Arrow season 7, episode 21 review: Living Proof

“She’s not my family anymore.” Minor spoilers for Arrow season 7, episode 21 follow.

The Ninth Circle has Team Arrow trapped underneath a building and Felicity on the run from the police, making Emiko’s plan closer to completion.

While trapped, Oliver encounters a ghost from his past yet again.

Tommy’s back

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Tommy appear on the show. For a while after his death all the way back in season one, his specter loomed over the series and Oliver’s character but, eventually, it seemed like he had moved past his death. Apparently not. The last time we saw him was as his doppelganger from Earth-X, but his appearance here felt the most like his appearance in “Three Ghosts” in season two.

Tommy is an amazing character who was killed off way too soon into the lifespan of the show, and it’s always great to see him back, especially when counselling Oliver. This ghost of Tommy seems to come out whenever Oliver needs his conscience and innermost thoughts to break through his immediate emotions. Right now, he’s extremely angry and murderous, which is something that he’s continually tried to change about himself. He thinks he’s doing the right thing by wanting to kill Emiko as penance for her sins, but Tommy just points out how wrong that is and Oliver knows it.

Colin Donnell and Stephen Amell both provide excellent performances in these portions of the episode, bringing out some of the best emotion of the season. Every Tommy and Oliver are on screen together, it really makes you think about how different the series could’ve been if Tommy wasn’t killed off.

Trust is gone

For the team on the whole though, Emiko goes through with her threat to send the SCPD the video of Roy murdering those two security guards. This causes Team Arrow to immediately be on the outs with the SCPD and Felicity to nearly be arrested before she can escape.

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As for the trapped team, this brings about some of the best parts for Roy in the entirety of his tenure on the show. No matter how far he’s fallen, he tries to find redemption in himself and what it takes here is for Dinah to talk to him. After almost sacrificing himself to save the team, it only is reasonable that he would question whether or not he was better off dead, so to have Dinah, someone with a similar arc, talk him down, is very satisfying. These are two characters who have barely shared any screen time together, but it feels like they’ve been together for as long as Oliver and Diggle.

William and Felicity

In the future, Felicity is attempting to protect The Canaries from the Archer led army that is being created to begin martial law in The Glades. The selling point of these interactions though are William finally able to confront Felicity after all these years.

William’s frustration with Felicity makes complete sense and it works to have Mia talk him into finally confronting her and forcing her to explain to him why she’s acting the way she is. For not acting like they want to care about each other, Mia and William really do feel like proper siblings.

The only real issue with the flash-forwards at this point is that they don’t feel like a story being told in just this season. This season’s use of them feels like set-up to a finale that will present in the final season of Arrow. The reason this is a problem, though, is that it makes the pacing of the storyline feel very slow, and not methodically slow either.

Arrow goes into its finale with one of its finest episodes of the season and uses its characters from the past in incredibly satisfying ways.