TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Arrow Season 7 Episode 20: Confessions

After a rather lackluster episode involving the Diggle family, it was great to see “Confessions” focus back on the real conflict. Emiko trying to destroy the city. And while not everything worked, a few key twists in “Confessions” made it so that this episode really shined as one of the seasons best.

I’m not sure if you remember the movie called “Vantage Point”, but if you look it up, it’s about how 7 people all saw the same thing but from different viewpoints, and when you pieced it together, it told a compelling narrative. That’s what Confessions basically was. A foiled terrorist attack left two innocent cops killed, and Team Arrow seemed to be the only suspects. But as they got interrogated one by one, we got to see more of the story.

I was a bit concerned without how it was being presented. There were obvious clues that the team were lying, but to what end, I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t like at first that Dinah was the one doing the interrogating because it felt odd that she would think them guilty and push this hard. But as things lowly revealed themselves, it became a much more shocking affair.

Mainly because tonight was the true return of Roy Harper as Arsenal in the present storyline. We’ve only seen him in the future so far, so to have him back in the present was nice. But to find out that it was him who killed the guards, and that he did it because he had been brought back to life via the Lazarus Pit was brilliant.

I was worried that they would saw “oh, it was the Mirakuru still in his system”, but that would’ve been inaccurate with canon. But having him die and brought back and have the bloodlust in him was not only a nice twist, but one that lines up with what him, Thea, and Nyssa were doing out there in the world. And the fact that Dinah was actually there and agreed to help cover it up was very nice indeed.

To wrap it all up, the finale of Emiko having set all of them up so that she could ruin their credibility then drop a building on them as she starts to erase the legacy of Oliver was proof positive that she is the true villain of the season. Only made worse when she revealed how she knew about the Queen’s Gambit and what Merlyn was going to do to it.

With only a few episodes left, and the team in bad shape, it’s going to be very interesting to see how they make their way out of this. And don’t forget, the future is still on the line too.