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Arrow Review – Season 3, Episode 12: Uprising

By Nick Tylwalk

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Cue the heroic, gathering-the-troops music. It’s time for a last stand against Brick before he takes over the Glades.

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Team Arrow has certainly been tested while Oliver Queen has been away, but it really needs to pull together now to avoid Arrow coming home and telling them that they have failed his city. Will they need to take Malcolm Merlyn up on his offer to help? And will a certain Emerald Archer make his return tonight? Let’s find out in the episode they call “Uprising.”

On-the-Mark Recap: Tatsu tries her best to dissuade Oliver from leaving, but he’s worried about his sister and his city. Hey, here’s an idea: why don’t you come with me, Tatsu? She says that like Maseo, she has disappeared from the world, with no desire to return. And just like that, he’s gone, out into the cold.

Police have been gone from the Glades for a week, and things are getting pretty bad. Brick’s men are demanding protection money, a.k.a. all the money in businesses’ cash registers. Arsenal shows up to stop some thugs in a bar (though they mistake him for the Flash), and he and Canary team to take out the trash. Felicity Smoak and John Diggle are holding things down back at the Arrow Cave, but it’s clear things are getting out of hand in the Glades. Sin, who we haven’t seen in a long time, sees Arsenal and the Canary leaving by motorcycle, but she mistakes Laurel for Sara.

Detective Lance wants to help the Hood Squad off the books (Felicity corrects him and says it’s Team Arrow, though maybe only to her). Elsewhere, thea Queen is getting better all the time at her sword skills, but Malcolm Merlyn still has some lessons to teach her. When she balks at the idea that it’s kill or be killed, her dad explains that he had a pretty good reason for becoming a killer — because the first man he ever killed was the person who murdered his wife.

Arsenal meets with Lance in person, and he immediately recognizes the hero as Roy Harper. Lance asks about Arrow and his daughter Sara, asking Roy to watch her back.

Team Arrow gets the break they need when Felicity digs into Brick’s M.O. and discovers he’s still using the same gun flagged in crimes over two decades ago. One of those was … yep, you guessed it, the shooting of Merlyn’s wife. And thanks to the bugs he has planted in the Arrow Cave, he now knows that too.

Let’s check in on Oliver’s journey home. His injuries have kept him from getting far, but Tatsu is following him. Around a fire, he asks what changed her mind, and she says she’s been to enough funerals. Noting that Ra’s al Ghul is good with swords, Ollie asks Tatsu for help in that area, but she feels only Maseo can defeat Ra’s that way.

Speaking of swords, Malcolm is sharpening his. Thea asks about what he’s doing, and he’s pretty distraught, explaining that his wife’s killer is still alive, and most of his last 21 years were a lie. He also says he thought the Undertaking (from Season 1) was going to help the Glades by ensuring no one else would lose a wife. Yeah, by killing a bunch of other people, which makes … what kind of sense, exactly?

At the same time, Diggle suggests unleashing Merlyn on Brick to help solve their problem with the crime boss. Roy notes that cell phone service has been cut to the Glades, but Brick’s men were still able to communicate with handheld walkie-talkies. Can Felicity track those, Laurel wonders? Our favorite computer whiz tells Laurel she hasn’t been down in the Arrow Cave too much. They track Brick to the police precinct building in the Glades, which Felicity says adds irony to his list of crimes.

Two of Brick’s men are at the precinct right now, trying to explain to their angry boss why Arsenal is still alive. One gets taken out the same way Brick always does in people who fail him, but the other is saved when the power goes out. It’s Felicity’s doing, of course, giving Arsenal and Canary cover to strike from the shadows. They take out a bunch of men, but Brick confronts them with explosive shotgun shells, and it looks bad. That is, until the Dark Archer arrives, shooting Brick with an arrow before part of the hallway collapses between them. Merlyn says they need to talk.

That discussion takes place in the Arrow Lair, where Merlyn suggests they continue to work together. Does their scorn for him outweigh their need to take their Brick? You have your options, I suggest you weigh them.

For Roy, he weighs them while listening to Thea talk about her own issues with her dad’s lust for vengeance. Ironically, that’s the same thing Roy’s thinking about, though he can’t tell her that. She actually buys his reasoning for trying to “help” the Glades in his own misguided way, and she shares the story of how Malcolm saved her life during Deathstroke’s siege. That, in turn, sways Roy to return to the Arrow Lair and argue in favor of Merlyn’s help. Laurel agrees, but Felicity vehemently opposes the idea, noting that there’s no way Oliver would ever approve. They put it to a vote, and the next thing we see is Diggle going into the alley to inform Merlyn that they decided against his help, saying that once they let the ends justify the means, it’s the first step in becoming like him.

As Oliver gets ready to ho on a truck, Tatsu give him medicine to continue taking. He makes one final effort to persuade her to join him, and though it doesn’t work, Tatsu offers up a final warning about how much Ollie might need to sacrifice to defeat Ra’s al Ghul.

Now all full of fuzzy feelings for her father, Thea looks surprised for him to say there’s not more to him than being a killer. In the Arrow Lair, it becomes clear that the vote went 3-1 against, with Roy the lone voter for teaming with Merlyn. He points out that they’re still outnumbered, to which Laurel suggests they rally the Glades themselves. To that end, she goes to visit Ted Grant, and Roy seeks aid from Sin.

Later, we see Team Arrow psyching itself up in the van, as it’s time for the assault on Brick’s turf to begin. The crime lord mocks Arsenal and Black Canary for dressing for Halloween well after it has passed, and taunts them with how many men he has at his disposal. Sin shows up with a bunch of folks to even the odds, and …

MOB FIGHT!

During the melee, a masked man corners Brick and gets some nice shots in before the scrap turns bad and Brick starts beating him down. It looks like curtains for him, but Arsenal saves his bacon by shooting Brick in the shoulder with an arrow. That forces Brickwell to flee, but he runs into the Dark Archer, and even he stands no chance against Merlyn.

The Canary tends to the masked man, and … oh yeah, we have a Wildcat sighting! That was Grant, now somewhat the worse for wear. Their reunion is halted when a familiar green arrow flies by. Oliver?

Merlyn unmasks as he is beating the crap out of Brick, then threatens the criminal with his own gun. Pressed by Malcolm, Brick recalls Rebecca Merlyn as his first murder, done only because she was weak and begging for her life. The Arrow arrives, telling Merlyn not to do it, that killing Brick won’t balance the scales. Malcolm fires back that he wouldn’t understand, but Arrow thinks he can still make a different choice now, for Thea’s sake. Cool, let’s just spill everyone’s identities and family member names in front of the criminal you’re not going to kill!

As Team Arrow watches remotely, Arrow makes an inspiring speech to the citizens of the Glades, apologizing for his absence but also congratulating them on not failing the city. He vows never to leave them again before zip-lining out of there.

We’re not quite done. Sin has some bad news for Lance: whoever is in the Canary suit, it’s not Sara. At Thea’s place, Malcolm informs his daughter that he didn’t kill, making the choice for himself as much as her. Oliver shows up too, telling his sister that he spent some time in jail in Bludhaven. He has a separate talk with Merlyn, still pretty upset that he put his own daughter in the path of the League of Assassins. But he also asks Merlyn to train him in the ways of the sword, as he is also a pupil of Ra’s al Ghul.

Finally, Ollie reunites with Felicity and Team Arrow. When Roy asks about Ra’s, Oliver says he and Malcolm are working on that — which immediately causes Felicity to go off on him, upset that she argued on his behalf while he was gone. She goes out for air, but Ollie follows her outside. She’s really, really upset, ending her rant about compromising his principles by saying she doesn’t want to be a woman that he loves any more. Cue the outrage from #Olicity shippers right … about … now!

Meanwhile, 21 Years Ago: Malcolm returns home from work to find a young Tommy Merlyn having a nightmare. He settles his son down with a magic trick and says they will always be together. He leaves when the doorbell rings, thinking it’s Rebecca. Instead, it’s two cops, and when they take off their hats like that with sad looks on their faces, it’s never good.

At Rebecca’s funeral, we briefly see young Tommy and Oliver. Malcolm’s assistant (I guess) gives him a photo of the prime suspect.

For some reason, Malcolm thinks it’s wise to confront the thug in a seedy part of town. He pulls a gun on the guy, who suspects Merlyn has never held a gun before and proceeds to stomp a mudhole in his behind, as Stone Cold Steve Austin might say. The crook sarcastically tells the bloodied Malcolm to go back to his rich neighborhood, but Merlyn is able to crawl to his gun and fire.

Later, we see Malcolm at home, furiously scrubbing blood off himself and preparing to skip town. His assistant shows up with 50 grand in cash, and he realizes what Malcolm has done. Though he says it didn’t bring Rebecca back or calm the anger he feels, Malcolm has heard of a place where rage can be tempered into something more. Tommy begs him not to leave, but his dad says he’s going somewhere to learn to ensure no one will ever hurt them again.

You win the prize if you guessed that was the headquarters of the League of Assassins. A young Nyssa wonders why Malcolm isn’t there to fight, and mentions how she should kill him. He shows her the magic trick he used on Tommy, leading her to say two words: The Magician.

Favorite Moment: Lance is unimpressed when he hears Roy’s super hero name for the first time. “Arsenal? What, are you guys just picking names out of a hat now?”

Runner-Up Moment: The first thug asks Arsenal if he’s the red streak he’s been hearing about on the news. His reply? Nope. Wrong City.

Final Thought: It’s perfectly logical for Oliver to come back and immediately think his way isn’t sufficicent to defeat Ra’s, and that he might have to go back on his vow to kill. The thing is, it’s really meaningless, because we all know death is only a temporary setback for the Demon’s Head. I really hope they don’t have him win, agonize over it and have Ra’s come back later anyway.

Also, didn’t Felicity try to convince Oliver before he left that he might have to kill Ra’s al Ghul? It seems a bit hypocritical of her now to be upset about him training with Merlyn.

Next: Previously, on Arrow: our recap of Midnight City

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