Who fights crime now?
The Climb, the previous Arrow episode, ended with Oliver Queen being killed by Ra Al Ghul in mortal combat. In this episode, tells the story what is Starling City like without Oliver Queen as the Arrow to fight crime. The episode also is a catalyst for Arsenal’s future independence as a crime fighter (at some point in the show) and starts the countdown to Laurel apocalypse. Laurel Apocalypse was coined by John Campea but the meaning of the word is when Laurel Lance starts to pose as the Black Canary and fans might quit watching the show.
The episode starts with Diggle and Roy pursuing a truck with two criminals. They capture one criminal and discover he works for a crime boss named Brick, played by Vinny Jones. Felicity has trouble focusing on her work and needs to find out if Oliver Queen is dead. Malcolm Merlyn looks into the matter and discovers that Oliver Queen is dead by the traditional practice of Ra Al Ghul leaving the killing weapon on holy ground to honor the dead. Felicity tests the blood on the weapon and discovers that it is Oliver’s blood. Roy and Diggle need to stop Brick but Felicity prevents them in succeeding by quitting the team. Meanwhile, Oliver has an old friend who helps him even though he is dead.
The episode was a very good episode because of the conflicts within the Arrow team. Roy still wants to fight crime and stand up for the innocent. Diggle has mixed feelings about fighting crime. Felicity wants out of the crime business because she lost Oliver. Colton Hayes was more a feature in this episode which was nice. It is like having a Robin or Nightwing centric storyline in a series of Batman issues. Roy in the episode was put on display. He was skilled with a bow but still lack that intuition to be near as good as Oliver Queen. Felicity had internal conflicts which made her walk away from Ray Palmer and his goal of building a crime fighter suit. It was nice to see all three pivotal characters featured in a episode without Oliver Queen being the main focus.
The biggest negative was Laurel Lance but not until the end of the episode. She does show up in the Black Canary outfit. Katie Cassidy looks gorgeous as the Black Canary but her character is no Canary. Her crime fighting skills makes Roy look like Oliver Queen. However, the writers of the show can prove us wrong.
Overall, Left Behind was a great mid season premiere. It was better than Gotham’s or the Flash’s premiere. The villain was great and Vinny Jones should reoccur as Brick every couple of episodes per season. Brick will be talked about more in next week’s review. Left Behind gets 4.5/5.