Arrow: “Nanda Parbat” Review

This week’s Arrow had several big plot developments, starting with the surprise moment that ended the episode – as Ra’s al Ghul told Oliver Queen he wanted Oliver to be his replacement.

Ra's' Offer

The Atom and Felicity

The Lazarus Pit and the Comics Connection

The Power of Secrets

What's Next?

But that wasn’t all, as Ray Palmer donned The Atom costume for the first time – and took flight. Oh, and, um, Ray and Felicity slept together.Arrow executive producers Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim weighed in on all these developments and more, with hints at what’s next.Guggenheim explained that the next episode, “Picks up literally ten seconds before the end of this episode. We do one of our direct pick-ups. We catch you up a little bit and go straight into sixteen like we did with 202 and 203 last year.”Added Kreisberg, “You want to keep that conversation going. Obviously, Oliver is completely, as hopefully the audience is, taken aback because he is not expecting that to be the case. It was something that Greg [Berlanti] and Marc and I talked about - that it was important to have a different villain this year and someone who was going to be doing something completely different and in Season 1 we had the incomparable John Barrowman [as Malcolm] who had his mission. Obviously last year, Slade’s mission was one of vengeance. For this year to have Ra’s, who is presented as this giant malevolent force, but then to come up and basically offer the keys to the kingdom to our hero, it just felt like a different way to go and a different relationship for Oliver to have with the villain. The next episode is actually called “The Offer.” What Oliver’s reaction is, what Nyssa’s reaction is, what everyone’s reaction is makes up the bulk of the next run of episodes and what his answer is and what that prompts all the other characters to do.”Oliver has attempted to put his days as a killer behind him, which would seem directly contradictory to becoming the leader of a group called the League of Assassins. But Guggenheim revealed, “Ra’s has an interesting perspective on that question which you’ll get in the first act of 316. One of the things we reveal in 320 is where the League of Assassins came from and what it means to be an assassin. If you’re a historian, you’ll know that it has a different meaning than just what it’s become in the modern day.”Ultimately though, when it comes to Ra’s offer, Kreisberg stated, “As Malcolm tells [Oliver] in a subsequent episode, he’s not really asking and that leads to all sorts of interesting combinations and new paradigms.”With an audience that has some very passionate fans rooting for certain character pairings – including plenty who want Oliver and Felicity together -- there’s obviously going to be some big reactions to Felicity sleeping with Ray Palmer.Kreisberg remarked, “We often talk about what life would be like if Twitter existed back in the days of Cheers or Moonlighting. Part of the fun of watching couples on television is keeping them apart and watching how other people come in and out of their lives. There are a lot of people who believe that Oliver and Laurel should be together and people who believe Oliver and Felicity should be together. We’re not sure how it’s all going to end up, we just do what’s right at the time. For right now, Oliver has decided "I can’t do this" and Felicity is not just going to sit around waiting for him. She’s probably the most healthy of all of them. He’s shutting himself down emotionally when he has this amazing person who is basically offering him hope and guidance and friendship and love and everything and he doesn't feel that he deserves it and doesn’t feel that it’s best for her whether she agrees with it or not. Then you’ve got Ray who, in a lot of ways, is real analog to Oliver - he’s had a tragedy and he’s trying to do right by it. He’s opening his heart to her and he’s Brandon Routh, so how can you blame her?”Meanwhile, with Ray suiting up as the Atom now, Felicity also finds herself assisting two different superheroes. When it comes to how Atom’s presence in Starling City affects Arrow and his team, Guggenheim said, “I think 317 is definitely the episode you’ll want to check out first in terms of that question. It’s not just the Felicity, Ray, Oliver love triangle situation. It’s the fact that there’s a new superhero in town and he’s going to go about things in a very different way than the Arrow does. And he’s not a part of Team Arrow. Right now he’s just a smart guy in a very, very powerful suit. Oliver is definitely going to have an opinion and the first instance of that will be episode 317.”When Oliver was “killed” by Ra’s al Ghul, many assumed the Lazarus Pit would be the key to bringing him back. Asked if the Pit could still come into play, given so many characters are in danger, Guggenheim said, with a laugh, “I give you points for the veiled attempt at getting us to spoil the show but truth be told, all the answers to that question, they’ve already been presented on the show. You’ve seen everything you need to see to know where we’re headed.”Kreisberg stressed, “Our version of Ra’s, on the TV show, is a lot closer to the comic books than you’ve seen in other live action adaptations.”As for Ra’s age and history, this week’s episode had him bring up meeting someone in the 1800s and Guggenheim noted, “We had said in 309 that no one has challenged him in like 63 years or some period of time that was older than [he appeared to be]. That’s what I mean by there’s plenty of auditory and visual clues that we’ve planned throughout the season, that we encourage everyone to play along with.”The last few Arrow episodes have involved many characters revealing their secrets including Oliver telling Thea he’s the Arrow, Laurel telling Lance Sara’s dead and Thea telling Nyssa she killed Sara. Asked about removing these secrets from the storylines and if it’s freeing or makes it difficult to keep the tension going, Guggenheim replied, “The currency of our show is secrets. I would never admit to reading recaps and reviews after an episode airs but were I too, I was a little surprised by the number of people who said well finally Lance knows the secret of Sara and Laurel should have told him back in episode three. I think that sort of misses the point of these revelations in the latter half of the season have currency only because the secrets have been kept for so long and the storylines have been simmering on the boiler for so long. We drop these little land mines and then we wait -- tick tick tick -- for them to get detonated and that’s a big part of what makes the show the show.”Said Kreisberg, “Plus, especially because it’s a superhero show and it is about heroes, for us the interesting part about it is as good as they are as superheroes, they’re all messed up as people. They make a lot of bad decisions. They don’t mean to. Oliver should have told Thea a long time ago that he was the Arrow but he had his reasons and they meant something to him. Just like Laurel was worried about her father’s help and I think part of it too is that if she admitted to her dad that Sara was dead than it was really true. The only way she knew how to cope with it was becoming Sara, which she knows she couldn’t do without telling her dad. Yes, she made things irrevocably worse and we were building to that. We thought that was so interesting. Usually on TV, people do something wrong and they have a spat and they make up by the end credits. One of the things that’s happening on this show and is going to continue for a while is they’re not in a good place. He said to her in episode 14, “it was always you and me. Whatever else there was between your mom and your sister, it was always you and me and you broke that. I’m going to have to live with Sara being dead but I don’t know how I’m going to get over that.” We don’t solve that. We’re writing episode 21 now and it’s still not solved. Laurel made a really bad decision and it’s going to haunt her and her dad for a long time. For us, that’s where all the drama comes from. That’s the best stuff to write. Otherwise everybody would be getting along all the time. So when we see on Twitter someone like “why is she doing that?” It’s like, "Because otherwise there’s nothing to watch.'”With everyone knowing who killed Sara, but reacting in different ways, the writers were asked how much revenge will continue to be a motivating factor on the series. Said Guggenheim, “I think revenge and vengeance has always been the undercurrent of the show. It’s one of those elements we always traffic in. Sometimes it’s right at the surface, like you said, like in recent episodes and other times it’s way below. I would say, in the next batch of episodes, a lot of it has to do with sacrifice and what all the different people in our drama are willing to do for all the other people in the drama. It doesn’t have to be life and death but there’s a variety of different forms of sacrifice."Added Kreisberg, “It’s also continuing what we said in the beginning. This year is really about “who am I?” Every character is asking “who am I?” For Malcolm, 'Am I the villain or am I the hero? Am I Thea’s father or am I just a killer?' Oliver’s asking, 'Am I Oliver Queen or am I the Arrow?' And now he’s being presented with, 'Well what if I’m Ra’s Al Ghul?' And Nyssa, 'Am I the Heir to the Demon or is there something more to me?' And then Thea, 'Am I this terrible thing that I did or can I be something more?' It really goes up to the end, because by the end of the year, our people will have made decisions for themselves. Some people will make surprising decisions and some people will make exactly the decisions you’re expecting. It’ll be interesting to see who gets to be what.”