Who Are You?

I think most of us had assumed that it was either going to be Earth-2 Laurel (Black Siren) or just simply a hallucination of Oliver's as soon as she showed up in the lair. Arrow has done a lot of divisive things over the years, but perhaps none more divisive than the decision to kill off Laurel/Black Canary last season. Luckily, the writers didn't blatantly choose to erase that from the lore of the show, and instead, are going to incorporate her into the show in a variety of ways in the future. We'll get to that other Black Canary issue a little later.

Because of how grounded the first 9 episodes of season 5 felt, I'm not sure how I felt about Black Siren's presence. I've always said this show is much better without any sort of meta-human or enhanced beings at all. While this version of Laurel is a far cry from most villains that appear on Flash, I still prefer Arrow to stay grounded in its crime drama roots. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Siren had a direct link to Prometheus as she played into his plan to continue to manipulate Oliver's life. How exactly Prometheus planned for Laurel to do that? Yeah, I'm still not so sure on that, but I was glad to see the big baddie make an appearance.

Diggle was left in a bit of a pickle last time we saw him as he's once again dealing with the aftermath of the incident with the military. Oliver hired Adrian Chase to take on his case, which led to mixed results. Diggle is presumably okay for the immediate future, considering how long Chase's "prosecution" will take, but he's far from being a free man.

The Team had some weekly conflict as always, this time, between Curtis & Rene and also Felicity & Oliver. The latter felt like age-old arguments from the early days of Arrow as Felicity repeatedly tried to convince Oliver of his blind-spot when it came to him trying to help Laurel. It's definitely nothing we haven't seen before, but I believed both sides of the argument enough for it to get by. The Curtis/Rene squabble was a bit of the same. It felt more like the writers needed to fill air time than natural. I believe Curtis in what he's frustrated about, but I'm not sure this episode was the right time for that to come to head.

The flashbacks also didn't carry a ton of weight this week, that is, until the final few seconds. Lexa Doig made her grand entrance as Talia al Ghul. Of course, even though she is said to be training Ollie in the coming episodes, she won't be able to tell him her last name considering that would wipe away the al Ghul's presence in season 2 and 3 (Oliver would have then mentioned that he knew Nyssa's sister). But Doig wasn't the only female to make her debut tonight as Juliana Harkavy made her first appearance as Tina Boland. Sure, seems like she'll be the new Black Canary, though I'm not sure we even need one, right?

Doesn't it seem weird that in the episode in which Laurel 'returns', they push her aside and welcome in a 'new' Canary? Didn't the show-runners say they will honor the Laurel Lance version of Black Canary? I'm not sure the fans will be pleased with this decision. Can't we just end the Black Canary character? Sara or nobody at all, Arrow. Come on now. Aside from a few cool set-ups for the latter part of the season, this episode was just plain average. Not exactly the follow up to "What We Leave Behind" that I was hoping for.

+Talia

+Chase & Diggle present a welcomed team

+Thankfully this wasn't a full on resurrection of Laurel

-But did we even need Laurel in the first place?

-Prometheus' plan for Laurel was unclear

7.4/10

After the mid-season finale was so cool, the mid-season premiere was a disappointment in comparison. A main growing concern I have this season is with the total lack of good team interaction. The new recruits have little - to no chemistry with original team arrow. It's fine that they are in the fight scenes, but is it really necessary for them to be in every ArrowCave scene? They are painful to watch, they don't have anything new/special to add to these scenes to help the storyline progress. The original characters were so well created and have such great chemistry. I feel like arrow has become more about developing these new misfits than Oliver Queen or the original cast. It was so disappointing that Laurel turned out to be Black Siren and even worse that she was not able to take on the Black Canary's Legacy. This was just heartbreaking that it was not somehow the real Laurel. I also think the Prometheus storyline needs some help too. It would be nice to see his face and understand his true motives. He is too one dimensional and becoming almost ridiculous with his Michael Dorn/Worf sounding voice. Basically, he is just stalking Oliver Queen. Prometheus is so not at the level of past super-villains, such as Malcolm Merlyn, Damian D., who had such memorable scenes with Oliver. They were fun to watch. It would be nice to see the Prometheus storyline progress a little.

After the excellent episode that was "What We Leave Behind" and its terrific twist ending, it was only fitting that the show continue to build off of that. Not quite sadly. "Who Are You?" completely undid the last episode and yet again, introduced a new character nobody asked for. It's dialogue was a tad sloppier, and aside from an impressive fight sequence, didn't offer much.