In Review: Arrow – Life Sentence

Synopsis: With a new ally on his team, Oliver engages Diaz in an epic final battle.

Review: In order to win back the city. Ollie is forced into a situation where he has to do a deal with FBI Agent Watson. In a nutshell, Ollie must surrender himself to the FBI once they have helped save the city and shut down Diaz. Kind of a sucky deal.

The episode wizzes by at breakneck pace with a lot of emotive moments between the action. There’s one moment where Rene and some agents think they are going to die because they have triggered one of Diaz’s traps. Thinking that his time is near an end Rene calls his daughter to tell her he loves her. It’s a really strong scene and the emotions linger for awhile afterward too when Ollie has a little bonding moment with Rene saying that he misjudged him when they first met.

Ollie has been tracking Diaz with help from Anatoly, but that option soon comes to an end.

Now with the full resources of the FBI and Agent Grant teaming up with the Arrow. Diaz is like a cornered animal and the only card he has left to play is threaten to kill Laurel Lance if Mayor Lance doesn’t order the FBI to leave Star City.

Overall. This was a rather anti-climatic season finale. It had some very strong acting performances, but narratively speaking it didn’t really make sense for Diaz. Essentially a street thug to be able to cause so much grief in Star City and manage to get away from justice. Especially when you look at the rogue’s gallery that Ollie and the team have defeated in prior series.

The one big problem Arrow has had since its very beginnings is the fact that the writers have always steered away from a little too much from the characters comic book origins.  The show has always tried to go for as much realism as it can muster, which was a great approach when the show was the only superhero series on CW. But there are now five different shows involving superheroes now. Too me Diaz feels like a character that would have fitted much better in an earlier season of Arrow. A season before he had encountered Ra’s Al Ghul and Damion Darhk.

So we now have to wait to around late September or early October to find out how Ollie gets out of prison. Any theories?