ARROW 2.20 "Seeing Red" Review: When It Comes to Your Children, No Decision is Impossible

I had to sit with this monstrous episode for ten minutes before I could start writing. That’s how difficult it was for me to process the events that just went down. Here I expected “Seeing Red” to be a Roy-centric outing but what we got was another well-balanced episode that blew up at least one relationship and drove a sword through a character’s heart. And, dear lord, was I not ready for any of it.

ARROW: The Thea Thing

The inclusion of Thea Queen was the one thing that worried me most about “Arrow.” The troubled teen sister reeked of the CW’s typical interference in the creative direction of a show. It’s a misguided attempt to inject youth into an otherwise adult cast, fearing that their key demographic – teen girls – won’t tune in if there are no teen girls in the cast to watch.

Fortunately, it worked out for “Arrow.” Thea Queen has never been the typical, rebellious girl-on-the-brink-of-womanhood, an archetype repeated far too often on CW shows (ahem, Jenny Humphrey). Instead, she’s proven herself to be a key part of Oliver Queen’s support system and an interesting character in her own right.

Yet one of my biggest grievances with the second season of the CW’s superhero hit is the seeming demotion of Thea from Oliver’s sister to Roy’s girlfriend, stripping her of the potential for a storyline separate from her love life. The recent revelation that she is really the daughter of the villainous Malcolm Merlyn is certainly a step in the right direction but I can’t help but feel that there is more that can be done to develop Thea Queen.

ARROW 2.19 "The Man Under the Hood" Recap: It's Not Who I am Underneath, But What I Do That Defines Me

Tonight’s episode was “Arrow” at its best. Not only were there phenomenal action sequences – some of which were the best of the series – but the performances from the entire cast – notably Stephen Amell and Katie Cassidy - were just as stellar. Everyone had a role to play tonight and boy was it fantastic.