Arrow: Leap of Faith (8x03)

Well that was... unearned.

Cons:

Zoe's death was melodramatic, and Mia is holding her and crying and she's saying to say goodbye and apologize to her father... and the whole time I'm just like... I never got to know this girl. I knew her as a little kid, but as an adult, what do I know about her? What is earned about Mia having such an intense reaction to this? We never got to see them actually being friends. I'm sad she's dead, because I never got to know her. I should be sad that she's dead because I knew her and will miss her. This was really over the top and, as I said, unearned.

Also in the flash-forward world, we see J.J. going around murdering people, and Connor is all devastated and fighting back, yadda yadda. In present day, we see Lyla and John working to help Connor and his mother, but we still don't have the full story of Connor being adopted, or what happened to John and Lyla in the future. It's so annoying to be kept in the dark about these details, when there does not seem to be any good reason for it. I guess I don't care enough about this show to track all of the details, so now that we've got more time travel shenanigans going on, I'm probably going to be even more confused.

Diggle and Lyla get a side quest where they go and help out their apparent future adopted son, Connor. Frankly, my eyes just glazed over during all of these plot points. I don't really care why they were there or what they had to do. At the end of the day, they succeeded. We got an annoying moment of John being overprotective and trying to take on danger alone. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me, but Oliver did the same thing to Thea elsewhere in the episode. Can we maybe stop having men do the overprotective thing with female characters? It's getting annoying.

Pros:

The one thing about the future characters that I continue to enjoy is the brother/sister relationship between William and Mia. I liked their little bonding moment, and the way Mia threatened to kill him if he told anyone how vulnerable she had been. That was nice. And also, despite how confusing it's going to be to untangle all of these timelines now, I'm thrilled that Connor, Mia, and William are now somehow in the same place as Oliver, John, Dinah, and Rene. All this time, we've had this pocket story with the kids in the future, and while it hasn't sucked 100%, it's never been as interesting or dynamic as the main story. So here we finally get a fusion! We get to see Oliver hang out with his kids! Praise be!

The one element that I really enjoyed from John and Lyla's story was their super sappy love scene at the end, because it made me really scared for their fates, and I will totally eat up some John Diggle angst in this show, as long as he and Lyla are both standing at the end of it. We've seen what John is willing to do for the people he loves, and I'm all about the heightened emotions that come from fear and desperation. Bring it on!

Obviously the true highlight of this episode was seeing Thea again. She and Oliver are adorable, calling each other "Speedy" and "Ollie" like the good ol' days. It was also fun to see Talia, and bring some of the old mythos around Malcolm Merlyn and all that good stuff back around to the show's forefront. It was also nice to have a calibrating moment, where we check in with Thea, see that she's been successful on her mission and is still thriving on her own path. Often, when shows have to write out characters but don't want to kill them off, it's awkward to justify why they would actually have left their loved ones. But I actually think with Thea and Roy, it works pretty well. This world-ending or possibly universe-ending "Crisis" that's coming up involves many different groups and aspects that no one person could consider. It's actually comforting to think of Thea and Talia teaming up as bad-ass women who are able to protect what's important. She needs to do this good work, so that Oliver can do his own.

We learn more about the Monitor, and by that I mean we learn that we don't know all there is to know about the Monitor. I'm bored with the specific details, but the gist here is that maybe he's the one trying to start the Crisis, instead of prevent it. It's pretty clear that we don't have all of the information we need, but it's nice that Oliver at least took steps to find something out on his own initiative. We'll have to see where that goes.

That's all I've got. I'm eager to see Oliver interact with Mia and William. I'm eager to find out more of the big picture, here. I'm eager for Tommy to come back and be the main character of the show. I mean... whatever. We can pretend that's happening. Over-all, this episode set up some things that I think I'll enjoy down the road. But there were lots of things in this particular installment that I didn't much enjoy.

6.5/10