WARNING! Potential Spoilers!

Wow, what an episode. Arrow has definitely entered the closing stages of the season, and with an episode as awesome and crucial as this it will be very interesting to see where things go from here. I’ve loved how they’ve been teasing Slade through the final scenes but when he got his own titled episode, there was no disappointment after the slightly weak Birds of Prey one that came last time around. We get a great week in terms of development as Slade begins to tear Oliver down to the ground, and the return of Isabel Rochev – as well as the capture of Thea by Slade, make this a crucial episode that’s one of the best ones so far.

For those of you who have been waiting for Slade Wilson to make his move then this episode most certainly doesn’t disappoint. We get larger hints of his gameplan and even though it was pretty bad for Ollie here, it’s a sense that things are only going to get worse further on down the line, especially given the secrets revealed in this episode as well as shocking truth about Isabel Rochev’s intentions. And what made it worse was that you knew that they were coming before it happened.

If we’re comparing Arrow with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, like many have done in the past, then Batman Begins was definitely Season 1. Season 2 is The Dark Knight – having reached the stage of all out chaos with our heroes being torn down to the ground. This was a turning point for Ollie, Thea, Roy, Moira – even Quentin and Laurel were affected by the events in this episode and you still get the feeling that with Slade Wilson in town, the worst is still to come.

This episode could have easily served as a penultimate episode but the question remains – what have the writers got left to throw in? We’ve got to obviously deal with the fallout from Roy’s actions this episode as well as the Flash guest stars, and potentially more Suicide Squad involvement, but there’s a slight worry that this series has reached its raising the stakes moment too soon. Also, it’ll be very interesting to see how they try to top last season’s epic finale – which also served to be one of my favourite finales that I’ve seen in recent years. But given the fact that Deathstroke’s involved and I’m predicting a brutal Oliver/Sara/Slade showdown, things should be very interesting indeed.

The flashbacks, normally the more interesting part of the storyline, whilst still entertaining and gripping – the audience didn’t have as much investment in them as the present day storylines. We know that Oliver, Sara and Slade would make it out alive whereas the main series definitely doesn’t have that element – judging by last season’s finale, nobody apart from maybe Oliver himself is off limits and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

This was a big week for both Oliver and Thea. Watching Stephen Amell’s character being torn to the ground by Slade Wilson was torture, and

the actor played his character very well showing just how much he has improved from Season 1’s early days. Willa Holland also had a big week for Thea and it will be interesting to see how she deals with the fallout of this week’s episode. On top of that, the next episode also looks set to be a big one for Laurel as well given the ending, which again uses Slade Wilson, but still has the same effect (also speaking of which, Laurel should really start hiring bodyguards given the number of times people make housecalls).

One more thing that I loved about Arrow is that it finally returned to Summer Glau’s character, putting Isabel to good use in a crucial turning point. Whilst it seemed odd to have her character randomly appear after several weeks out with no explanation, it was a welcome return and it’ll be very interesting indeed to see her character continue to become more involved with the storyline as things go on.

The most annoying thing here is that we don’t get a new episode next week. This show is just too good to have another week’s break, which is a real shame because even though there are no more breaks after this, I would have rather that, given how crucial Deathstroke was as an episode, air it a week later and have a break before it. But still, it’ll be great when the show does return.