(WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD FOR SEASON 7 EPISODE 13 OF ARROW!)
The future and the present finally come together. A familiar face is responsible for the mysterious notes being left for the team. If that wasn't enough, one member of the cast makes a surprise exit. Let's find out just who the Star City Slayer is.
Photo: Jack Rowand/The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Let's talk about these creepy notes for a second. Not exactly a Valentine, and now, they are starting to come with a body count. The team is understandably shaken, especially Rene when one of the notes comes to his home. It did give us a cool moment of Dinah giving Zoe some training, which isn't a callback so much as it is a callforward in this particular case. What they are realizing is that it has less to do with metahumans and more to do with the team themselves. I'm going to skip forward quite a bit here, since we're talking simply about this specific storyline. The investigation leads them to a very creepy, let's just call them living quarters, where they quickly discover that this is really about Oliver. Remember good old Stanley from Slabside? Yeah, well...it turns out he's the Slayer. I have to say that I was pretty surprised to see mousey Stanley as such a psychotic and ruthless killer. He also gets the drop on Dinah, slitting her throat in the process. To paraphrase "The Dark Knight", we now know how Dinah "got these scars" that we see on her throat in the future. Maybe you think this means that she is the one leaving the show? You'd think wrong, but I'll get into that more later. Stanley eventually pays Oliver a visit, immobilizing him, Felicity and William in the process. It should be a surprise that Stanley is a bit obsessed with Oliver, but he was certainly very chatty while he was there. It was almost like a classic villain monologuing moment while the hero buys time to plan their next move. I will admit, the tension was a bit out of this scene for me, thanks to the future forward scenes. While they are supposed to be in peril in the present, we know that William is alive in the future, Felicity doesn't die until much later and so does Oliver. It did take a bit of the steam out of what could have been a very intense and creepy scene. Sure it was still uncomfortable, but lacked the impact, especially when they finally take him down.
Photo: Jack Rowand/The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
From this, we do get a couple of important final decisions that are made. The first has to do with William who, as we saw last week, was pretty mouthy and unhappy with both Oliver and Felicity. Turns out Williams feels ignored, that he's not being listened to and that his opinion doesn't really matter. Normally I would chalk this up to typical teenage mindset, but this isn't exactly a normal family. If you just take things at the surface, it seems like William is upset with everyone. What it really shows, I think, it how much he cares about his dad and Felicity. If he didn't care, he wouldn't get that upset. At the same time, he wants a normal life. He wants it so much, he calls his maternal grandparents about living with them. There is talk of a custody battle at first, since you know Oliver wouldn't lose William without a fight. That quickly gets squashed later in the episode, when tensions cool, and they get to have more of a heart to heart. Oliver sees William's point about leading more of a normal life. William, given what just happened, also sees that right now might not be the safest time for him to be in Star City. So we see them part ways, but it wasn't as emotional of a moment for me as it probably should have been. Again, it just seemed to lack a bit of finality. It's almost like I don't really believe this is the last time we'll see William for a while. I could end up being wrong about that, we'll see.
Photo: Jack Rowand/The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Now let's talk about the exit that is actually happening. This probably surprised me more than it should have, given his apprehension in last week's episode with the methods A.R.G.U.S. was using. Curtis basically give his notice, and will be leaving to take a new job in D.C. Diggle does try to entice him with a better job, but it seemed like Curtis already had his mind made up. This is the real deal, with Echo Kellum leaving the show as a series regular to spend more time with his family. We have seen this before, albeit under different circumstances with Colton Haynes, and he came back. I doubt this is a permanent goodbye for Mr. Terrific himself, but I doubt we see him back this season. I will miss the goofy Curtis, but I am a bit disappointed that we never really got the Mr. Terrific that I hoped we would see on the show at some point. Never say never, but it doesn't seem like that's a direction things are going in.
The final big moment from the show did come in the flash forwards. As Williams leads his cohorts in to the Bunker, they are met with opposition and captured. It's easy to see that Connor Hawke is one of them, but we're not quite sure who the young female is yet. It seems like they do have something in common, looking for or looking in to what Felicity was planning. What we didn't know, is that she and William would share something much deeper than that. It turns out that Katherine McNamara is playing Maya Smoak, Felicity's daughter and William's sister. Remember the phone call that Felicity got from the doctor earlier in the episode? Well...now you know what that's about. This might not be a HUGE surprise, but definitely adds a cool factor to things and much more intrigue to these future forward scenes. Not to mention, Maya has quite an edge to her and plenty of skills. If nothing else, things will be much more fun from here on out with these scenes. There was even talk of having an all future episode, which I could see working much better now.
How does Oliver deal with the news that he is about to be a dad again? What's next now that the Star City Slayer has been taken down? Will Dinah being revealed as Black Canary be a problem with her SCPD job? How will A.R.G.U.S. move forward without Curtis? I'm sure there are plenty more questions that will need to be answered before Arrow wraps for the season.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know!