Arrow season 6, episode 16 recap: Thea vs. the League of Assassins
A new episode of Arrow saw Thea reassess her priorities since after the League of Assassins reemerged in Star City.
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Although Arrow’s writers don’t hit every target they aim for, they do generally play fair with the audience. For example, last week when Thea (Willa Ford) and Roy (Colton Haynes) got back together, the show didn’t even try to pretend that this meant the two characters were going to get a happy ending. “Collision Course” ended with a League of Assassin member stalking the newly reunited couple. And this week’s episode dealt with what the League wanted and how it would affect Thea and Roy’s future. And much to the show’s credit, the way that storyline played out was far from predictable.
“The Thanatos Guild” opened with Classic Team Arrow (CTA) celebrating Thea and Roy’s plan to leave the city. After leaving the party, the happy couple was attacked by an offshoot of the League of Assassins called the Thanatos Guild. Nyssa al Ghul (Katrina Law) saved them and explained the Guild wanted a map to a powerful artifact they believed Thea possessed. CTA located the map but were attacked by the Guild and its leader Athena (Kyra Zagorsky). The group with the map escaped but Thea refused to leave the mystery to Nyssa.
Upon inspection, the map was found to be blank. Athena threatened to bomb the city if the map wasn’t handed over and Thea acquiesced. During the handover, Athena stabbed Thea and her blood spilled on the map, which revealed its contents. CTA once again escaped with the map and learned it revealed the location of two other Lazarus Pits. Thea decided to help Nyssa destroy the pits and Roy agreed to join them. Meanwhile, New Team Arrow uncovered evidence that Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo) had fully subverted the Star City Police Department.
“The map is meaningless without spilling your blood.”
Given how last week’s episode ended, I fully expected this week’s episode to end with a funeral. I figured the League would ask Thea to lead them, she’d refuse and Roy would pay the price. All of the Arrowverse shows have a tendency to punish their heroes when they get too happy. Instead, both iterations of Speedy survived and their bond is stronger than ever. I enjoyed that subversion of the franchise’s usual storytelling. And I really like that Roy is supportive of Thea’s decision to return to vigilantism. The show could’ve used that decision to generate cheap tension between two but it smartly avoided that pitfall.
Another great creative choice made in this episode was having Thea call Oliver (Stephen Amell) on his decision to retake the Green Arrow identity. That call made sense when Diggle (David Ramsey) was still injured, but he’s long since recovered. Oliver has just been using one pretext or another to keep putting on the mask for weeks now. Thea rightly pointed out that Oliver was holding onto his quiver because being Green Arrow gives his life purpose. While that’s really sad given that he’s the mayor of a major city and a family man, it’s also undeniably true. Ollie was wrong to not be more honest with Diggle and I’m really looking forward to their reckoning next week.
“Sometimes I forget you’re not Felicity.”
While I enjoyed everything “Thanatos Guild” did with CTA, I was bored with Curtis (Echo Callum) and Dinah (Juliana Harkavy) subplot. The audience has known for quite some time that Diaz is effectively running the SCPD. Watching NTA slowly learning information we already got real dull real fast. Especially since they didn’t do anything interesting with that data. This episode kept the Diaz storyline in a holding pattern and that’s a real problem this far into the season. We didn’t even get to see what the recovering Rene (Rick Gonzalez) and Black Siren (Katie Cassidy) were up to. Some intense physical therapy would’ve been more interesting to watch than a two mice and no cat game.
Next: Arrow season 6, episode 15 recap: An old friend returns
Still, as annoying as that the plot was, this was definitely a better than average episode of Arrow. It featured a quality mix of action, comedy, and drama and it gave Thea some much need development. I also really enjoyed all of Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) and Nyssa’s interactions. Felicity’s jealousy at having one of Oliver’s exes hang around was really funny. As was Nyssa’s gradual appreciation of Felicity’s computer skills. I really hope we get to see those two characters team up again this season because Rickards and Law play off each other really well.
Arrow airs on The CW Thursdays at 9 pm.