S05.E23: Lian Yu

[bijoux]

1 hour ago, apinknightmare said:

I would've accepted anything other than an interested, "You know my mom?" YOU ALREADY FELL FOR THIS ONCE YOU CUTE LITTLE MORON. THAT MAN KIDNAPPED YOU TOO, just...yikes. If he'd just turned and walked swiftly away I would've felt better about the level of preparation his mother had given him. Anything other than what we got, haha.

What I find funny, and by funny I mean annoying, is how easy it was to fix that. Just have William say no, that's not my name, and turn around. And close out the episode on Chase's crazy face as he watches him. The end result would still have been the same, of course Chase wouldn't have been fooled and he would have taken the kid. And that's what mattered most here. I only wish it mattered a little to not make this child seem stupid and put the very minimum amount of effort in order to achieve that.

[dingochick]

Dialogue aside, I feel like I can never hear it all, is the sound mixing weird for anyone else on this show? Have tried adjusting my set to no avail. 

[legaleagle53]

5 hours ago, nitrofishblue said:

do we really know that Malcom is dead? Yes, there was an explosion but that was in the background, no scenes of what actually happened. In the Arrow world, you aren't dead until you have died two or more times. The "dead" keep coming back.

John Barrowman confirmed on Facebook that "Malcolm is no more."

[arjumand]

22 minutes ago, dingochick said:

Dialogue aside, I feel like I can never hear it all, is the sound mixing weird for anyone else on this show? Have tried adjusting my set to no avail. 

I thought that was just me! I just keep making it louder and louder, and then when I watch something else the speakers vibrate ominously. Or I yell at the screen like a crazy person: "Hey asshole! Speak into the mike!"

 

10 minutes ago, legaleagle53 said:

John Barrowman confirmed on Facebook that "Malcolm is no more."

Until my theory is disproved next season - which it probably will be, in the stupidest way possible - here it is: yes, Malcolm is dead, but not in that mine explosion thing. His death has been filmed already, and it's going to be some noble self-sacrificial thing, and it won't be offscreen. I think that explosion we heard was the result of Malcolm pulling Boomerang dude onto the mine. In my opinion, they're not going to kill off their beloved Malcolm Merlyn without milking it as much as possible. OTOH, they really could be that dumb. Who knows.

[AudienceofOne]

27 minutes ago, arjumand said:

Until my theory is disproved next season - which it probably will be, in the stupidest way possible - here it is: yes, Malcolm is dead, but not in that mine explosion thing. His death has been filmed already, and it's going to be some noble self-sacrificial thing, and it won't be offscreen. I think that explosion we heard was the result of Malcolm pulling Boomerang dude onto the mine. In my opinion, they're not going to kill off their beloved Malcolm Merlyn without milking it as much as possible. OTOH, they really could be that dumb. Who knows.

I imagine that Malcolm survived that land mine but then finds a way to get everyone off the island and dies when Chase sets off the explosives. So he's still blown up and is still "no more" but he saves everybody before he does it.

[Midnight Lullaby]

3 hours ago, catrox14 said:

Can I just say how much I love how quickly this place adopts a nickname and it's usually totally organic and born of terrible writing, like Poppy or Rayporter. And now, Myson. No one will ever convince me that his name is not in fact Myson William Queen. 

I liked the finale overall and I fully understand the need a writer has to make sure the audience can follow the plot but for FFS, do they really think viewers are just going to tune and not figure out after the first 3 'My Sons" that they are trying to save Oliver and BM's SON.  This episode might as well have just been titled. "MY/SON'

I mean, seriously, who speaks like Oliver did when Oliver & Slade, and then later Oliver & Chase, are talking to each other, respectively about William?  In each case, they both know who they were talking about whether it was them alone with each other, or others in the room who already knew who they were talking about. Everyone on the damn island including the poor unconscious ARGUS guard knew who they were talking about.

Every one of these exchanges just took me out of each scene, and I was so bothered by it, that I decided to rewatch and the look at the dialogue because I thought maybe I'm being too harsh. And maybe I'm just being overcritical...but I really don't think I am.

Look at these specific exchanges. I'm even leaving out BM and Felicity's chat in which BM says, "I can't leave my son".

 

 

 

Okay, that was bad enough but seriously this exchange made laugh when I wasn't supposed to be laughing because it was not how people speak.  

 

NO NO NO, this is not how people talk to each other when they are talking about the SAME THING AT THE SAME TIME.

Okay, most people, switch to an informal pronoun, in this case "He" after the first "my son".

So it should be:

Oliver: Where is my son?
Chase: William? Good name. Sort of a sweet kid, actually. You sure he's yours?

Oliver: Adrian, where is HE?!

Chase: If you want to get him (or you know his name, William) back, you know what you have to do.

And on the boat, Oliver did it one more time, but at least he remembered his child's name. LOL

 

The writers have only themselves to blame for me never calling Oliver's son anything but "Myson". 

Thank you for writing this down. I can't stop laughing and it's the most positive emotion Myson's existence has ever caused me, LOL

[statsgirl]

2 hours ago, dingochick said:

Dialogue aside, I feel like I can never hear it all, is the sound mixing weird for anyone else on this show? Have tried adjusting my set to no avail. 

I had to turn on the closed captioning a number of times.

Edited May 27, 2017 by statsgirl

[Cthulhudrew]

9 hours ago, catrox14 said:

I am so hoping for the reveal that "Vigilante'  is  Chase's evil doppelganger cousin who looks exactly like Chase, and has been working with Chase to get all these plans into play and he will blame Oliver for Chase's death so we get Josh Segerra back cause he was awesome when he was bad.

Maybe the Vigilante will turn out to be Samantha.

"I saw how much William idolized his deadbeat dad once he learned he was the Green Arrow, so I needed to find a way to regain my level of importance in his life!"

[Morrigan2575]

17 minutes ago, Cthulhudrew said:

Maybe the Vigilante will turn out to be Samantha.

"I saw how much William idolized his deadbeat dad once he learned he was the Green Arrow, so I needed to find a way to regain my level of importance in his life!"

Vigilante existed before William found out Oliver was the GA.

ETA: Just realized you were joking

Edited May 28, 2017 by Morrigan2575

[johntfs]

11 hours ago, Hiveminder said:

I'm not going to give Ra's any credit. So he was essentially coerced into joining the LoA to protect his loved ones and then had to go back and destroy his home which contained his loved ones because it was league tradition and they would have turned on him if he didn't. You know who else was in that position? Oliver. And guess who didn't become a power mad sociopath who treated other people like his toys and forced another man into the same awful situation he had once been in. 

Then don't.  Ra's wasn't just coerced into joining the League.  Presumably the previous Ra's saw him as a potential new Ra's, so he was kidnapped and put through the brainwashing stuff that failed to work on Oliver.  Ra's al Ghul was "The Head of the Demon" which makes the League of Assassins, collectively, The Demon.  It's not supposed to be a group about hugs and puppies.  The best that can be said about it is that it was intended to be an evil that sought out and destroyed other evils.

So, a person holding the name and title of Ra's al Ghul, the Head of the Demon, is required by his position to do harsh, terrible, evil things as a matter of course.  Ra's obeyed those dictates.  He was a bad guy.  But even though he obeyed the dictates, he didn't indulge them or revel in them.  He was harsh but not willfully cruel.  He wasn't selfish and he wasn't petty.  Merlyn, Slade, Darke and Chase were absolutely cruel, selfish and petty.

[BkWurm1]

10 hours ago, dingochick said:

Dialogue aside, I feel like I can never hear it all, is the sound mixing weird for anyone else on this show? Have tried adjusting my set to no avail. 

7 hours ago, statsgirl said:

I had to turn on the closed captioning a number of times.

Yeah, rewinding and turning the closed caption on and off several times during an episode to get the parts I couldn't understand was my norm before the live positing thread happened.  Then I just couldn't understand and had to hope someone in the thread caught it or wait til I did a rewatch.  And it's not with any one specific character.  It happens with everyone sometimes.  

18 hours ago, johntfs said:

Because that's how things go in the League of Assassins.  Ra's (and consider that before he was Ra's, Ra's had another name - a name that was taken from him) was as much a slave to the traditions as anyone else in the league, probably more so.  Unless he upholds the traditions to the letter the others in the League will turn on him, execute him and pick somebody else who will fulfill the traditions.  It was awful that he forced Nyssa to marry Oliver, but he did that in order to save her life.  Because otherwise, once Oliver became Ra's, Nyssa would have to be killed as a potential rival.  Because that's the tradition.

Except that's not true.  Nyssa became the head of the LoA and disbanded the whole thing.  No one turned on her. No one tried to kill her and pick a new leader.  

5 hours ago, johntfs said:

Then don't.  Ra's wasn't just coerced into joining the League.  Presumably the previous Ra's saw him as a potential new Ra's, so he was kidnapped and put through the brainwashing stuff that failed to work on Oliver.  Ra's al Ghul was "The Head of the Demon" which makes the League of Assassins, collectively, The Demon.  It's not supposed to be a group about hugs and puppies.  The best that can be said about it is that it was intended to be an evil that sought out and destroyed other evils.

So, a person holding the name and title of Ra's al Ghul, the Head of the Demon, is required by his position to do harsh, terrible, evil things as a matter of course.  Ra's obeyed those dictates.  He was a bad guy.  But even though he obeyed the dictates, he didn't indulge them or revel in them.  He was harsh but not willfully cruel.  He wasn't selfish and he wasn't petty.  Merlyn, Slade, Darke and Chase were absolutely cruel, selfish and petty.

And again, this isn't true.  Ra's specifically told Oliver that when he was the new Ra's, Oliver could remake the League as he saw fit.  He tried to brainwash Oliver to get him to abandon those ideas and instead be his puppet.   But he made promises that turned out to be true since we had Nyssa in power for mere minutes before she ended the whole thing and apart from the acolytes that Talia trained on her own, the LoA is gone.  Otherwise Malcolm could have just continued as leader.  Whoever had the ring got to call the shots.  Ra's Al Guhl WANTED to be the evil guy he was.  Maybe he was trained that way, but turns out no one but himself was forcing those traditions to continue.  

[DeadZeus]

Wish Oliver would have beat down some of Talia's students aswell just to proof how superior he is!

I agree that Oliver's acting when saving William was a bit off, and kinda out of character IMO.

MM dying offscreen? I don't believe it! Is it too far fetched to think they are trying to trick us and asked barrowman to hint that he won't be returning... Only to return as the big villain next season?

[johntfs]

5 hours ago, BkWurm1 said:

Ra's Al Guhl WANTED to be the evil guy he was.  Maybe he was trained that way, but turns out no one but himself was forcing those traditions to continue.

Sure, it turned out that way, but Ra's did as he did because he believed he had to.  Granted that he wasn't as good as could have been, but I never said he was.  My basic point was that he wasn't nearly as bad as he could have been either.  And for all the stuff that happened in Season 3, let's also not forget that Ra's aid was one reason that Season 2 didn't end with Star City becoming a radioactive wasteland roamed by Mirakuru zombies.

[Hiveminder]

2 hours ago, johntfs said:

Sure, it turned out that way, but Ra's did as he did because he believed he had to.  Granted that he wasn't as good as could have been, but I never said he was.  My basic point was that he wasn't nearly as bad as he could have been either.  And for all the stuff that happened in Season 3, let's also not forget that Ra's aid was one reason that Season 2 didn't end with Star City becoming a radioactive wasteland roamed by Mirakuru zombies.

And so what if he wasn't as bad as he could have been?  If a woman complains to me about her husband abusing her I'm not going to tell her, "Well, at least he doesn't hit the kids." 

Or to more accurately parallel the situation, if a woman comes to me and says her father told her to have sex with this man or he would tell the man to rape her, I'm not going to say, "Well, at least he didn't let that city(that he's planning to destroy shortly) be murdered by super soldiers, and he let the man he's totally cool with raping you use his magic hot tub to save his sister (who Ra's ordered to be fatally injured), and he let that guy(who he only let use said hot tub in exchange for abandoning his life, becoming an assassin, marrying a woman against his will, and eventually murdering his entire home town and all his loved ones) have one last night with the love of his life (so Ra's could feel magnanimous)".

Ra's was a bad guy who occasionally did a helpful thing in exchange for something. There's nothing like able about him, and I don't give people credit for being subjectively less evil than other evil people.

In any case, this conversation is no longer relevant to this thread, and it looks like it's probably just going to go in circles, so that's my last word on the subject unless someone brings up a new point. 

Edited May 28, 2017 by Hiveminder

[statsgirl]

As John Barrowman said in the Loose Women interview this weekend, every villain in their own mind thinks that they are right and doing a good thing.  Malcolm thought he was right to destroy the Glades because they had destroyed Rebecca, Mirakuru-affected Slade wanted to destroy Oliver because the thought Oliver had chosen to save Sara over Shado, Damian Darhk wanted to reshape the world, and Chase wanted to break Oliver for having killed his father.  Ra's just wanted the best leader for the LoA and decided it was Oliver no matter how much Oliver didn't want it so he proceeded to take everything away from him so Oliver would do what he wanted.

Of the Big Bads, only Ra's and possibly Darhk was sane.

We should probably take this discussion to the Villains thread.

[DeadZeus]

Did they ever adress where Olivers "love" for the salmon ladder came from in the flashbacks?

Also... I kinda wish Oliver had spent atleast some time alone on the Island... The way they portrayed him in S1 he seemed to be bad with ppl, but he was literally always surrounded by people... ppl who he can call friends and allies...

[leopardprint]

I don't think the way they ended the flashbacks really matched up with his behavior once he got home as well, they should have started showing the PTSD symptoms from S1 in the Russia flashbacks, like the sleeping on the floor, attacking people who wake him up...

They could have also done a timejump. 

10 minutes ago, DeadZeus said:

Did they ever adress where Olivers "love" for the salmon ladder came from in the flashback

Oliver is like that dude at the gym who has to grunt a lot so everyone knows how heavy he is lifting (especially Felicity). ?Do you see Diggle hitting tires and doing inverted push-ups by her desk? 

It would have been cool if they had incorporated it into a flashback stunt, he fails at a task because he can't move up a vertical space. 

Edited May 28, 2017 by leopardprint

[bijoux]

22 minutes ago, DeadZeus said:

Did they ever adress where Olivers "love" for the salmon ladder came from in the flashbacks?

Slade (I think) had him doing chin ups as part of his island training. It was a feat that took Oliver a while to accomplish. I imagine Sally was conceived then.

[Hiveminder]

If I try to apply logic to what I see on screen the only assumption I can come to is that Oliver was faking some of his PTSD symptoms.  Which doesn't make sense, because he wanted everyone to believe he was completely normal and unchanged from his time on the island. It also doesn't explain why his burns and the wound Kovar gave him on his chest healed so well in, what, a week?  I have had much, much less severe burns before, and they took forever to heal. So I've just decided to pretend that Oliver missed the first boat, and something with the Bratva delayed Anatoly from sending a second one for months. If the writers don't care about continuity then why should I?

[BunsenBurner]

18 minutes ago, leopardprint said:

I don't think the way they ended the flashbacks really matched up with his behavior once he got home as well, they should have started showing the PTSD symptoms from S1 in the Russia flashbacks, like the sleeping on the floor, attacking people who wake him up...

I think the shot of whatever Kovar gave Oliver to make him kill himself explains why he acted like he did once he returned home.  The writers have written the perfect explanation to why he couldn't retain what he learned each season, the shot made him forget and become a moron. Unlike the mirakuru this shot stayed in his system for 5 years.

Somehow going back to Lian Yu and dealing with Prommy finally, hopefully, got the shot out of his system and he can become a normal human being. Unfortunately I don't believe it will but we can always hope.

[leopardprint]

Didn't he go directly from being burned to setting the signal fire, @Hiveminder? Maybe it took three weeks for the fishermen to see it or his mom also has the infamous Queen child amnesia and didn't pick him up from China for a month (this show...)

OMG, @BunsenBurner, I forgot about that dumb shot, do you think it also possessed magical healing abilities for his burn? 

And the thing is, the writers do this to themselves!

Edited May 28, 2017 by leopardprint

[statsgirl]

Another problem is that Oliver was so closed off and "can't trust anyone" when he got back, and yet all bromancey with Anatoly a few weeks earlier.

[tv echo]

Kovar injected Oliver with a KGB interrogation drug called the Red Death, which made him relive the pain of every injury he ever received: “Every cut, every bullet, every wound, like you’re feeling it for the first time."

Supposedly, this drug breaks the strongest men. It was the writers' deus ex machina for aligning Oliver's emotional and psychological state with S1.

Edited May 28, 2017 by tv echo

[BunsenBurner]

@leopardprint  Absolutely and that's why every injury, gun shots, arrows, knives, etc. healed so well that he could walk around in a couple of hours and no one ever knew. Take for example the gunshot wound by his mom. It was too close and yet he met with the police and did quite well.

[leopardprint]

3 minutes ago, tv echo said:

Supposedly, this drug breaks the strongest men. It was the writers' deus ex machina for aligning Oliver's emotional and psychological state with S1.

With these writers, more like "dumb ex machina". 

Sad trombone, I'll see myself out. 

[Hiveminder]

26 minutes ago, leopardprint said:

Didn't he go directly from being burned to setting the signal fire, @Hiveminder? Maybe it took three weeks for the fishermen to see it or his mom also has the infamous Queen child amnesia and didn't pick him up from China for a month (this show...)

OMG, @BunsenBurner, I forgot about that dumb shot, do you think it also possessed magical healing abilities for his burn? 

And the thing is, the writers do this to themselves!

Lol. Imagine.  Walter and Moira at breakfast.

Moira: I got a really important phone call last night. For the life of me, I can't remember who it was. Oh well, it will come to me. 

24 minutes ago, tv echo said:

Kovar injected Oliver with a KGB interrogation drug called the Red Death, which made him relive the pain of every injury he ever received: “Every cut, every bullet, every wound, like you’re feeling it for the first time."

Supposedly, this drug breaks the strongest men. It was the writers' deus ex machina for aligning Oliver's emotional and psychological state with S1.

Lazy, is what I call it. 

[Primal Slayer]

1 hour ago, DeadZeus said:

Also... I kinda wish Oliver had spent atleast some time alone on the Island... The way they portrayed him in S1 he seemed to be bad with ppl, but he was literally always surrounded by people... ppl who he can call friends and allies...

Yeah that was a negative for me, they knew where they needed to go but seemed to ignore it. He should've at least spent a month or so on his own. 

[AudienceofOne]

21 minutes ago, Primal Slayer said:

Yeah that was a negative for me, they knew where they needed to go but seemed to ignore it. He should've at least spent a month or so on his own. 

There was absolutely no reason why he couldn't leave Anatoly to go back home and then have Kovar kidnap him, dump him on the island and hunt him for sport. A month or so of that in his Arrow costume would have translated to the man we saw on screen when he got back. It's not that hard to write either. Instead we have him re-dress in a ragged Arrow costume. I mean, why? He may as well have 'Green Arrow' tattooed on his forehead.

[Primal Slayer]

Just now, AudienceofOne said:

There was absolutely no reason why he couldn't leave Anatoly to go back home and then have Kovar kidnap him, dump him on the island and hunt him for sport. A month or so of that in his Arrow costume would have translated to the man we saw on screen when he got back. It's not that hard to write either. Instead we have him re-dress in a ragged Arrow costume. I mean, why? He may as well have 'Green Arrow' tattooed on his forehead.

That would've been perfect.

[bettername2come]

On 5/25/2017 at 1:47 PM, tv echo said:

Some nice gifs from the Oohlo review...

I just realized how pretty that shot of the muzzle flashing in Oliver's eyes is. 

[SmallScreenDiva]

Oh, that's cool! I didn't notice that when I watched.

[leopardprint]

There were some downright lovely shots in this episode with the forest. 

[ElleMo]

On 5/27/2017 at 5:25 PM, legaleagle53 said:

John Barrowman confirmed on Facebook that "Malcolm is no more."

I still don't believe it.

[Lantern7]

I like Barrowman. Malcolm, not so much. Maybe if he had the widow's peak and goatee.

I keep forgetting to mention . . . Oliver was mayor of Star City for a whole year! I mean, the life expectancy of the mayor is pretty short, and I was thinking he'd wind up resigning. Can't wait for the season premiere. "Good news: I have my son. I didn't know he existed until a few years ago, so I'm not bad in that way. Bad news: A lot of my friends and family are dead, including Deputy Mayor Lance and my sister. Because I was Green Arrow. And if you didn't figure that out on your own? Punch yourself."

[BkWurm1]

3 hours ago, bettername2come said:

I just realized how pretty that shot of the muzzle flashing in Oliver's eyes is. 

Oh!  I saw that flash but couldn't figure out what it was.  I thought it was a glitch.  That's so cool.  

[DeadZeus]

Another thing... Oliver beat down 3 marshals in the previous episode to get their van... He did it as the mayor... Those ppl are just gonna keep quiet about that? lol

Somehow i want Slade to admit he was wrong and ask Oliver for forgiveness for his mother, and Oliver will give it. Would be pretty cool and emotional... I don't care that Deathstroke is a villain.. Arrowverse version doesn't have to be!

[leopardprint]

11 minutes ago, DeadZeus said:

Another thing... Oliver beat down 3 marshals in the previous episode to get their van... He did it as the mayor... Those ppl are just gonna keep quiet about that? lol

Those were ARGUS agents so either they already know he's GA or Lyla will cover for him because you know she only cares when Felicity breaks people out of her custody, it's totally cool when Oliver does it...

Perhaps he should ask Thea and Ray and the other countless people he killed for forgiveness too? ??

Edited May 29, 2017 by leopardprint

[johntfs]

On 5/27/2017 at 4:25 PM, legaleagle53 said:

John Barrowman confirmed on Facebook that "Malcolm is no more."

Which doesn't necessarily mean a damned thing.  He could be nearly dead, found by ARGUS and then turned into some kind of cyborg killing machine (which still uses bows and arrows).  Malcolm is no more, but let all fear... the Merlynborg!  Because it will kill people but also scheme, try to control Thea's life, ally with and betray Oliver on a rinse/repeat cycle and basically be a bionic version of Malcolm again.

[Morrigan2575]

Except of course Barrowman isn't under contract for any DC show next season. So it's unlikely he'll show up next year. Maybe he'll come back in the final season but, per Barrowman he doesn't have a contract to appear next year and seems unlikely to come back for the time being.

[Hiveminder]

2 hours ago, leopardprint said:

Those were ARGUS agents so either they already know he's GA or Lyla will cover for him because you know she only cares when Felicity breaks people out of her custody, it's totally cool when Oliver does it...

Perhaps he should ask Thea and Ray and the other countless people he killed for forgiveness too? ??

Well, to be fair, Lyla tried to stop Felicity from breaking out Cayden James, but she hasn't exactly tried to arrest her for it. I don't know if she would have tried to stop Oliver from letting Chase escape since Dig was one of the kidnapped (although I think she probably would have), but I bet she would have tried to stop him breaking out Slade and Harkness and been like, "Why don't I just send a bunch of Argus agents who have never tried to kill you or your loved ones before, like a sensible person?" You know, if she hadn't had to be strangely absent during her husband's kidnapping because of plot. 

[BkWurm1]

32 minutes ago, Hiveminder said:

Well, to be fair, Lyla tried to stop Felicity from breaking out Cayden James, but she hasn't exactly tried to arrest her for it. I don't know if she would have tried to stop Oliver from letting Chase escape since Dig was one of the kidnapped (although I think she probably would have), but I bet she would have tried to stop him breaking out Slade and Harkness and been like, "Why don't I just send a bunch of Argus agents who have never tried to kill you or your loved ones before, like a sensible person?" You know, if she hadn't had to be strangely absent during her husband's kidnapping because of plot. 

And I guess this sister she was staying with didn't get cell service cause otherwise you'd think Oliver would have called Lyla.  I mean with Chase going to an island that Lyla runs..  Argus would already have boots on the ground.  Maybe cameras. Maybe someone could have scouted the island and say found the bombs early on?  Maybe they could have arranged back up transport?  A doctor on hand?  You know, random stuff.  

[Hiveminder]

49 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

And I guess this sister she was staying with didn't get cell service cause otherwise you'd think Oliver would have called Lyla.  I mean with Chase going to an island that Lyla runs..  Argus would already have boots on the ground.  Maybe cameras. Maybe someone could have scouted the island and say found the bombs early on?  Maybe they could have arranged back up transport?  A doctor on hand?  You know, random stuff.  

Well, what do you want?  Plots that make sense?  Asking a bit much, don't you think?  

[BkWurm1]

4 hours ago, Hiveminder said:

Well, what do you want?  Plots that make sense?  Asking a bit much, don't you think?  

There are wants and there are expectations.  My wants are massive, not so much the expectations.  And yet, they often still are disappointed, lol.  

[ElleMo]

12 hours ago, johntfs said:

Which doesn't necessarily mean a damned thing.  He could be nearly dead, found by ARGUS and then turned into some kind of cyborg killing machine (which still uses bows and arrows).  Malcolm is no more, but let all fear... the Merlynborg!  Because it will kill people but also scheme, try to control Thea's life, ally with and betray Oliver on a rinse/repeat cycle and basically be a bionic version of Malcolm again.

oooh   -  I didn't think of it like that.  He doesn't even have to be a Merlynborg.  Just Merlyn.  Isn't he just Merlyn in the comics?

Edited May 30, 2017 by ElleMo

[Last Time Lord]

Oh, Prometheus music cue... I think I'll miss you most of all. No, seriously. I adore that piece of music.

Loved this episode. Wasn't expecting Lian Yu to get all explody, though I can see why they did so. That leg of Oliver's story is over.

Wonder if they might do a time jump for next season.

[bijoux]

These are some nice callbacks that I didn't pick up on.

  

  

  

http://olivergifs.tumblr.com/post/161053537245/114-523

 

All Oliver wanted for years was to go back home to Mom. The fact that they had such a hard and complicated relationship and that they had so little time together once he made it back is making me seriously emotional right now.

  

  

  

http://dust2dust34.tumblr.com/post/161637480160

[tv echo]

Too bad Oliver didn't have a pic of Moira with him on the island.

[leopardprint]

1 hour ago, tv echo said:

Too bad Oliver didn't have a pic of Moira with him on the island.

Why would he? I mean she's not his father, it's not like she sacrificed herself to save him or anything. (Still bitter...) 

Not a criticism (shocking) but I wonder why they didn't have an Oliver tries to sacrifice his life for Myson to parallel what his Mom and Dad did for him? They had a lot of other parallels in the episode. Just a random thought. 

[Midnight Lullaby]

1 hour ago, tv echo said:

Too bad Oliver didn't have a pic of Moira with him on the island.

Well she knew she was the most important woman in his life, she didn't need to give him something to remind him of her existence, LOL

[Taryn74]

Just finished watching S5 yesterday.  I've held off on commenting on individual episodes because I knew any theories I formed as I was watching, would have probably either been confirmed or shot down by the end of the season, and anyone reading would already know that.  Heh.

But here's where I stand at the end of the season -

* I fully believe we are not finished with Helix yet, and that we are going to find out Helix was working with Chase/Prometheus the entire time (or at least the guy they broke out of Argus, whether Helix as a whole knew they were involved or not).  That would explain how Chase found William even when Felicity could not (more than once Felicity pointed out that Helix was better than her at finding people) and could also possibly explain how Chase was able to pull off the network of bombs on the island.  It would also explain the explosion at the lair that Oliver and Felicity assumed was Chase.  (No, dummies, you got played.  Chase was never there.)  It would ALSO explain how Chase was able to hide an entire change of identity well enough to be hired into such a high position.  He did all of this within four years.  That takes some MASSIVE skill, to be able to pull that off.  Not only did he have to erase Simon Morrison from existence, he had to create Adrian Chase from scratch, with the education and experience to be hired as District Attorney.  Within four years.  Helix HAD to be involved with that, I just can't believe otherwise.

* This one just occurred to me - maybe Evelyn is with Helix, and she brought Chase in???  That's an interesting thought.  She could have gone to the island beforehand and had time to set up the bombs and all that.  If she had Helix covering her tracks, it's not impossible.  Not at all.  Eff me, maybe Evelyn is the way Helix found Ghost Fox Goddess?  Once Evelyn found out Felicity had redirected that nuke, Helix would know that she had to be a hacker with some major skill.  They could start putting pieces together and figure that out.

* I don't for a minute believe Malcolm Merlyn died by the land mine going off.  He may be dead now (couldn't get to the others in time before the network of bombs went off), or we may find out about his death from some other thing in a future flashback, but a piddly little land mine is not going to be what killed him.  I sniff in derision.

* I believe the group survived the bombs because 1) Felicity and Curtis were able to disarm the ones closest to them in time; or 2) Slade/Malcolm knew a way underground and led them to safety in time.  I'm leaning more towards the first one.  

* I hate to bring this one up, but they made a point of saying that everything Chase did as DA was being overturned once he was outed as Prometheus.  What does this mean for Diggle?  Chase was the acting attorney who got him exonerated, right?  WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR DIGGLE, SHOW?!?!?!  My heart can't take this.