Duck Fox

“The Magician” is an interesting episode of television. Arrow very often tries to elevate material that could be considered “campy” or “comic booky,” and it usually does so by grounding the motivations and methods of various characters. But this has never really worked for characters like Malcolm Merlyn. Even Slade had a very human character arc wherein he was driven mad by the pain of loss and rage against his situation (which turned into rage against Oliver). But Malcolm Merlyn, while ostensibly human enough to care for his child(ren), had such grand ambitions that he literally wanted to remake Starling city. And devote years to building a device which would cause an earthquake to destroy the “unworthy” Glades. There’s little that can be done to make that sound even slightly plausible, but by dropping John Barrowman into the role, the series has managed to get away with a lot. And in truth, even “The Magician” doesn’t push us over the edge of suspended disbelief, it just drives us right up to it with a few moments. 

Picking up directly after the cliffhanger, Oliver has to tell Nyssa that Sara is dead, and the pain on Katrina Law’s face is palpable, as is every other scene involving Nyssa tonight. There’s something to be said about how powerful an actress Law is for making us so heavily invested in Sara and Nyssa’s relationship after only seeing three or four episodes worth of it. Nyssa progresses through the five stages quite admirably, as she lashes out at Laurel for daring to wear the jacket she gave Sara, pleads with Oliver to kill Merlyn and finally seems to come full circle on her opinion of Laurel taking up Sara’s mantle as the Black Canary. I know Nyssa is unlikely to get much more screen time, so it was out of necessity that she seems to have so quickly accepted Sara’s demise, but it’s a little weird when juxtaposed against the rest of team Arrow who are all still clearly struggling. I don’t even know if Oliver’s smiling muscles work anymore. 

If there was a fatal flaw in this episode, it would almost certainly be Oliver’s pledge not to kill coming back to bite everyone in the arse. Okay, let me preface this by saying I completely understand the decision to keep Oliver on the path of no killing from a creator’s standpoint. Having him willy-nilly violate an oath basically made on Tommy’s name would be tasteless. Yet, there’s not really any explanation for why Oliver doesn’t call Merlyn’s bluff on his island prison. Or take out his knees with a couple of well-placed arrows. Or let the League of Assassins take him as per Nyssa’s request. Promising to protect Merlyn from the wrath of the League is just the opposite of what he should be doing, and makes a somewhat believable character feel too over the top. It is nice to see Barrowman chew the scenery while telling Oliver how damning either option—freeing or killing him—would be. 

The episode is essentially a cat and mouse game between Merlyn, no doubt the titular magician, and team Arrow + Nyssa. But the tension of the hour is flaccid because we know Oliver isn’t going to kill Merlyn from the start. It only gets worse when Nyssa kidnaps Thea to get to Merlyn, and not just because Roy attempts to dazzle her with parkour only to receive a knockout dart. Thea isn’t going to be in any real danger even if she hadn’t received Merlyn’s training. Nonetheless, the show plays up the kidnapping subplot for the rest of the hour, and though we get a few nice action sequences, I couldn’t help but feel like there was too little substance. 

While not a truly bad episode, Arrow only manages to do Nyssa justice in the first lackluster episode of the season. Here’s hoping the introduction of Ra’s Al-Ghul can wipe this episode from our collective memories.