Team GATV Roundtable: Looking Back At Arrow Season 5

Ultimately, what was your favorite Season 5 episode of Arrow?

CRAIG: There were so many that I liked, but I’d have to give all the applause to the season finale, “Lian Yu.” It was all that I could have hoped for from a finale, putting so many characters to good use, and legitimately left the audience wondering what’s going to happen next.

STEPHANIE: “Kapiushon.” A lot of the episodes from the second half of the season are running together in my head, but this one stands out from the crowd. Adrian’s mind games and torture tactics sent Oliver to such a different place than we’re used to seeing him and produced Stephen Amell’s best acting work to date. Seeing Oliver lose his spark, his will, his self-assuredness afterwards really nailed the impact of the episode.

MATT: I think I’ll go with “Kapiushon” because it felt like such a crux of the season. Stephen Amell and Josh Segarra in a battle of wills in basically a bottle episode with Oliver chained up. This was a brutal episode with Oliver’s revelation to himself and served to break his spirit in a way not quite done before. These are the kinds of square-offs that can make villains compelling if done well. And Oliver basically accepting the vicious nature of his hooded alter ego in the past in Russia while Anatoly got concerned with losing his friend worked really well for me.

MELISSA: “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Underneath” I consider them a two-parter. Together or apart, they contained some of the best character driven scenes of the entire show.

The two episodes let Oliver and Felicity be completely at odds, while never losing their underlying connection or forcing them to act out of character. I hated the contrived melodrama in season four, but these episodes tackled honest conflicts in which neither were completely right or wrong and both were allowed to show their strengths and weaknesses. I was struck that these were scenes that wouldn’t have been possible in the early seasons; they needed five years of accumulated history and growth between them to make their confrontations ring true.

I was floored by the scene where Felicity is begging Oliver to let it be her this time to carry the burden of making the impossible choice and Oliver not being able to even fully explain why he couldn’t, only for the truth to come out in “Underneath” with Oliver really only figuring it out as he made his confession to Felicity. Like “Kapiushun” did with Oliver individually, these two episodes broke down Oliver and Felicity’s relationship in order to rebuild it stronger.

Besides being emotionally satisfying, Underneath had my favorite stunt of the season and Felicity jabbing Oliver with adrenaline was one of the funniest moments of the show.

Now neither were perfect episodes, Quentin and Rene were weirdly sidelined in “Dangerous Liaisons” and the final conversation in “Underneath” between Felicity and Oliver where she says she gets now why he had to lie about William still doesn’t make sense (just lie to Samantha instead and tell Felicity the truth, problem solved), but by then the past didn’t matter, only the future and what they could start building toward again.