Review: Arrow ‘The Promise’

This week on Arrow, ‘The Promise’ makes a departure from its usual format and instead brings us an episode that has more going down on the island in the past than in the modern world. Together, the two time frames spell out exactly why old Slade Wilson has such a problem with Oliver. And while seeing everything go down was entertaining enough, this week’s episode, in the end, didn’t really have much substance to it, instead spending 41 minutes showing, in complete detail, how much Slade hates Oliver and little else.

In the past, Slade, Oliver and Sara are getting ready to head out to take on Dr. Ivo, steal his boat and then get the hell off of the island. By concocting an elaborate plan, Oliver manages to run Ivo’s soldiers around in circles while Slade and Sara infiltrate, setting loose the prisoners and creating a full-scale revolution. Unfortunately, as can be expected, Slade ends up learning the dirty little secret concerning how Oliver “chose” that Shado should die rather than Sara.

In the modern world, Slade prowls the Queen compound, making nice with Moira and Thea while Oliver is forced to look on. As the tension builds, we get a few glimpses into their relationship (when they have leave to speak out of earshot), but mostly they just spend their time speaking between the lines, communicating to each other in ways that the others can’t quite make out. Ultimately, very little is said that we don’t know. Oliver, afraid that Slade is going to go ballistic right then and there, calls in the cavalry. So here comes Sara (whom Slade seems quite surprised to see), Roy and Diggle, all ready to take Slade down should the need arise.

While this episode definitely sets up the future confrontation between Oliver and Slade, it took entirely too long to do it. The action scenes on the boat were fun and the tension between Slade and Oliver as they wandered around the Queen household pretending that nothing was happening was good, but it just dragged on a little too much. Halfway through, I was ready to move on to the next subject, but the writers seemed to feel the need to really hammer the point home about how much Oliver and Slade don’t like each other and exactly why.

Ultimately, they could have told this story over the course of a few episodes and created a better flow. I know they want to get it out of the way and set up for bigger and better things, but we’ve already known why they hate each other, so why spend 41 minutes describing it in full detail? I wouldn’t say this was a bad episode, but it lacked the deeper development that the season has shown thus far and introduced very little new material in favor of having a couple of drawn-out showdowns.

Unfortunately, we get yet another week off from Arrow, but they will be back with what looks to be a fun new development in ‘Suicide Squad’. Check out the trailer for the upcoming episode over at this site.

Photo Credits -           

The Promise courtesy of blog.zap2it.com