Review: Arrow ‘League of Assassins’

Keeping in time with the exceptional nature of the last two episodes of Arrow, ‘League of Assassins’ doesn’t display the same level of awesomeness as episodes 3 and 4, but does manage to bring to the screen what is probably the best action in the show thus far.  Between The Canary, Arrow and a gang of assassins, we see something that is simple yet entertaining and not the usual over-the-top or incredibly mediocre stuff that we generally get.  It’s a bit of a switch in tone, but it worked.

The story this time really revolves around The Canary (AKA Sara) and what she managed to get herself into over the last five years.  As it turns out, she joined up with a legendary organization known as the League of Assassins and was trained to be a crazy killer.  Of course, she eventually wanted out and the only way out is to be hunted down and killed by the League’s members.  So they send in the baddies to either bring her back or kill everyone she loves.

That means Sara’s dad and sister are in danger, so she eventually has to reveal her secret to Detective Lance in order to keep him alive.  Needless to say, dad is pretty emotional when he sees his five-years-dead daughter and even more-so when he realizes that she’s an assassin with all sorts of ass-kicking skills, is working with The Arrow and is okay with killing someone in front of him.  Sara ain’t daddy’s little girl anymore.  And it all ends with The Canary running off into the night, leaving everyone behind (in order to protect them) and her father having to promise not to let Laurel know that she’s alive.

While I really liked the emotional strings they were trying to pull with this one, the good writing was once again marred by bad dialogue and an inability of the actors to pull it all off.  Paul Blackthorne (AKA Detective Lance) is not capable of holding a strong emotion for more than a few seconds, so he kept going in and out of the moment.  Caity Lotz (AKA The Canary) hasn’t had enough time to really get into her character, so she has lots of up and down moments as well, though is mostly burdened by the still mostly two-dimensional nature of The Canary.  At least we got to see some of her backstory, which means she’ll likely be playing a much bigger role in future episodes.

As far as the episode’s biggest strength - the action - it wasn’t even that there was a ton of action, it was just that each scene felt necessary and well choreographed.  The cameras didn’t jump around, the actions of each person in the fight flowed together well and it was, in my opinion, a splendid example of the way all comic book action should be done.  You don’t need to make the world explode if you just do things right.

So, all-in-all, not as good as the last two, but still good in its own right.  We shall have to see if this is the beginning of the downward trend (albeit a slower one, it would seem), or if Arrow bounces back and rides high for the remainder of the season.  With so many pieces being put in place, the writers have a lot of good stuff to work with, so I’m going to remain optimistic - for now.

For a sneak peek at next week’s episode, ‘Keep Your Enemies Closer’ head to this site and watch a video.

Photo Credits -           

Canary vs assassin courtesy of seriable.com