Arrow - 'This is Your Sword' and 'My Name is Oliver Queen'

Neither the bride nor the groom was willing to concede the wedding day
brood-off.

Everything is terrible as we start 'This is Your Sword'. Oliver is now Al Sa-him and is racking up the al-Ghul titles: Heir to the Demon, future Head of the Demon and once he goes through with the broadsword wedding* to Nyssa, Son of the Demon. Back in Starling, everyone is pissed at him, but in the dark about Ra's al-Ghul's plan to wipe out the city with the Alpha-Omega.

And then we get the reveal of the triple cross: Oliver is working with Malcolm Merlin to bring down the League of Assassins in a feat of bizarre logistics. Not only is Malcolm able to travel from Thea's loft to Nanda Parbat in the space of a scene dissolve, but they assume 'a few months' would be time to dismantle a thousand year old order of killers from within before Oliver even became Ra's al-Ghul. With the timetable moved up, Malcolm and Tatsu recruit Team Arrow for an assault on Nanda Parbat, taking out the Alpha-Omega delivery plane with assistance from the Atom, only to learn that it was a trap.

There followed the great Staring City leather shortage of 2015.

Points added for an awesome fight scene, including Felicity apparently taking out an assassin with her broken tablet, only to realise that Malcolm actually shot him in the back.

With his friends in custody, Oliver leaps into action and... does nothing. Tatsu shields him by claiming that Maseo - whom she killed in the fight - told them about the plane. Al-sahim's marriage is announced and Emily Bett Rickards gives an Oscar-worthy performance as a character taking one emotional gut punch after another. Then Ra's releases the Alpha-Omega weapon in their cell and he and Al Sa-him swan off like magnificent bastards, leaving the episode to end on an even more down note than it started.

At the start of 'My Name is Oliver Queen', Merlin reveals one more twist: He and Oliver got a vaccine from Oliver's blood and inoculated all of Team Arrow without telling them. They are then broken out of Nanda Parbat when the Flash incapacitates all of the remaining Assassins, like a Boss, and leading to the exchange of the week:

Flash: "Hi guys! Wow! This is like a real dungeon."
Felicity: "Barry!"
Flash: "Thanks. You just outed my secret identity to a supervillain. No offence."
Merlin: "None taken."

Oliver and Nyssa take out a Hercule full of assassins, but Ra's escapes with a parachute and the bioweapon to meet up with yet more of his apparently limitless supply of low-level League goons. As Olvier rallies the heroes and police of Starling to track down four vectors, almost as an aside it is revealed that the real purpose of the whole business is to take out Damien Darhk (yes, with an h,) except that he's already bugged out, leaving Christopher Heyerdahl in his place.

Oh, right; there's a whole subplot where Thea goes to see Roy and takes him
the Arsenal costume, but he doesn't want her to live on the run, so he takes off
and leaves her the suit. You can see her side of it though; a guy who can adjust
a leather tunic from Roy's shoulders to Thea's so she can still effectively draw
a bow overnight is a keeper.

Chris is one of my favourite B-list genre actors, so it was great to think we might see him in a recurring role in Season 4.

Then Ra's shot him. Oh well. We'll always have Sanctuary.

Diggle takes down the first bioweapon carrier, aided by Thea, but it turns out that they are carrying the weapon in their blood, so shooting them is bad. Laurel and the SCPD - Captain Lance having finally been snapped out of his funk - take down the other couriers, while Ray creates a nano-bot vaccine delivery system on the fly to prevent the spread of the virus from the already spilled blood. Because he's a magnificent techno-baller.

I don't know that it's entirely appropriate to turn up for a date wearing your ex's
clothes.

Oliver duels Ra's al-Ghul once more, after a pep talk from Felicity where she tells him that Oliver Queen and the Arrow have both failed to beat Ra's, but he's someone else now; something else (credits shout out!) He wins, and saves his city where he failed to save either Hong Kong or Akio.

The flashbacks reveal that Akio died, too young for his immune system to fight the bioweapon even with the vaccine, and that in revenge Oliver tortured General Beastmaster and Maseo executed him. Burdened with guilt and darkness, Oliver sets off to be alone.

Atop Starling City dam (yes, it has a dam,) Oliver kills Ra's al-Ghul, there being no other way to stop him, and is shot by a police sniper. He survives, however, as apparently League armour is just that good, and because Felicity borrows the Atom suit to save him from the fall.

The end?

Oliver acknowledges that Starling is now replete with heroes, and that his impulse to lone wolf it was wrong, before handing off the title of Ra's al-Ghul to Malcolm Merlin (which can not possibly have bad repercussions,) saddling Thea with the name Speedy instead of Red Arrow, and heading off into the literal sunset with Felicity in search of 'a state that can nullify Nanda Parbat weddings.'

And Ray Palmer explodes**.

So that's Season 3, all wrapped up and only eight weeks into Season 4's UK run. It was a whole new level of grimdark, perhaps because a lot of the fun was calved off into The Flash, but it held together as a season and as part of the evolving story, although the original spiel is clearly bullshit. Five years on an island my arse.

*Like a shotgun wedding, but lower tech and higher status.
**Technically the Atom suit explodes, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he spends the first half of next season microscopic before flying off to Legends, but part of me also suspects that this was just Starling City's inevitable reaction to someone so perky and upbeat.