Arrow Season Finale Review: “Unthinkable” (Season 2, Episode 23)

Things come to a head when Oliver discovers that Felicty has also been kidnapped, and that Slade’s men are all gathering in a tunnel outside of town. Team Arrow and the League of Assassins take on the army in the tunnel, leading to the show’s biggest and perhaps most impressive action sequence. There are a ton of pieces in play in this sequence, yet the action is always easy to follow and well choreographed. This fight only helped strenghten the fact that the action in this show rivals some of the action shown in its big-screen counterparts, a truly impressive feat for a television series on the CW.

Oliver finally confronts Slade, who has Felicity and Laurel and is presumably giving Oliver the chance to choose which one of them to save. Oliver doesn’t give him the chance, however, revealing that he’d given Felicity the cure while at the mansion, using his confession of love as a way to prompt her kidnapping so that she’d be close enough to Slade to inject him with it.

This was a great little twist, and was perfectly handled. It just goes to show how far Oliver has come, using his observations about Slade to give him an advantage in the final battle, rather than attempt (again) to confront him head-on.

The fight between Oliver and Slade did not disappoint, and was juxtaposed with flashback sequences depicting their initial fight on the Amazo. While I haven’t been a big fan of the flashbacks over the last few weeks, showing their dual battles was an effective way of bringing everything full circle. Oliver’s season two arc is brought to a head as he must decide whether to play it safe and kill Slade – as he’d tried before – or take a risk and keep him alive.

All year long Oliver has been struggling with his newfound No Kill code, and if any kill was justified it would be Deathstroke. However, Oliver has learned from his mistakes, and decides not to kill him this time around, instead tying him up with some trick arrows and handing him over to A.R.G.U.S.

The rivalry between Oliver and Slade may be over, but its repercussions will undoubtedly be felt as the show moves forward. As Oliver tells him later, Slade helped Oliver become a hero, though he initially trained him to be a killer. The ill-destined brotherhood between them was front and center all season, and the evolution of that relationship, and how it affects them both, played out wonderfully this week.