Arrow: "Heir to the Demon" Review

This week’s Arrow introduced Nyssa al Ghul (Katrina Law) into the series, as Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter came to Starling City to try to bring Sara Lance / Black Canary (Caity Lotz) back with her to the League of Assassins. But as we (and Oliver Queen) learned, this was a very personal mission for Nyssa, because she and Sara were, in fact, lovers.

Katrina Law as Nyssa al Ghul and Caity Lotz as Black Canary in Arrow.

Caity Lotz in Arrow.

Revealing how they decided on this turn of events, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg explained, “It was really more about Sara than anything else. We’d thought of this at the beginning of the season. If you watch [episode] 205, there's a reference to “The Beloved,” and "You think that's going to keep you safe." We talked about, like, "Well, does Ra's al Ghul have a son? Or could it be Talia?" We felt like Talia had just been done in the movies. One of our writers had brought up the idea of Nyssa. It just felt like something new and different. At the same time, we didn't do it to be salacious, because it's a pretty chaste relationship from what you see on screen. For us, it just touched on a couple of interesting things, like the idea that Sara found herself in this terrible world and found this one person who treated her with love and kindness. Even the way it bounced back for [Quentin] Lance, just for Lance to be able to express -- this sort of hardened, tough cop who's probably not the most progressive guy -- that even he was like, ‘I’m just glad you had somebody who loved you and took care of you during those nightmare years.’ Those little moments just felt like they would be special and play for us.”Execitive producer Marc Guggenheim noted, “We were very anxious about [the fact that] in the same episode we reveal that Sara had had this lesbian relationship, she is also sleeping with Oliver again, and we really wanted to approach it and not be salacious and be sensitive and be realistic. We actually specifically avoided using the term ‘bisexual.’ We didn't want to label her at all. Let her be her own person. If the audience wants to label, fine, but we wanted to not make it that specific -- because it is a very specific relationship to Sara and Nyssa. By the way, maybe Sara's had other female relationships in her past, but we'll get to that in due course when it's right, if it's right. But we wanted to not just do something to shock.”Law meanwhile said it was a surprise for her to learn Nyssa was a lesbian, because when she’d first read for the part, not only did the sides [pages of the script used for auditions] use a fake character name for Nyssa, but they had her big relationship scenes be with Oliver. Explained Guggenheim, ”For spoilers -- because the sides always make it out onto the Internet — we made up fake sides for Nyssa, because we didn't want to spoil it. So it was a brand new character name, sort of that killer thing, but a scene between this character -- I'm forgetting what we even called her -- and Oliver. Then we narrowed it down to Katrina and one other actress, and we brought them both back for chemistry reads with Caity Lotz. We said, ‘By the way, she's gay -- and, oh, by the way, it's Nyssa al Ghul.’” Kreisberg said that “about 12 seconds in” to seeing Law read with Lotz, they knew that was the right pairing. When Law said, with a laugh, “Our chemistry's just palpable!,” the producers assured her that was actually the case.Said Guggenheim, “We do these chemistry reads for a reason. The truth is, you can really see it when it's there, and you can see it when it's not there. Added Kreisberg, “We did that with Emily [Bett Rickards] and Grant [Gustin], and there were a couple other actors who were in line for The Flash. You know, it's to our cast's credit that they really understand that, because some actors I'm sure would be like, ‘Well, that's a waste of my time,’ or, ‘I have better things to do.’ But whether it was Grant, Stephen, Caity Lotz -- they've all come down [from Vancouver, where Arrow shoots]. Stephen did it to help us find Caity Lotz, and Caity Lotz returned the favor and helped us to get Katrina on board. It really is important, because you can be a great actor, but it's not the right part, not the right fit, the right chemistry. We've been really lucky with those hookups on the show.”Regarding Sara’s decision to stay in Starling City at the end of the episode and whether she’s really safe from Ra’s al Ghul now, Kreisberg said, “As far as the Ra's al Ghul of it is concerned, this was not Katrina's only appearance of the season. As far as what the Sara of it means, part of the reason we did this episode was to free Sara, at least for the time being, from the threat of the League of Assassins and allow her to fully be the Black Canary and come home and all the delicious implications that that brought. Part of the reason, again, we did this story from the beginning for Sara was having this dead woman come back and the effect it was going to have on everyone's lives. I think you got a glimpse of how some people are obviously very happy and some people are very upset. So in the next bunch of episodes you're really going to see how Sara's return affects everybody. I think hopefully so far people will be surprised by the reaction.” When I tried to get the producers to say whether we might see Ra’s al Ghul on Arrow soon, Guggenheim replied, “We really can't comment on when or if you'll see Ra's -- and how he'll pronounce his name.”Kreisberg said they were extremely happy with how Nyssa’s introduction into Arrow had gone, and praised Law, remarking, “You know, we've often been -- and not wrongly -- it's been pointed out that sometimes our villains get short shrift and that we don't always do right by the villains coming onto the show, whether we just don't have enough time with them... Some of that is just because our show is so dense with so many different characters that we've gotten away with, you know, just casting very cool people in the parts and asking the audience to fill in the rest. The number of things that Katrina had to do in this episode, just all the places she had to go… I think the most surprising being that I've watched that episode a zillion times, and I actually feel bad for her, which I think it one of the most amazing things, because she does really seem like this broken-hearted person who really got the shaft. I think that's why, to me, this is, again, one of the most successful episodes that we've ever done, because every single aspect of it is working -- not just our main characters, but having Katrina fill Nyssa's boots, who came in and owned every scene that she's in I think is really amazing.”Regarding how the audience has taken to the League of Assassins on Arrow, Guggenheim said, “I have to admit, I was completely bowled over by how excited people were.” Said Kreisberg, “We say this all the time, but it really is true: we really write what we want to see and what we like. I mean, we grew up loving comic books and loving this stuff and being steeped in it and being huge fans of the Donner movies and the Burton movies and the Nolan movies -- and Greg [Berlanti], Marc and I have written comics, so we've always set our star by what's going to make us happy and what stories we want to tell and what we want to see. That's never served us wrong. So yes, we're always surprised that anyone likes anything on this, because we're Jewish writers! [Laughs] But that stuff -- we always knew Sara was out there, but when we hit on the idea that she was part of the League of Assassins, we knew that that would open up that world to us, and that connected us to Merlyn and Ra's al Ghul. Once you hit on that one idea, it's the gift that kept on giving, and it kept expanding out and giving us new things and new ways to try stuff.”“We’re really glad that people have responded to it, because it's funny, we really did sort of go all in on the League of Assassins at the beginning of this year,” noted Guggenheim. “All this stuff that we're talking about was worked out in the hiatus between Season 1 and Season 2, where it was like, ‘Oh, and Sara's a member of the League of Assassins, and that means this, and that means that. Oh, and there's Nyssa, and if Nyssa and they had a relationship, then this and this happens.’ That was all sort of decided almost a year ago at this point. You're hoping that's all going to pay off. You're taking this big leap, and you hope that the audience will take the leap with you. Turns out they did, which was very lucky for us.” Kriesberg added, “It also paid off into the Malcolm story, because who's the only person alive that Malcolm fears? That's Ra's al Ghul. So it's ping-ponging off of every character.”One semi-odd aspect of “Heir to the Demon” was not seeing Roy Harper, given he had just learned Oliver Queen’s identity and been taken into his lair at the end of the last episode. The producers revealed Roy actually was originally in the episode, with Kreisberg explaining, “There was an amazing sequence in here that we actually had that unfortunately we just had to cut for time because this episode was just so jam-packed. But we actually had Oliver tell Roy, ‘I want you to go down to the hospital and keep an eye on Laurel.' When Nyssa and her goon kidnap Mrs. Lance, Roy actually confronts them. Nyssa shoots him with a dart with snake venom and says, ‘A normal person would be dead by now. You're stronger than you look,’ and he says, ‘I get that a lot.’ Then they have a fight, but the venom starts to affect him, and she takes him out. It's a great sequence, and they're great in it, but it wasn't propelling the story forward. It was just a really neat moment. But yes, the next five episodes -- in addition to everything else that's going on -- it really charts Oliver's attempts to keep Roy on the straight and narrow.”The producers indicated we’re likely to see that Roy vs. Nyssa fight sequence on the Season 2 DVD.