‘Beyond Redemption’ is a breath of fresh air as Arrow goes back to basics.
‘Beyond Redemption’ starts off as just another episode of Arrow. Corrupt cops are being corrupt, Ollie still wants to save the city, Lance doesn’t know if he can trust him, and, you know, salmon ladder, but I don’t think there’s been a better episode of Arrow since last season’s ‘The Climb’. I’ll get to why later.
We start with Liza Warner and her team of cops gone bad. They kill some actual good cops over some Slam (a cocaine/heroin hybrid), even though they’re definitely not criminals.
Ollie finds out about this (because Felicity), and he goes to Lance, who only agrees to help to avenge his fellow officers. He’s still not happy about working with Oliver (even though it works literally every time), and he’s even less happy about Ollie’s intentions to run for mayor.
Turns out, no one’s fully on board with the idea, as Ollie reveals it to the team in Sebastian Blood’s old mayor’s office. They try to protest, but then Ollie takes them to the new Arrow cave downstairs and they’re all totally cool with it now.
Talking of secret basements, I’m not sure I’m clear as to where Laurel is keeping Sara. It’s implied that Sara is tied up underneath Laurel’s apartment… on a high floor… in an apartment building. Anyway, Laurel is keeping her recently resurrected sister in a basement somewhere near her apartment, and she takes Lance down to see her. You know, the guy with the heart condition who thinks Sara has died literally three times. Good thinking.
Lance sees that Sara is different, so he seeks advice from Damien Darhk (as you do). Darhk straight up tells him to kill Sara, saying that if it were his daughter, that’s what he would do. We all know Lance isn’t going to kill Sara (because Legends of Tomorrow); what’s more interesting is that Darhk has a daughter, and no, it’s not Felicity.
Felicity’s storyline this week is another Legends set up. Unable to decipher the code on her phone, she enlists the help of Mr. Terrific (who isn’t terrific enough to work out that Ray Palmer’s security password is ‘password’). What we know and they don’t, is that the code is tiny Ray Palmer’s attempt at contacting Felicity.
Despite this distraction, Felicity finds security footage of Lance and Darhk’s little meet up, and Ollie breaks in to Lance’s house to scare the sh*t out of him (again – heart condition). In the best scene of the season (possibly the last two seasons), Ollie tears in to Lance for working with Darhk, when Ollie has been working so hard to gain Lance’s trust.
Lance comes clean about Darhk, explaining that he threatened to kill Laurel if he stopped working with him, and Ollie is having none of it. He tells Lance to stop hiding behind his daughters, and to take matters into his own hands. It’s not much, but this scene has been a long time coming. These are two characters who need each other, and maybe Ollie’s speech went a long way to opening Lance’s eyes to that fact.
So, taking matters into his own hands, Lance goes to murder his daughter. I’m not sure that’s what Ollie meant. But anyway, he is talked out of killing Sara by Laurel, and he breaks down on the floor. Unfortunately, his day doesn’t get any better after this.
He is kidnapped by Liza, who needs the Captain’s fingerprints to enter the SCPD contraband centre, where she plans to take what she can for profit and skip town. Felicity does Felicity things to track them down, and Ollie and the team arrive to save the day. But then Ollie gets stabbed.
Breaking free from a trap arrow, Liza threatens to kill Ollie, when Lance steps in to talk her down. He knows better than anyone that there’s good in her, and in an Arrow first, she drops the knife and turns herself in.
Later, Ollie breaks in to Lance’s apartment again (for a cop, Lance’s security is just terrible), and the Captain has learned his lesson. He plans to turn himself in, but Ollie has a better idea. Lance has regained his trust in the last three minutes of screen time, so Ollie wants him to keep working with Darhk, and provide him with information that no one else can get.
The episode ends with Ollie announcing his mayoral bid with the most on-the-nose speech of all time (‘after five years in hell, I returned with only one goal-‘ You know the rest), and Laurel walking in to her apartment building dungeon to find Sara has escaped. Next week’s episode will focus on Sara and the restoration of her soul, with John Constantine coming to Star to lend a hand.
This was a great episode of Arrow, the first for a long time. A lot of it has to do with that scene between Ollie and Lance, but it’s more than that. It felt like Arrow when Arrow was good, and I think the producers knew it, throwing in a bit of salmon ladder for the first time in forever.
Even the flashbacks are good again. Back on the island, short hair Ollie is working with an army of soldiers, apparently guarding/selling/packing the Slam (the drug Liza was stealing). In the first two seasons, the flashback storylines correlated to the present day plot, and there’s just a hint here that we’re going to see more of the same this season.
Arrow returns to The CW next Wednesday.
