Episode Title: “Suicide Squad”
Writers: Keto Shimizu & Bryan Q. Miller
Director: Larry Teng
Previously on “Arrow”:
As much as some fans may want it, the “Suicide Squad” episode of “Arrow” was never going to be a backdoor pilot for a Suicide Squad TV series. The biggest reason why not is that nobody on the Suicide Squad is ever going to land on the cover of a Tween magazine. I can’t say the same thing about Grant Gustin.
But if there ever was a “Suicide Squad” series, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to place John Diggle (David Ramsey) front and center as the star of the show. “Suicide Squad” is very much Remsey’s episode and he demonstrated once again that he can carry a narrative without Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell). For Oliver’s part, he barely even notices that Diggle is missing in this episode.
On the Suicide Squad itself, Diggle is essentially playing the Rick Flagg role. He’s the guy who has a sense of honor and a worldview that doesn’t conform to Amanda Waller’s (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) willingness to sacrifice several civilians and her own team just to accomplish her mission.
For all of the hype placed on this episode, it’s kind of a placeholder story for the season as neither the flashback storyline or the primary storyline move forward at any meaningful pace. And as happy as I am to see Ben Browder back as Ted Gaynor, the Diggle-centric flashbacks in “Suicide Squad” were kind of useless. With so many characters in the mix, a few were bound to fall by the wayside. But the episode didn’t develop its primary villain, Gholem Qadir (Lee Majdoub) into a convincing threat or even make the audience believe that Gholem felt friendship for Diggle.
There are full spoilers ahead for “Suicide Squad,” so if you missed last night’s episode of “Arrow” then you should probably skip this review or else Felicity won’t be bringing you any hot chocolate.
Regardless of anything else, I loved the Harley Quinn cameo (with Tara Strong reprising her vocal role). With “Gotham” coming to Fox, the chances of seeing more Batman villains on “Arrow” have probably gone down.
As for the rest of the Suicide Squad, only Deadshot (Michael Rowe) was given any real characterization. It doesn’t quite fit with Rowe’s previous portrayal of the character last season. But this feels like a course correction to make “Arrow’s” Deadshot closer to his comic book counterpart.
Diggle and Deadshot actually have some good chemistry with each other in this episode, but I have to say that Diggle was way too friendly with the man who killed his brother. Diggle even speaks glowingly about Deadshot’s character and he goes out of his way to save his life! Now, it would be one thing if Diggle saved Deadshot to learn who put him up to the murder of his brother. But Diggle doesn’t even ask him about that here!
The CW’s promos for this episode were also misleading. The ads suggested that the Squad would be going after Deathstroke (Manu Bennett). So it was somewhat disappointing when Gholem was actually the team’s target. The ending of the episode suggests that the Squad may actually help Oliver hunt down Slade Wilson in the future, but it would have been a great way to dovetail Diggle and Oliver’s stories in this episode if it had happened here.
Oliver’s subplot wasn’t bad, it just covered a lot of ground that’s already been well explored. The supposedly reformed Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) offers Oliver relationship advice about pushing Sara (Caity Lotz) away and it just feels like we’ve been down this road before. On the other hand, Slade’s cat and mouse game with Oliver was great. We never even see Slade’s face in this episode, but his presence is felt. And Slade leaves a few calling cards to remind Oliver that he’s completely outmatched.
Strangely enough, “Suicide Squad” had the best use for Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) in a long time. Rather than retreading Felicity’s incredibly transparent feelings for Oliver, we get to see that she and Diggle really care about each other. It’s not a romantic attachment, it’s just friendship and it really worked in their brief scene together. Diggle cares enough about Felicity to wait outside of her home just in case Deathstroke wanted her dead. Can’t ask for a better friend than that.
I’m less sold on Diggle’s relationship with Lyla Michaels (Audrey Marie Anderson). Outside of the Suicide Squad, Diggle and Lyla are fun together. But within the context of that group, their conflict felt forced and unbelievable. The episode tried to have it both ways with Lyla. She was perfectly fine with some of the squad’s ruthless tactics. And yet Lyla was very openly appalled by Waller’s more advanced tracking bombs for her team at the end of the episode. Even Lyla’s reconciliation with Diggle rang false, as he sees the heroic side of Deadshot and it makes him question his perspective.
The ending implies that Amanda Waller may soon show up in the flashback storyline, as she apparently knows both Oliver and Slade. That’s intriguing, but it seemed like the entire episode could have gotten us to that a lot sooner instead of wasting a story on the squad chasing a villain that wasn’t even one note.
Still, I can’t deny that “Suicide Squad” was a largely entertaining episode that managed to overcome most of its problems. I would absolutely watch a John Diggle-led Suicide Squad TV series. But it’s just not in the cards.
