kiss on the lips is romantic and passionate. A kiss on the forehead is loving, deeply loving in this case. Oliver had all sorts of feelings for Felicity but he couldn't open up the door of passion because he had to leave her. He had to. Kissing her on the mouth could have made that much more difficult, particularly since they weren't in the habit of kissing casually. There were such huge issues here, I don't think Ray having kissed Felicity was on his mind. I think if he were kissing her on the forehead because she had just kissed Ray, or because he was letting her move on, I think the kiss would have been shorter and not as intense. Nor would he have told her he loved her because that would really mess up her mind if she's moving on. Oliver was hoping to come back if he could, and so I don't think he would want to be encouraging Felicity to move on to Ray. That kiss was about the two of them and what he needed to do.

GirlWednesday, Laurel doesn't know that Thea killed Sara. Wisely I think, Team Arrow didn't tell her because at this point, she's a loose canon right now and the only person who she will listen to is Oliver and he can't deal with that right now. I really liked seeing this episode in contrast to last season's City of Blood where Oliver had given up and was willing to sacrifice himself just to make it stop. This time he's not willing to do that, he's going to go down fighting as hard as he can. But realistically, he's going up against Ra's al Ghul and the odds are not great that he will make it back. So hoping desperately that he will come back, to Thea, to Felicity, to his crusade, he also prepares for the fact that he very well may not, refusing to let Diggle risk his life for him, telling Roy to take care of Thea, and finally being completely honest with Felicity again. I think it's a power thing. Right now, Laurel is telling everyone the secret with the addendum "I can't tell anyone else...Don't tell anyone". She even told Ted Grant that her sister was murdered and she's the only one who knows, which is a big fat lie. As long as Laurel tells everyone "my sister died; don't tell anyone", the people who know don't talk amongst themselves and she controls the secret. Once Thea talks to Oliver, or Dinah to Nyssa or Oliver or Thea, the power is out of her hands. I think Oliver is a control freak but that's from his time on the islands where if you don't control everything, don't look at all the escape plans, you die. Laurel is controlling, I think even in the flashbacks Laurel is someone who likes controlling others and it's consistent to present day (e.g. last episode telling Quentin she wants to police to spend more time looking into the burglaries).

Good acting choice by EBR, since we won't get to be seeing Felicity going to sleep in Oliver's sweaty T-shirt while he's gone.

I didn't mean her corporate career goals but who she is as a person. He values her brains but he's willing to put her round peg in a square hole because he wants her close in case he needs her, and he's willing to let her take the consequences e.g. the gossip. For what Oliver wanted Felicity to do, Thea would have been a better pick for the job, if she knew the secret, because she's an organizing sort of person (e.g. the way she took over Verdant) and for Felicity it's something she can do if she has to but not where her talents lie. Ray is willing to let Felicity be a round peg in a round hole. Everything, and everyone (at that point) is secondary to the mission for Oliver.

I'm holding out for some tracking device because "she knows where he is and where he isn't", and that she goes into full hacker mode. There's only two weeks between when the show comes back and when Oliver does so it's not impossible. I need something to get me through the Canary episodes.

It's not just Cooper though, Felicity thought Sara was dead but she turned up alive, she saw Oliver react to Slade being not dead after all, and they all thought Malcolm was dead and now he's also turned up, very much alive. Maybe even Ronnie if Caitlyn told her about him. Why wouldn't she hold out hope Oliver is still alive too? MG tweeted that Felicity's reaction to the news was "epic". I'm hoping that that means she goes into warrior queen (later to be warrior Queen) mode and refuses to believe it.

I change my vote, it does sound like Maseo. It would make sense if it was him lying to Ra's about Oliver being dead. Given what we've seen of Maseo and Oliver's relationship, Maseo would be invested in Oliver staying alive. Felicity just found out that the boyfriend she had felt guilty about for five years because he died really didn't. What's the point of that story if she's going to be so willing to believe that Oliver is dead without a body? Barrowman said they were just finishing filming 3x09 when he was schedule to go up the mountain at midnight. I think Oliver is supposed to return in 3x12 but only briefly since SA did only a day or so of filming. His return is probably the cliff-hanger for the episode, and his real return is in 3x13 Canaries. I would so watch that.

It was Barrowman's voice, and JB said in an interview that he was filming on a mountain at midnight later that day.

You know there is going to be a 'gotcha' somewhere in there. I liked the good-byes scene. Diggle offered to go with him but Oliver refused so they shook hands as equals and Roy got a "take care of Thea" and a hug because he's become kind of a little brother to Oliver. I don't know if he was expecting Felicity to show up, she said that she had been delayed at work, but when she said that she wouldn't try to talk him out of going because he wasn't going to listen to her anyway, he said "I appreciate that". I really love that these two know each other so well, same with Diggle and Oliver. I think Diggle and Felicity both knew that there was a very good chance Oliver was going to end up dying, in spite of what they said to him. Except for when he worked for Waller, Oliver only killed bad guys who were hurting others. Diggle was a soldier. Malcolm gleefully killed innocent people just because he could. I see a difference. The other difference is that Thea doesn't know that Oliver has killed anyone, only that he's kept secrets from her. She knows Malcolm has killed hundreds of people, including the father who raised her, and hurt the man who was her stepfather. So aside from it being a stupid decision on her part, I see no reason why Diggle or Felicity would trust her with their secrets. If it turns out that Malcolm was brainwashing Thea all along, taking away more of Thea's agency and JB's comments on how Malcolm loves her, I will be so disappointed. I think that would be Oliver, Deadshot and Roy..so, yeah, he is one of the 2 smartest men he knows :D Don't forget Ben Browder's character from season 1. That list would put Oliver in the genius category. Maybe but I don't think she'd jump into bed with Ray. For one thing, he's further along in his grieving process so it wouldn't be a "keep the demons at bay" thing for him and he's been shown to be considerate of her so I think he would be considerate of not taking advantage of her grieving too. For Felicity, if Ray actually knew Oliver she'd be more likely to do it but he didn't and I think she would want to get closer to the people who mourned with her like Diggle and Roy. In the goodbye scene with Team Arrow, Oliver seemed strangely at peace with his decisions. Maybe because he really though he could defeat Ra's, or maybe because he thought if he didn't the world would finally stop tormenting him. There were a number of almost-smiles for Felicity, as if he had finally accepted his feelings for her and was dealing with them. (That's not to say I wouldn't have preferred a serious goodbye kiss but as an alternative this still worked.) Maybe it has to be near Gotham City and Metropolis. That's the thing about this show. Even though The Flash has better plotting and is more fun to watch right now, it disappears from my memory like candy floss as soon as it's done. Stephen Amell in playing Oliver's interactions with the people close to him grabs me, pulls me in and doesn't let me go. Which is why Oliver can't die.

If some people really think that Oliver is gone, then the cliff-hanger did what it was meant to do. I can't see the show being about anyone other than Oliver. They're not going to make a Diggle show, unless it's the Suicide Squad, and none of the other supporting actors is a good enough actor to carry it. Heck, it took even Stephen Amell until now to be really nuanced in playing his role. Yeah. I'm getting tired of seeing Oliver get beat up on, and take two steps forward and then three back.

Nope, I want it to be Felicity, but only if his behavior is bothering her. because this arc for Felicity has been all about empowering her and giving her direction. And she did that again in the Climb, but telling him she wants them to go back to a professional relationship. (Not that they ever really were, but they were in terms of what Ray and Felicity do.) For all that this hasn't been an ideal alternative relationship for Felicity .... well, maybe it has. He's a guy who values her brains and what she can do with them in terms of tech (unlike Oliver), he promotes her to VP status (unlike Oliver who made her his EA), and he gives her lots of space and time to do her own thing, whether it's with Team Arrow or a day off with her mom. He's rich and handsome and treats Felicity well. Bonus is that he's creepy enough that we're not going to take him seriously as a real alternative romantic interest. So if the plan was to introduce another potential superhero vigilante while providing Felicity with an alternative to Oliver so that when she picks Oliver it's not because she doesn't have anyone else, I think they've worked it not too badly.

I think people will tune in to 3x10 to find out what happened to Oliver. It's 3x11 that they really need to worry about, when Oliver still isn't around and it's Insta Canary time. I get the feeling it's more "we want to do Batman and we want to play around with different things each year so here, this is what we're trying out season 3 and hey, incidentally doesn't it make a great hole to showcase Laurel and Ray?" The problem is that Laurel is the most polarizing of all the characters and viewers aren't invested in Ray enough to watch to see what happens with his new suit. I think this show hasn't done justice to the supporting characters not named Laurel, but other shows were worse, House in particular. At the end of their season 3, they decided to get rid of the two most popular supporting characters after Wilson and replaced them with three few people cared about. Nothing the fans said made any difference, over two hundred signed rubber ducklings arriving at the station made no difference, and when people continued to complain and interviewers continued to question, the EP had hissy fits. The more viewership went down, the more he held firm.

John Barrowman's voice on the V/O for the promo plus the shot of someone approaching Oliver makes me wonder if this was an elaborate plan by Malcolm to find the Lazarus Pits so that he could use them for Tommy. And then I remember he was with the LoA for years so he probably already knows where they are. Do we know that Ray will actually be miniaturized himself? From how he was explaining it to Felicity, it sounded to me like he was going to create a miniature android to do the fighting. I hope so because is spite of what the guys on the ArrowAfterShow are predicting, it is way, way, way too soon for Felicity to start getting romantic about Ray. Oliver's just told her that loving her is one of the two things he knows. Love of your life guys, remember that. That's probably why SA tweeted that there was more to the show than just Arrow's story. Even if people believe Oliver is still alive, when he doesn't show up in 3x10, they don't want viewers not to come back for 3x11. I love the tracker idea. Guggenheim said Felicity wouldn't be looking for Oliver because "she knows where he is and where he isn't." The Felicity I have got to know, the only person actually looking for Sara's killer, would be moving heaven and earth to get Oliver back even if it's only his body. Isabel, like Blood, was a plot device. (And like the Count, Blood will be back in another version.) Yao Fei I'd argue was somewhat of a plot device because Oliver felt grateful to him, not emotionally close. Shado was Oliver's lover but more than that, she was Slade's love and his motivation to go crazy on Oliver. Real feelings from both the guys she was fridged for. The only male character that Oliver has been emotionally close to who has died permanently was Robert, and that was back in the pilot. Since then, there's been Shado, Moira and Sara.

I think we are supposed to see the stalking as Ray having social problems and not realizing when he crossing the proper line. He's not in Sheldon Cooper territory but he is definitely not following the rules for polite company. What doesn't make sense about this is that he's supposed to be a successful, charming businessman. Typically, those guys have their social manners down pat. The timing is much more problematic for me, which is why I'm hoping that now that Ray has shown Felicity his plans and Felicity and Oliver had their not-quite-9 scene, that a Ray/Felicity romance is off the table. Hopefully Felicity will decide that Ray is not over Anna and keep her distance, and as for Felicity, there is no way I will accept her dating Ray within the next year, whether Oliver is dead or alive.

Moira was a picture in one of the Christmas ornaments, wasn't she? Everybody has secrets on this show, it's SOP. But with Thea and Malcolm, she knows he's a psychopath who without hesitation murdered over 500 people in the Glades including his own son, and maybe by now she also knows he murdered her father and had Walter kidnapped. It's not like she's suddenly struck up a relationship with her formerly deadbeat dad. This is s very dangerous man and she knows it, she tried to shoot him herself. So to deliberately choose Malcolm's side (by hiding that she's been living with him and training with him) because Oliver lied about knowing he was her biological father for two weeks, it seems an immature and stupid choice. There's no way I would tell her about the Arrow cave because the first opportunity she saw to score point with Malcolm, she would tell him all the secrets. I had great hopes for the Thea/Merlyn stuff. I really wanted her to go all Moira on him and beat him at his own manipulative game. But Thea's been turned into a dummy, accepting what he says without question because he's her only living parent and "never lied to her", lying to everyone else for him, and finally being turned into a real dummy (as in ventriloquist's doll) with the stupidest of all tropes, the drugs that let them control your mind and you can't remember it. Poor Willa Holland. The EPs said that KC and WH would get really good storylines s3 because they' were troopers for the lack of stories in the first 2 season. Well KC got hers but WH really got gypped. I wasn't into the comics and I find Ra's creepy, Icky creepy, not fun creepy. Sara was tailing Malcolm for the LoA, wasn't she? All he would have to do would be to drop hints where he was going to be and she'd pick them up like breadcrumbs. That's a good point, and the only way Ra's behaviour makes sense. Poor Sara, she really was just a plot point for everyone except Nyssa and Quentin. That makes sense, and it parallels Oliver saying he finally knows what he's fighting for. But like the clues to Sara's murder, Laurel has had so many lightbulb moments this season that if this is the big one, it got overlooked. Laurel has already been "doing what it takes" in terms of lashing out at people in her anger and taking boxing lessons; is what it takes to find and punish Sara's killer putting on a costume rather than looking at the evidence?

I think it doesn't matter whether someone was intended to be dead or not, as long as the audience saw that person die in front of us. We saw Robert die, and Malcolm, and Tommy, and then Shado, Moira and Sara in quick succession. So whoever comes back a few episodes down the line and the EPs look! not dead!, it's still going to feel the same kind of cheat. When the characters who come back are all male (except for Sara and now she really is dead), it feels like even more of a cheat. I really like Tommy and I wish they hadn't killed him off but if yet another person is going to come back from the dead, I'd rather it was Sara than Tommy.

Quentin's was angry at Oliver in s1 because he blamed him for Sara's death and hurting Laurel. Since he got over that, he's been okay with the Arrow s2, and cheering him on in s3. Laurel, on the other hand, has been up and down, up and down.... I don't see Thea getting an invitation to Team Arrow because they can't trust her. She's still lying to Oliver and putting Malcolm ahead of him. If she's doing that to Oliver, there's no way Diggle and Felicity can trust her. If Oliver doesn't come back right away, I'm hoping Diggle, Felicity and Roy go over to Thea's and stage an intervention and lay down some truths on her. I don't think Team Arrow dropped the ball that badly on Sara's murder. They, or rather Felicity has been looking into it as she got evidence in drips and drabs. Maybe if Laurel had told her father, he could have got some crime scene investigators over there right away, or not dragged Sara's body to the Arrow cave probably destroying evidence along the way. But two months isn't that long when it's a murder case. The really bad writing is for Ra's, who in ep 3x04 couldn't care less that his daughter's lover had died because she had never really belonged, and now suddenly he's giving Oliver 48 hours to find the killer.

Last week the story was by Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg (because they wanted to blend it with the Flash part of the crossover). Storytelling matters.

I didn't like it when Oliver said Merlyn was under his protection just because Thea pulled at his heart strings about her tiny remaining family, and I hope even more now that when he gets back, he works to loosen Merlyn's clutches on her. Yes, he's her only remaining living parent but some parents are toxic and the only way to save the kid is to remove them from the parent. Always with the silver linings....... I think it terms of Laurel's story here, if Oliver had told her and said goodbye, not only would they have had to deal with her reactions and then calming her down, but she would have been a minor part of Oliver's story. This way, with her scenes only with Dinah, Quentin and Thea, she got to have a B plot of her own.

No, Oliver is still keeping that a secret, just as Thea was keeping secret that she was living with Malcolm when she was away and training with him. It's been months since Laurel hounded Team Arrow to find out who killed Sara. Since then she's told Oliver that she's not on his team and he's not the boss of her so presumably she's doing her own investigating. If she is. With Ted Grant. I think 3x03 was the last time she tried to get Team Arrow to investigate. She didn't try to kill Roy but that's because Oliver stopped her. If he's out of town, there's no one to do that.

Diggle got a bromance/partners handshake. It wasn't a hug but it. seemed appropriate. Only Thea got a hug and that's because Oliver was sacrificing himself for her. IMO, Olicity is getting the same shoddy treatment the rest of the show is getting. There are moments, but they are few and far between and meanwhile we get scenes with crazy eyes Ray. I was surprised that Roy didn't react more when he heard that it was Thea who killed Sara. But maybe he understands, having killed a cop himself. The plot was very Malcolm Merlyn, killing two birds with one stone. Either Oliver wins, in which case he's free of Ra's, or Ra's wins in which case he free of Thea's meddlesome brother. I think they're struggling even more this season to write Laurel. They've got the anger and determination but she's doing nothing to find Sara's killer, just taking boxing lessons and still talking about how she'll extract vengeance from him /her and we know that's not going to happen because it's Thea. (And tbh, I don't think KC can do the scene where Laurel finds out and rages at Thea.) So moving her into BC zone is still kind of pointless, and even more bizarre when she's telling everyone she knows that Sara is dead and please don't tell my father. The difference is that while Quentin has a heart problem, we don't know how he will react to hearing about Sara. Laurel, on the other hand, has gone off on a vengeance spree every time she heard about the next person in line killed Sara, except for Roy when Oliver stopped her. That's the problem with Laurel, it's always been the problem with Laurel (good consistency, writers) that she goes off on a tangent and does stupid things without proving her information first. I thought MG said that we would see in this episode why Laurel puts on the BC costume. Unless it's to keep fooling Quentin, I still don't see why. They really need a new schtick. On this show, the women (Shado, Moira, Sara, Tatsu, Barry's mother and now Anna) stay dead while the men (Slade, Malcolm, Ronnie on the Flash) survive. Robert Queen did die but I wouldn't be surprised if Malcolm revived Tommy somehow. However, I really hope that the Ray/Felicity "romance" is over now that she knows that he lost a fiance and isn't over her, and that Oliver loves/loved her. You're right, if he was thinking she was moving on with Ray, she should have said something like it back to him. Well they have to come up with the next way to keep Oliver and Felicity apart.... ETA: Matseo said, and Oliver repeated later, that they were meeting to fight in a neutral place so I assumed it wasn't in Nanda Parbat. Maybe they have a meeting ground in the Rockies, or the Andes.

Well that looked pretty dead to me..... I wonder if Nyssa is the one who Lazarus Pits him. Malcolm Merlyn is really truly awful and I think Oliver should have shown that video to Thea of the plane and the short shooter, and tell her about the drug. He's so so bad that if Oliver doesn't come back, Thea will be completely taken over by him. I really really want Felicity and Diggle to go over to Thea's and explain the facts of Merlyn life to her. Speaking of the mind-control drug, lamest explanation ever. parallel I liked: Felicity knows two things; Oliver knows two things. parellel I didn't like: Felicity tells Oliver to kill Ras; Dinah tells Laurel to make those who killed Sara pay. (Also, Laurel is still doing bugger all to find Sara's killer, it's Team Arrow doing all the work. If that scene was a '9', Guggenheim is working in base 16. At first I thought they were going for the people who died and were waiting for him on the other side, but Oliver saw the four people he cared about the most: Robert, Moira, Thea and Felicity. Not that that's going to put the matter to rest for those who believe that Laurel is his true love. She knew he was going to go --if nothing else she knows by now that nothing changes Oliver's mind when it's made up except experience, she even said she wasnt't gong to ask him not to go. if she begged him not to go, it might distract him and that would be dangerous. But hey, MG, a real kiss wouldn't have hurt.