ARROW Review “The Longbow Hunters”

Arrow — “The Longbow Hunters” — Pictured: Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow — Photo: Dean Buscher/The CW

The Longbow Hunters Review

By Justin Carter

When a TV show brings in a villain they’ll often give him or her henchmen to show their influence and help present a credible threat. It’s also a good way to get the heroes to fight someone who isn’t  just a nameless guy in a mask. The Longbow Hunters, Ricardo Diaz’s trio of trained assassins, aren’t really it, at least not yet.

For an episode that’s named after them, they don’t show up as much as they should to count as a completely credible threat. What we’ve got here are three trained killers who don’t even warrant having their names spoken, I had to look them up online: Silencer, who recently made her way into the comics and can kill all the sound in a room; Kodiak, a guy with a bladed shield; and Red Dart, who just…shoots darts. Of the three, only Silencer makes a lasting impression, and that’s because her fight scene with Laurel and Dinah is pretty cool. It’s such a small thing to watch a fight go on with muted sound, but seeing the two Black Canaries use their sonic powers at the same time is pretty cool, and Dinah and Laurel have a pretty great dynamic to boot.

The Hunters are the focus this week after stealing an ARGUS battery that could be used to wipe out a city, but Felicity doesn’t care about that so much as she does taking down Diaz and getting her life back. This is where I’m admittedly torn because this all hinges on our resident hacker making some boneheaded decisions that nearly blow up in her face twice in a row. All the conflict with Diggle really does is amount to her joining up with the FBI, but damn if Digg isn’t right in saying that bringing down Diaz won’t reverse the last five months of her life. He’s also not wrong in saying that wearing the Hood did ruin Oliver’s life, in a sense, and not wanting to inflict that torture on his own family is valid as can be, since he paid for that tenure physically. And we’re seeing his words ring even more true thanks to William’s flash forwards. They don’t provide full answers, but pairing him with an older Roy who’s ducking answers about separating from Thea sure is telling.

As for Oliver? He’s still having the time of his life in prison and forced to kill a guard for information on Diaz. I’m still convinced that his partner in crime Stanley isn’t on the up and up, if only because he seems to have not died despite being easy bait to be killed. Here, Oliver just has to stab a guard for some information on Diaz and after finding that he doesn’t want to murder or threaten the guard’s family, stabs himself on blames it on the guard. There’s nothing really more to it, lacking in brutal fight scenes but making up for it with a cute rapport between Oliver and Stanley and the funny sight of him passing out on the cafeteria floor after being stabbed.

Additional Notes

• Oh cool, William is queer. That’s nice!
• I’m hoping Diaz doesn’t show up too much this season, if only because the show’s reasons for the team not apprehending him when he’s in physical range will start to wear thin.
• An interview from last week confirmed that William’s flashforwards will be sticking around for the rest of the show’s run, and all I hope for is that his forwards are better than his father’s backs.
• Speaking of, what’re we thinking with how everything shook out between the Queen family? William says they abandoned him, but he’s old enough there’s enough flexibility between this season and however long the time skip is.
• More set photos have been released for “Elseworlds,” and that looks like a hell of a fun crossover.