“Al Sah-Him” has to ask an interesting question: what does Arrow look like without the Arrow? Well, in short, it’s kind of a bummer, and slightly unfocused, but I wonder if that’s not by design. Without Oliver around as a way to bind everyone together, they’re all kind of milling around doing their own thing. Also, weirdly enough, it almost seems as though “Al Sah-Him” is setting Arrow up to end, which it obviously isn’t, but how ballsy would it be to end like this? I digress.
Oliver is going through League of Assassins training, which looks a lot like sword fighting mixed with frat hazing. Does LOA stand for Lambda Omega Alpha? Better clean my dad’s Volvo with that toothbrush held in your ass cheeks, pledge, I want it sparkling clean before I take Cassie to Delta Psi’s charity Date Rape-a-Thon! Anyway, there’s a nicely spooky sequence where Diggle is brought before Oliver; he says he’s been held captive for weeks, and Maseo says he was trying to break in. It’s up to Oliver to kill him, which he does, without a second thought. It’s only then that he’s been subjected to a rare and potent herb that causes people to hallucinate. This is a bit of a cop-out, but let’s face it, Arrow was never going to kill off Diggle like that. What’s important is that Oliver didn’t hesitate at all. Stephen Amell is especially impressive in “Al Sah-him” for the sheer amount of talking he doesn’t do. He and Ra’s are even starting to share the same emotionless stare.
Ra’s gives Oliver a mission: eliminate the competition, here meaning Nyssa al Ghul. The heir to the demon can suffer no one else’s claim to the throne, a lesson that Ra’s learned the hard way when he failed to kill Damien Dahrk, who will apparently be season four’s bad guy. (I’ve said it before, Arrow doesn’t have a deep bench of villains.) So Oliver returns to Starling City, where Nyssa is continuing to train Laurel. It’s no secret that Arrow has been looking for something for Laurel to do; the alcoholism subplot never really gelled with me, but her incarnation as Black Canary is probably the most interesting she’s ever going to be. She and Nyssa make for surprisingly believable friends, and “Al Sah-Him” does good work in humanizing Nyssa. Although if I were Nyssa I’d punch Laurel in the mouth for telling me to dip my fries in my shake – fuck you, Laurel, that’s disgusting.
Oliver confronts Nyssa, but Diggle and Laurel show up to stop him. Laurel does this canary screech thing, and I’m still not sure if it’s cool or not. Is it canonical? I might be overthinking this. The point is, Oliver is intensely focused on returning Nyssa to Nanda Parbat, so his next move is to kidnap Lyla, which, wow, dick move.
Here’s my problem with this whole plot. We’re told by Nyssa, and later by Malcolm, that Oliver has been the victim of some pretty serious brainwashing. Now that’s a real cop-out, as opposed to the phony Diggle I mentioned earlier, which was just a fake-out. If Oliver’s brainwashed, he has no agency or autonomy and thus can’t be held responsible for his actions. It’s the show’s way of letting Oliver do dark, heinous shit, while the whole time keeping its fingers crossed behind its back, because none of this counts. I like the League of Assassins plot, but Arrow can’t give it the level of commitment it deserves. At the end of “Al Sah-Him,” Ra’s tells Oliver his wishes: he is to marry Nyssa, then use the Alpha and Omega bioweapon on Starling City, to finish his ascension. I got nothing against the people in Starling, but I would love to see this happen.
A Few Thoughts
- Not a lot of laughs in this installment, but Thea saying “My dad’s a supervillain” was pretty good
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Why does Thea have so many tables in her loft? Is she gonna have her fifty closest friends over for dinner?
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Another nice touch: Thea says “Mr. Diggle”
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