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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Arrow Season 7 Episode 19: Spartan

April 23rd, 2019 by Todd Black Comments

It’s good to see things ramping up as we draw closer to the end of season 7. But leave it to Arrow to fall back into tropes while things got good. Because after seven seasons, we learned about Diggle’s dad…and stepdad. Yep, it’s one of those stories.

Granted, having Ernie Hudson in a show in any capacity is a good thing (Ghostbusters!), but did we really need the “that man ruined my life!” story that easily transformed into “why didn’t you tell me the truth about my father?” thing? I really don’t think we did. It honestly would’ve been better to do the “I need to impress my stepdad” story because it likely would’ve shown more growth with Diggle. Here? We really didn’t get much.

That being said, the storyline caused by the involvement of the general was nice. The 9th Circle now has an incredibly deadly bioweapon, and you know that they know how to use it. And have a drone delivery service to launch it. Them stealing archer was another big step that I approved of. Especially since it sent Felicity into a tailspin of sorts regarding her legacy (and the end of her time on the show…) and it affects the future storyline of how Archer came to be. Surprise! It wasn’t Felicity’s fault after all!

Also, if you didn’t catch that reference. Dr. William Magnus is the creator of the superhero group known as the Metal Men. Which are full autonomous robots that are named after certain metals. They’re very popular in certain circles, but you won’t see them on Arrow more than likely. Especially since we only have one season left and it’s only 10 episodes.

The future storylines definitely were a bounceback from last week’s oddly paced venture. We learned why the soldiers are so powerful and we got more details into what happened with Conor Hawke and John Diggle Jr. Apparently, Jr. is a bad guy now! You had one job diggle!

Finally, the twist of Emiko believing Oliver and killing Dante was nice, but it turns out that wasn’t enough to bring her back to the light side. So now she truly is the villain of the story.

“Spartan” did get a bit tropey at times, but it paid off for the most part, and now things are going to get truly dark as the final four episodes come.

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!