Arrow – Broken Dolls

• Title: Arrow – Broken Dolls
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“She was different. Trained. And she used a sonic… thing.”

Picking up from last week’s cliffhanger, the latest episode of Arrow opens with the Black Canary (Caity Lotz) springing Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) from Laurel‘s (Katie Cassidy) trap. Loosing his new friend moments later, Oliver enlists the help of Roy (Colton Haynes) to learn as much about Startling City’s new vigilante as possible. Tracking down a young woman named Sin (Bex Taylor-Klaus) gets Roy face-to-face he wanted but things don’t go quite as he planned.

The still demoted Officer Lance gets more worked up than usual when a serial killer he put away years ago begins killing again after escaping Iron Heights Prison during the quake. Unwilling and unable to follow orders to stay away from the case (which will eventually get him arrested), Lance enlists the help of Arrow to catch the Dollmaker (Michael Eklund) before he adds any more young women to his list of victims. However, even working together the pair are unable to stop the killer from taking another life. After Felicity‘s (Emily Bett Rickards) going undercover as bait fails the Dollmaker raises the stakes by kidnapping both Lance and Laurel who he plans to make his latest victim in front of her father.

“Broken Dolls” finally gets Moira‘s (Susanna Thompson) trial underway with the District Attorney’s announcement he will be seeking the Death Penalty shaking both Ollie and Thea‘s (Willa Holland) faith that their mother may survive the trial. Moria, however, is more concerned with making sure certain truths about her relationship with Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) are never revealed. The episode offers more flashbacks involving the mercenaries bombarding the island and earning Ollie a cushy jail cell, and a temporary reprieve from the island.

Over the course of the episode Black Canary and Green Arrow save each other, but it becomes obvious pretty quickly that the woman would get far along with the more murderous version of “The Hood” than the current hero Ollie is trying to become. The episode offers a surprising amount about the Canary’s past including foreshadowing her connection to Laurel that the episode’s IMDb page has given away and offering an explanation for her unique skill-set when a member of the League of Assassins arrives with orders from Ra’s al Ghul to bring the Canary back “home.” This new Black Canary is certainly far different from her comic book counterpart, but given this introduction I’m intrigued, and pleasantly surprised with the League of Assassins angle, to see where her storyline will lead.