4.22 Lost In The Flood Compared to the other citizens of dystopia dome, Thea is less cool with this set-up (an existence without crop tops is no existence at all), which forces her concerned father to brainwash her using the same happy pills Ruve forced on the apparently dearly departed Alex. (R.I.P., Alex, we hardly knew thee. Seriously, you never got any character development.) For those keeping track at home, this is the second time Malcolm Merlyn has drugged Thea and asked her to kill someone she loves. This time, her target is Oliver, who breaks into the dome with Diggle in order to find and rescue his sister. Guys, can I say that I am so over the Thea Gets Brainwashed subplot? In fact, I have never been under it. Using the brainwashing card to create character motivation is, with a few exceptions, a lazy storytelling choice. It’s a boring way to have two characters who would normally never turn against one another, become suddenly at odds. It’s much more interesting when characters clash for completely organic, well-developed reasons. #NarrativeGoals While on the search for Brainwashed!Thea, Diggle and Oliver find themselves hiding in one of the homes of a dystopian dome family. Unlike some of the population of the dystopia dome, this family hasn’t popped the happy pills. No, they believe in the Darhk’s cause wholeheartedly. The patriarch’s explanation? They’re sick of people promising to save the city, only to see the city fall further into chaos and disrepair. This family sees Ruve and Damien Darhk’s promises of a new world built on the rubble of the old as a promise they can believe in. Um, what? There’s a lot of room between thinking Star City is a crap place to live and being cool with blowing up the world to start over. Like, have you thought about possibly relocating? I hear Coast City has good pizza. And, yeah, Central City might currently be suffering a metapocalypse, but at least they get sunlight there. If none of those options appeal to you, go to a city council meeting or build a community center. Global extermination is not the answer, friend. Starling City with its Queen Consolidated and its Glades and its Queen mansion looming august on the outskirts felt like a city we could visit. It operated using much of the same logic of the real world, albeit heightened in the way that TV melodrama so often is. Star City is a different story. It is dark and its only inhabitants are superheroes or supervillains and it has zero chain coffee places, as far as I can tell. A city without a coffee chain? Completely unrelatable. But I digress. The worst part of the dystopia dome man’s speech is that Oliver started to wonder if Darhk might be right. “The world is coming apart, just like Star City. It has worse than it has ever been,” Oliver says to Diggle. Diggle, awesomely, responds: “That’s because Darhk has spent the last year trying to kill it.” Diggle for Star City Mayor. There, I said it. Besides, I heard there might be a mayoral opening… Yeah, that was a pretty gauche way to lead into discussing Ruve Adams’ death, but bloggers gonna blog. Ruve was killed by Lonnie Machin as part of his campaign to destroy the dystopia dome because of that time Darhk kicked him out of H.I.V.E. Yes, his revenge plan is a little out-of-the-blue given that we didn’t see him for most of the season (until last week), but I have to respect a villain who is honest about the irrationability of his motivations. As he sarcastically tells Ruve: “I’m sorry, did I leave you with the impression that I’m a rationale guy?” Lonnie kills Ruve (in a similar way to Darhk killing Laurel, might I add), and blows up the dystopia dome. Oliver, Diggle, Thea (who has since fought against her brainwashing — because that’s apparently a thing that’s possible) make it out alive, with Darhk’s daughter. Malcolm Merlyn also leads a group of dystopia domers out before the massive implosion. The implosion of the dome should be a big moment. After all, this is what Darhk has been building towards all season — his Genesis. Hundreds of people died, including Ruve, and an entire section of The Glades was leveled. (Poor Glades. Can’t catch a break.) Unfortunately, it wasn’t as effective as it should have been. Too often, TV shows seem to prioritize the twist over the slow-build. Perhaps if Arrow had explained Darhk’s plan earlier in the season, given the audience some dramatic irony from the show’s heroes, then we would have cared when the dome was destroyed. The only difference is, now, Darhk is going to destroy all of humanity (including his own daughter) to satisfy his thirst for vengeance. That’s a completely different motivation than what Genesis originally represented. Wanting to destroy most of humanity to start over again with a “better” humanity comes from a different place than wanting to destroy humanity, full stop. This lack of character clarity makes Darhk a weaker villain than he needs to be. To destroy the world, Darhk is going to need a hacker. You see, his previous hacker (Felicity’s ex-boyfriend, Cooper, who randomly returned for this episode) failed, so Dahrk goes to the best hacker in town: Felicity. This is a more effective cliffhanger for the more effective storyline that was Felicity’s family drama, but I’m not sure what Darhk’s coercion is going to look like here: Destroy humanity or I will kill your loved ones? Fulfilling his evil plan will end in the same result. Though this fills in a bit of the mystery of Noah, it still seems like Felicity’s parents are keeping something big from her (and us). Donna convinces Noah to leave, insisting that he knows she’ll be safer without him there. This seems a silly argument to be making only minutes after Noah and Felicity saved the world together. What is the piece of the Smoak family puzzle we’re missing? Meanwhile, on the flashbacks, Taiana turns into a zombie. You’d think this would have been an affecting moment, but, given that Taiana didn’t really have any notable character traits before becoming a serial-killing zombie, it’s hard to drudge up an opinion on this one. I guess I could be into Taiana and Ryder fighting for the idol? Arrow‘s never done a zombie v. zombie fight on this show before — unless you count anyone who has been resurrected from the dead or almost-dead, in which case, almost every fight on this show involves zombies. UK viewers: Arrow season 4B currently airs on Wednesdays on Sky One. Caroline Preece is away.
