This review WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS for the episode to be discussed, if you do not want certain plot points or story spoilt, please do not read further.
The latest episode of Arrow tries to take a leaf (and a villain) out of Flash's book and creates an incredibly disjointed and odd episode.
'Beacon of Hope' sees the return of the Bree Larvin (The Walking Dead's Emily Kinney), the Bug Eyed Bandit. Larvin brings her flying mechanical bees with her to Star City and presents Team Arrow with a new type of villain that they rarely go up against. It's hard to not feel that Barry would have been able to handle Larvin a lot easier than Ollie, who's more used to ninjas and street thugs than such large scale threats.
Larvin, who was caught with the help of Felicity and put in prison during season one of The Flash, breaks out and heads to Star City in order to steal the microchip that Felicity has in her spine. Larvin is even more irritating in this episode then she was in Flash, with over the top acting and really, really stupid bee puns that make her irritating whenever she's on the screen. For anyone who complained about Emily Kinney's character on The Walking Dead, watch this and tell me Beth isn't a million times better than Larvin.
It isn't until late into the episode that we find out that Larvin is after the chip because she has a tumour on her spine and will lose the ability to walk. Whilst this could have been something that added a lot of depth to the character her acting is so cheesey and the revelation so late in the game I just didn't care about it at all.
As well as having a giant swarm of robotic bees at her command Larvin can make the bees combine together to make a humanoid robot. Whilst this development actually gave Ollie and the gang something that they could physically fight it feels completely wrong for this show. Maybe it could have worked on Flash, that has a lighter tone and a focus on sci-fi, but Arrow has always tried to be the more realistic show in the CW DC universe, and this really feels out of place here.
The episode also brings Curtis Holt into Team Arrow as he manages to track down the Arrow Bunker and joins up with the team to work their tech in the absence of Felicity. Whilst bringing Curtis onto the team is a good thing (I'm hoping he goes full on Mr Terrific someday) his overexcitement and childishness was extremely grating and didn't really mesh with the events going on.
He might have been excited to be discovering the real identities of Star City's heroes and working with them, but surely he should know not to be shouting and trying to high five people when Felicity and everyone else in Palmer Tech was still in danger.
It's already been announced that Curtis is going to be a series regular and a part of Team Arrow in season five, and hopefully he will not be as annoying or grating when season five rolls around.
Speaking of the inclusion of Curtis on the team as a replacement for Felicity, it's brought up a novel idea about who might be in the grave in the flash forwards. Maybe it's Felicity. Now, I know that after the funeral that Ollie gets into a car and Felicity is sitting there and tells him he has to kill someone, but maybe that's not really Felicity, but just in Ollie's head.
Think about it, Barry is at the funeral, and whilst he does know the whole team he's got the biggest connection with Felicity, and he looked genuinely upset. The loss of the love of Ollie's life would definitely encourage him to kill someone. Why add another techie to the team is Felicity is still around? I think that Felicity could very well be a real possibility for the person in the grave.
'Beacon of Hope' is an episode I can't help but feel would have worked a lot better on The Flash rather than here, as the mixing of tone really didn't work very well, and led to an episode that felt very disjointed and broken. Hopefully the show will pick up in quality fairly quickly as this was an extremely disappointing episode.
Amy.
It isn't until late into the episode that we find out that Larvin is after the chip because she has a tumour on her spine and will lose the ability to walk. Whilst this could have been something that added a lot of depth to the character her acting is so cheesey and the revelation so late in the game I just didn't care about it at all.
As well as having a giant swarm of robotic bees at her command Larvin can make the bees combine together to make a humanoid robot. Whilst this development actually gave Ollie and the gang something that they could physically fight it feels completely wrong for this show. Maybe it could have worked on Flash, that has a lighter tone and a focus on sci-fi, but Arrow has always tried to be the more realistic show in the CW DC universe, and this really feels out of place here.
The episode also brings Curtis Holt into Team Arrow as he manages to track down the Arrow Bunker and joins up with the team to work their tech in the absence of Felicity. Whilst bringing Curtis onto the team is a good thing (I'm hoping he goes full on Mr Terrific someday) his overexcitement and childishness was extremely grating and didn't really mesh with the events going on.
He might have been excited to be discovering the real identities of Star City's heroes and working with them, but surely he should know not to be shouting and trying to high five people when Felicity and everyone else in Palmer Tech was still in danger.
It's already been announced that Curtis is going to be a series regular and a part of Team Arrow in season five, and hopefully he will not be as annoying or grating when season five rolls around.
Speaking of the inclusion of Curtis on the team as a replacement for Felicity, it's brought up a novel idea about who might be in the grave in the flash forwards. Maybe it's Felicity. Now, I know that after the funeral that Ollie gets into a car and Felicity is sitting there and tells him he has to kill someone, but maybe that's not really Felicity, but just in Ollie's head.
Think about it, Barry is at the funeral, and whilst he does know the whole team he's got the biggest connection with Felicity, and he looked genuinely upset. The loss of the love of Ollie's life would definitely encourage him to kill someone. Why add another techie to the team is Felicity is still around? I think that Felicity could very well be a real possibility for the person in the grave.
'Beacon of Hope' is an episode I can't help but feel would have worked a lot better on The Flash rather than here, as the mixing of tone really didn't work very well, and led to an episode that felt very disjointed and broken. Hopefully the show will pick up in quality fairly quickly as this was an extremely disappointing episode.
Amy.
xx
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