Arrow season 7, episode 16 review: Star City 2040

“You would rather go play hero than do what’s best for your daughter.” Minor spoilers for Arrow season 7, episode 16 follow.

Mia and William finally are able to begin the search for Felicity on Arrow, but first, they must make their way into one of the most secure buildings in The Glades.

While those two do that, The Canaries search for the bombs that have been spread across Star City.

Mia takes center stage

Arrow has a lot of fun with its use of time in its storytelling, it has from the start of the series. So, by using the flash-forwards it was a nice change of pace for the series and the beginning of this episode does the exact same thing. By using another flash-forward, simply set slightly prior to the current of the flash-forwards, Arrow does a great job setting up Mia’s mindset prior to her meeting William and why she is so adamantly against looking for Felicity at first.

By doing this, and giving Mia the screen time necessary, it gives great motivation for the character as well as setting up a potential showdown once she and William find Felicity. Her hatred of vigilantes still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given who her parents are, but we also don’t know what happened to Oliver, so we don’t have the whole picture. Once the whole picture is revealed though, Mia’s motivations may come to make more sense than they do now, even though they are very clearly spelled out.

Katherine McNamara also does a great job channeling a ferocity that is very similar to Oliver’s ferocity in season one of the series. She doesn’t have the restraint that members of Team Arrow learned to have and it’s another visual cue about her anger and frustration with her situation. The fight toward the end of the episode is easily one of the best fights of the scene if not series, as well.

Mia has been one of the most interesting characters introduced during this season and this episode moves her story forward in such an interesting that really makes her character even better.

Mia and William make an entertaining team

This episode again shows how entertaining Mia and William are together. The writing between the two is great to begin with, but Katherine McNamara and Ben Lewis make the great writing even better. These two have such great chemistry that makes the show so enjoyable to watch. They probably have some of the best chemistry between any two characters in the history of Arrow.

When they finally reunite with Felicity though, their relationship takes a backseat for the rest of the episode, but their reactions are so drastically different, that it helps solidify their relationship, even if they don’t know it.

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Team Arrow 2040

B-stories throughout many of the episodes on various Arrowverse honestly have rarely ever been as interesting as the A-story, but in this episode, the B-story only enhances the story. By having both stories intertwine with each other and eventually meet up with each other during the back half of the episode, it makes an already compelling story even better.

Even though this portion of the episode didn’t have the most screen time, it also gave solid character moments to Zoe and Roy, even if there wasn’t a full explanation as to why Roy is now the way he is. However, this is fine though because there are so many unanswered questions that aren’t needed.

Arrow has arguably its best episode of the season with the flash-forward heavy episode that harkens back to the episode “The Odyssey” with the way it was told.