Welcome back, Roy! Glad you survived the experience!
From the moment Arrow revealed that Roy was coming back, fans were thrilled. Roy Harper is OG Arrow, and though his return may be temporary, it came at the perfect time. Mainly because his return allowed the Outsiders to take a back seat while OG Team Arrow got to save one of their own.
“Doppelganger” had a lot of spinning plates this week, and they mostly worked. Roy was brought back into the fold, which prompted Thea to become Speedy again when he was in danger, which allowed Ricardo Diaz to truly emerge as the villain we wanted him to be, all the while having Black Siren worm her way into the public spotlight impersonating our Laurel! Busy episode.
While Roy’s screen time may have been short per se, every scene he was in was meaningful in one way or another. Whether it was Speedy nearly falling to pieces at the sight of him, and risking her life to save his, or Ricardo showing his sinister side in order to try and break him, it worked. And of course, the ending scene with Roy and Thea being “together” again was very touching.
Moving onto Diaz, a lot of people rightfully said that they were disappointed with how the character was being treated in the early season, and I agree with them. Doppelganger though allowed him to shine in many ways. He showed off his martial arts skills, his ability to think ten steps ahead, to motivate people to do what he wants, and of course, his ability to be smug when he’s “lost”.
Even Dinah got some actually good story this week, as she had to stifle her agenda against Black Siren when Oliver revealed that Diaz bought half the SCPD, and now her and Quentin have to work together to root out all the bad seeds. Hopefully, this will be more of a focus for her than her revenge plot because I’m way over that.
I will say this though, some aspects of the episode did feel stuffed in. Diggle bringing up that he wanted to be Green Arrow again, and Oliver saying he didn’t know why he didn’t give it up again. This should be the focus of another episode, not this one.
In the end though, “Doppelganger” brought much needed progression to the season, and redemption and revival to many characters…now…if only we didn’t have to wait three weeks until the next episode…
4.5 out of 5 nerds
Todd Black
Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!
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