Spoilers Arrow - Season 5

I agree with dodge in that Prometheus is misinterpreting Oliver's "secret," but not for the same reason. I think it's true that Oliver, at his darkest point that we're now seeing in flashbacks, did take pleasure in killing. I don't think it's true that he still does. The vigilante who came back to Starling City five years ago was a killer by choice, using the List as his excuse, but he's changed since then. Then, he was a "monster" shaped by his ordeals and by the influence of enemies like Fyers, Ivo, and Baron Reiter and allies like Slade, Waller, the Bratva, and Talia. So the darkness in him was at its strongest. But in the years since, he's been shaped by more positive influences -- Diggle, the Lances, Felicity, Barry, etc. The man he is now is not the man he was five years ago. Chase can't see that because he's still stuck in the past, unable to grow, so he assumes the same is true of Oliver. But Oliver has grown a lot. He can't entirely move beyond the influence of his past, but he is better now than he was then.

No, but it's cool.

No, we're basically empathetic beings. We evolved to use cooperation as our primary survival trait, to form communities that are stronger than any individual. That's why we evolved traits like language and the capacity to form lasting family bonds. Sensationalist depictions of prehistory play up our hunting side, but in fact, hunting never provided more than 1/3 of a community's calories; we subsisted mainly through gathering, and our hominid ancestors were initially herbivores and scavengers before they evolved into omnivores. And gathering was a communal activity performed by women and children in groups, working together and looking out for each other -- and then sharing the fruits of their labor with the men, who shared the, err, meats of their labor in turn. Aggression was one of our survival skills for hunting and defense, yes, but not our primary skill, otherwise we'd have no communities, families, language, or civilization.

So human existence is defined by our capacity for empathy and cooperation. Cruelty is what happens when that innate tendency is damaged or uncultivated, due to developmental defects or traumatic or neglectful upbringing. Psychopaths are born without the parts of the brain that enable us to care for one another, but that deficiency can be ameliorated if they're raised in loving, stimulating environments. Neglect and abuse cause actual physical brain damage that impairs those same potentials for empathy and affection. A healthy, properly developed brain is a compassionate one. Cruelty and hate are malfunctions.

 

Thank goodness.

And we're also aggressive and violent beings, who tend to blind ourselves from these aspects of our nature with a "respectable" or "good" veneer, because sometimes, we're incapable of facing the truths about ourselves. Which Oliver had a tendency to do, sometimes.

 

Aggression is merely one of our capabilities, to be used when it serves a purpose. Like any other behavioral trait, it evolved for a specific function. It doesn't define what we are, except in the rhetoric of people who want to make excuses for their own lack of self-control.

 

Casting info for season six, which I am spoiler-coding because it's also a slightly spoiler-ish tidbit about the finale.

Spoiler: Season 6, S5 finale

Katie Cassidy will return as an opening credits regular for season six as Earth-2's Black Siren. She will also be appearing in the final two episodes of S5.
I begin to suspect that the reason for the season long, franchise-wide contracts for various players were just to keep them on the payroll while putting their characters on the backburner.

 

Which also maybe tied to another series

Spoiler

Katie Cassidy is also appearing in the season finale of Legends. Which will air before the final two episodes of Arrow's S5

 

Marc Guggenheim says that Vigilante's secret identity is someone we've met already, though we won't find out who until next season.

So let the months of speculation begin. Who haven't we seen in the same place as Vigilante?

 

Paul.

Unless it's not Paul.
Could be Quentin Lance.

Of course Quentin is bullshit.
It's Tommy, back from the dead.

Or not?
Is there a flashback character that he could be?

It's Ollie... from Earth 2.

Nonsense. I'd say it's Deadshot, whose body we never saw.
But he keeps missing, so probably not.

We haven't seen Walter in a while, have we?

 

Its Roy Harper.

 

Aggression is one of humanity's traits that we tend to dismiss or pretend that it does not control us. It's not our only trait. But it is a trait that we humans are very reluctant to acknowledge.

By the way, didn't Anatoly Knyazev's comments to Oliver in the flashback verify Oliver's own confession near the end of the episode?

 

On the contrary, it seems to me that we glorify it to excess. Look how much our political candidates strive to project "toughness" and how much we want our movie/TV heroes to be "badass." Our current society respects aggression more than it respects empathy and kindness, and if you ask me, that's exactly why it's so screwed up.

As I said, I don't think so, because that confession was true for the Oliver of 5 years ago, not the Oliver of today. Prometheus assumes they're the same, and he's convinced Oliver they're the same, but I don't believe they are.

 

I'm starting to come around to this idea... it's a good way to look at it that answers and explains a lot.

 

I agree that our society has a tendency to glorify aggression. I'm not just talking about our "current" society. This has been the case throughout history. All one has to do is study world history.

But I'm also curious over why so many (and not just on this site) are so many people trying to pretend that Oliver's moral compass is not as complex as this latest episode has revealed it to be?

 

I agree; I think Oliver does a lot of things for a lot of reasons, and some of those reasons are not what we would consider moral by any means. Every time he encounters someone dressed as TGA, he speaks, acts, and projects anger, hate, and frustration. Just watch how quickly and without thought he puts an arrow into just about anyone. That is his natural state; his instinctual reaction is to lash out and attack. Oliver himself has stated that when he got too soft as a vigilante, that's when people closest to him paid the price.

I find that Oliver Queen/TGA is much like the Doctor of Doctor Who. Every where they go, death and pain follow them. Everyone else pays the price while these two "heroes" get to walk free and move on with their lives.

As to our last episode and Oliver's morality, apply Occam's Razor and you'll see that his confession to Adrian is likely true. Granted, it may not be the ONLY reason why he does what he does as a vigilante... but it certainly is, or at least WAS a driving force.

 

I'm sure nobody here is "pretending" anything -- we sincerely interpret things differently than you do. You have your honest opinion, we have our equally honest ones, and they differ because we make different assumptions.

And "Oliver's moral compass is complex" is a totally different premise from "Oliver kills people for pleasure and everything else is an excuse," which is what Prometheus is actually claiming. A "complex moral compass" is what Oliver's assumed he had all along -- he tried to do right, but was willing to kill when there was no other choice. Prometheus's premise is that this was a lie, that he's just a serial killer pretending to be a hero, using crimefighting as his cover for exercising his bloodlust. That's not a complex moral compass, that's simple psychopathy. That is what I do not believe is correct. At his lowest ebb, shaped by "five years in hell," Oliver did find pleasure in killing and made excuses for doing it when he didn't have to. But in the years since, shaped by the beneficial influence of his friends and family, he's grown beyond that. He still bears the scars of his past, but he's changed for the better. That's a complexity that Prometheus refuses to recognize in Oliver, because he doesn't have it in himself. Prometheus is simple-minded, driven by the singular need for revenge, and in his simplicity he assumes that Oliver is as simplistic as he is.

 

Oh boy. No wonder most TV shows are incapable of exploring the ambiguous nature of its protagonists. I'm beginning to suspect that deep down, most people don't really want to see or acknowledge it.

 

1x18...

There it is! Season 1 Arrow.

 

So won't this call into question all of Chase's cases?

 

So now all the team's back except Green Arrow, which is sort of what I've been thinking might be a sensible way to go -- let Oliver be mayor full-time and have Spartan lead the team. Even aside from Ollie not being "there yet" (and GA being wanted for murder), it kinda makes sense for him not to divide his focus between two very demanding jobs.

I'd been thinking that Anatoly seemed incongruously benevolent in the flashbacks. Now we get the explanation for the difference -- he really was trying to be better then, but the pressures of running the Bratva without Oliver by his side made him lose his way. Sort of the reverse of Ollie's journey from the darkness back to the light.

Odd to hear Curtis say that ninja-style hood/mask made his face itch. You mean that weird T-shaped thing he has glued to his face doesn't make it itch? I guess we're supposed to think it's made of some special high-tech material or something.

Also, we get confirmation that Team Arrow normally uses "trank ammo" in their guns. I'd had that impression, but I hadn't been sure.

 

So, Oliver went from one form of blindness to the other?

 

The ending of this episode reminded me of X-files "Home", with something brutal happening followed by an oldie. That was a really interesting and eye catching ending to a pretty good episode. This wasn't as good as the previous two weeks, but I think it did a great job setting us up for the final few episodes. I'm still loving the way this season is being written, with every episode being important to the overall story. Looking forward to 3 weeks from now.