Arrow: Midnight City Review

Roy and Diggle try to stop Laurel from following in her sister’s footsteps before she gets killed. However a new enemy, Brick, captures the city’s alderman and will kill him if the police wont evacuate The Glades. Meanwhile ray tries to help Detective Lance. Malcolm tells Thea that their family is being hunted and tracked down by Ra’s al Ghul and must leave town immediately.

Brick makes his agenda known as he looks to take over The Glades and Laurel suits up for a pretty cringeworthy debut as The Canary on this week’s episode of Arrow.

1. Vinnie Jones is great in almost anything he is in, and that is no different than his turn as “Brick” on Arrow. He is one of the show’s more ruthless villains, though we learn tonight that he does have a code of honor. He spares Laurel, at least once, because he doesn’t believe in hitting women, and he doesn’t have any grand ambition to control all of Starling City, just The Glades.
2. Laurel suits up for her first major outing as “The Canary” and it really doesn’t go well for her. Almost being stabbed before being rescued by Roy, botching a jump and of course getting an alderman shot. All of this could be seen as a negative, but I’m happy that the creative team is showcasing a hero who doesn’t have it all together yet. Oliver was pretty much the bad-ass from the start, and while The Flash has growing pains, he learns fairly quickly on his feet.
3. With Oliver out of the picture, it was interesting to see how Team Arrow reacted to Laurel’s debut as The Canary. Surprisingly, it was Felicity who stepped up and gave her the blessing as she realized that there is more than grieving for the ones you’ve lost, but fighting for the ones who remain as well. This should help Laurel in the future as her fighting-style at the start of the episode was wild and violent, and came from a place of anger. 
4. The fights were top-notch this week, and with so many heroes fighting from behind, it was kind of a different stroke to see them fail badly. They fail to stop Brick from kidnapping the aldermen, they failed to rescue them, which cost the life of one of the men they tried to rescue and ultimately they failed the Glades since it is now in Brick’s control. I guess what I’m trying to say is: they failed this city!
5. Black Driver upgraded to Black Pilot! Go Diggle!
6. The Oliver stuff was a mixed bag. One of those occasions where the writers want to write around something before the grand reveal to the audience. So Oliver saying something like, “I didn’t know you two still spoke after…” and never following it up feels cheap. It was nice to see em fight the League even if briefly.
7. Thea’s plot continues to grow more baffling. She went with Merlyn because she hated how much Oliver and Moira lied to her. She finds out that Malcolm has been lying to her, and is kind of fine with it? The douchebag DJ, not even sure his name, kind of forced himself on her and now they have a flirtatious thing going on? And Roy is just creeping in the shadows on her? It’s all very bizarre. Though the ending showed us, she’s about to be brought into this world in a very hard manner.

One of season three’s strongest episodes. I liked this “mini-trilogy” as next week’s episode seems like a season finale and we’re only just getting started!