Arrow: “Seeing Red”

“No one dies tonight!”—Oliver Queen

Oh Oliver…

Can the last five minutes of an episode redeem whatever has come before it?

That’s the question I find myself stuck with at the conclusion of last night’s shocking “Seeing Red.” The vast majority of the episode plays like a bit of a softball installment, complete with focus issues and a fairly by-the-numbers central storyline. In the opening minutes, a Mirakuru-afflicted Roy escapes from the Team Arrow headquarters and begins an anger-fueled rampage across the city to find (and kill) Thea. Meanwhile, Moira must decide whether or not to continue her political campaign in the wake of her family’s internal collapse.

Complementing the family drama is a flashback set seven years in the past. A much younger, more vibrant Laurel calls out a younger, douchier Oliver for being uncharacteristically moody. Oliver attributes his behavior to exhaustion but, when confronted by his mother, confesses that he got a girl pregnant (and it’s not Laurel). For roughly half the episode, I feared that the writers would reveal that Sara was the mysterious girl. Add in the fact that a minor subplot in the present timeline focuses on the growing tension between the two, and the story certainly seemed to be pointing to that conclusion. Thankfully, no doubt realizing that this would not jive with their past interactions, the girl turns out to be someone we’ve never seen before. Gotta say, it’s good to have actual proof that Oliver’s pre-Island sexual misadventures did not revolve solely around the Lance girls.

Filmed with a warm amber tint, these flashback scenes looked straight up Dawson’s Creek in presentation. This soap opera quality extends to the present-day scenes, where Oliver and Sara argue about their future together. In some of the more ham-fisted, corny dialogue of the season (even by Arrow standards), Sara outlines how she and Oliver are far too different people to live together harmoniously. “I spent six years in the darkness, and I looked into the eyes of the devil and I gave him my soul,” she muses, once again bringing up that old darkness/light motif. Between this and the events of last week’s “The Man Under the Hood,” I begin to develop a nagging fear that an overabundance of CW-sanctioned melodrama would spoil what I assumed would be a great concluding storyline.

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Eventually, Team Arrow has a stand-off with Roy at the Verdant, Thea asks him to fight against the serum, Sara displays her growth this season by immobilizing him rather than killing him—yada yada yada, etc., etc. It’s all fairly predictable and plays out pretty much beat-for-beat as anyone even remotely familiar with the show would expect. Just as the episode looked to be wrapping up, however, I looked to my clock and realized there was still almost ten minutes left in the episode. Something was coming.

Sure enough, upon driving away in their limo, Oliver, Thea and Moira are attacked and abducted by Slade. When Oliver awakens, Slade asks him to choose which family member he wants left alive—just as Ivo made Oliver do with Shado and Sara years ago. Moira instantly stands and offers to be the sacrifice. “You possesses true courage,” Slade responds. “I’m truly sorry you did not pass that on to your son.” He then promptly stabs Moira through the chest, killing her instantly. His mission achieved, Slade departs, leaving Oliver and Thea to huddle at the body of their dead mother. We then move to the final scene of the flashback storyline. Here, the amber tint quickly takes on another connotation—that of a heavenly glow.

Curtain on Moira Queen.

Despite my abject shock at this turn of events, it’s a twist that makes complete sense in retrospect. A big component of this year’s story was Moira’s attempts at redemption in the wake of the Glades massacre. Looking back over the events of “Seeing Red” after knowing the outcome, the episode’s position as a Moira “tribute episode” becomes all the more clear.

In a world already heavily populated with ambiguous characters, Moira stood as perhaps the most morally gray. She was a loving mother in a dark world that required numerous ethical compromises to keep her children safe. As if to acknowledge her complex nature, this week’s (non-Island) flashback story culminates with her paying off the girl that Oliver got pregnant to lie and tell him she lost the baby. Besides opening the floodgates story-wise (our hero has a young child he doesn’t know about), this flashback further confirms how Moira’s determination to protect her children would often lead her down questionable paths.

The biggest hint, however, should have been the reveal that Moira has known about Oliver’s secret life as the Arrow since last year’s season finale. It’s a twist that, during my initial watch, seemed to come out of nowhere. On second viewing, as seen through the prism of this being Moira’s final episode, I was much more forgiving. It will be interesting to look back at the season after the fact and see if the writers included any select moments that would hint at this.

Most of all, I believe actress Susanna Thompson deserves our applause. On a youth-oriented network where anyone over the age of 40 (sexy vampires excluded) is either a villain or a stick-in-the-mud that the youths must overcome, Thompson always tackled her role with an equal balance of grace and fervor. More than most archetypal CW parents, she felt like a full character, rather than merely an obtrusive adult figure. Take care Ms. Thompson—you shall be missed.

“Seeing Red” feels, for more the most part, like large chunks of filler that just happen to be capped off by one of the most devastating moments of the entire series. It’s a hard episode to judge but, ultimately, the final product does become a tad richer once you realize what road it’s heading down. Now only a few episodes from its conclusion, “Seeing Red” has teed its audience up for what’s looking to be an explosive, emotional finale. Buckle up, people.

Mark Rozeman is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow him on Twitter.

Arrow: “Seeing Red”

(Episode 2.20)