1.22 Darkness on the Edge of Town Malcolm Merlyn/The Dark Archer returns to the A-plot this week, with the episode opening to a grisly mass murder Malcolm has staged so as to distract from his role in The Undertaking. There’s no doubt this is evildoing, and that Merlyn isn’t just planning a mass murder – he’s willing to kill just so he can pre-emptively cover his tracks. Poor Tommy has no idea what he’s gotten himself involved in and I have no doubt that, if it came to it, Malcolm would throw his own son under the bus to save his own skin. Oliver isn’t dealing too well with last week’s revelations, and Diggle is back on Team Arrow with little explanation. I guess they had a good talk after the credits rolled last week, since the only clue to any residual resentment are some non-pulled punches during a fake interrogation. Diggle, dressed up as The Hood for Moira’s benefit, attempts to pull some useful information from Mrs Queen by pummelling her son in front of her. It’s a clever plan, and one that nicely mirrors her own tactics at the beginning of the season. Oliver even finds time to speak to Tommy about Laurel, but his words fall a bit flat when Tommy sees his friend and ex-girlfriend going at it just a few hours later. I’m not going to go into the likelihood of someone walking past a window at the exact moment Oliver and Laurel were making out in front of it – that’s something that comes with having a love triangle on a CW show – but this discovery will at least serve the story in terms of Tommy’s turn to the dark side. I’m still not seeing the chemistry between these three (apart from Oliver and Tommy, interestingly), but at least the fans got some sort of closure to their season-long ‘dance’. Some of the less interesting, but still important, stuff this week involved two of the peripheral relationships on the show. Walter returned to the Queen mansion just long enough to get divorce papers drawn up, so we may have seen the last of The Undertaking’s manhandled pawn. Then there’s Thea and Roy, who break up over the latter’s growing obsession with The Hood. We finally got to see Oliver interact with Roy without his costume on, and he doesn’t disappoint with a humorous ‘disapproving big brother’ speech that still doesn’t deter him from his investigation. He’s lost someone ‘who isn’t coming back’, and wants to become a fellow vigilante. Read Carolines’s review of the previous episode, The Undertaking, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
