Josh recaps Season 3 Episode 20 of Arrow, titled The Fallen, where Team Arrow heads to Nanda Parbat in order to save Thea! Following the recap, both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Arrow, Season 3 Episode 20: The Fallen
Thea awakens after being stabbed by Ra’s al Ghul at the end of last episode, and tries to get to her phone. Just then, Oliver comes in and finds her, and calls for an ambulance. At the hospital, Oliver watches through the glass while the doctor tries to keep her alive. Later, the doctor tells Oliver that she can prolong Thea’s life as long as he wants, but it might be best to look into other options. Oliver and Malcolm visit an unconscious Thea in her hospital room.
Felicity and Diggle come to the hospital as soon as they hear. Oliver notices that the League has released purple smoke, and goes to it, meeting with Maseo. He punches him. Maseo says that if Oliver takes his rightful place as the Demon, Ra’s al Ghul will bring Thea back.
Felicity and Diggle find Oliver at his place packing up to go to Nanda Parbat. Malcolm explains that there are waters in Nanda Parbat which have allowed Ra’s al Ghul to live 100 years, and that they have been used to restore the dead to life. However, Malcolm warns that the waters change a person’s soul, and the Thea he gets back will not be the one he lost. Felicity says she’s going with him. She goes to Ray and asks to borrow his jet. He figures out that Felicity is still in love with Oliver, but still says she can take the jet.
Felicity gets Thea out of the hospital by telling the doctor she’s being transported to Central City. Malcolm, Diggle, and Felicity accompany Oliver to Nanda Parbat. On the plane, Oliver tells Thea about the time he came back to Starling City while he was missing for 5 years, and saw Thea, and killed her drug dealer. He laments having failed his sister this time.
Upon arriving in Nanda Parbat, Team Arrow is greeted by the entire League of Assassins. Ra’s al Ghul welcomes “Al Sah-him” home, and the League members bow to Oliver. Inside, Oliver hands Thea to Maseo to prepare her for the ritual. When Maseo shows Diggle to his room, Diggle accuses League members of being cowards and running from their lives. Maseo tells Diggle not to judge him until he’s held his dying son in his arms and lied to him, telling him everything was going to be okay. Then Diggle asks Maseo if he thinks his son would be proud of him.
At the ritual, Oliver, Diggle, Malcolm, and Maseo lower Thea into the Lazarus Pit. A few moments after being submerged, Thea jumps out of the water, fully conscious, and hostile. She has to be sedated. She wakes up in bed later, not recognizing Oliver, thinking that he’s dead. She calls Malcolm “Dad” and asks where her mom is. He tells her to get some rest. Oliver tells Malcolm that Ra’s said the confusion would pass. Malcolm still disapproves of what Oliver has done. Felicity thinks it’s wrong what Ra’s al Ghul is making Oliver do, and is so angry that she confronts Ra’s al Ghul. She says that she and her friends are willing to fight to get Oliver back. However, he shares his own story, in which he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to his family, and advises Felicity to take the opportunity to tell Oliver goodbye before it’s too late.
Felicity goes to see Oliver, who seems to believe that fate has led him to this moment. Felicity confesses that leaving him here will destroy her, and tells him what an impact he has had on people’s lives, especially her own. She tells him she loves him. They kiss, then begin to undress, and move things to the bed. Afterwards, Felicity pours a couple of glasses of wine. It turns out she has drugged it, and Oliver passes out after drinking it.
Felicity calls Diggle and Malcolm to the room and tells them what she did. She convinces Malcolm to tell them a possible way to sneak Oliver out: the catacombs. Malcolm gets Thea, while Diggle carries Oliver, and they head to the Temple. Maseo decides to help them, and shoots a couple of League members so that they can get down to the catacombs. He also advises them to stay left at the fork. However, League members catch up to them. Just then, Oliver wakes up, and commands the League members as heir to the Demon to put their weapons down. He orders them to tell Ra’s he’ll be back shortly.
Oliver walks them out to the jet, and they say their goodbyes. Well, except with Felicity, they kiss rather than say goodbye.
Back in Starling City, when Thea wakes up, Malcolm is there to greet her, and she’s seeming like herself again. However, she doesn’t seem to remember what happened the past few days after Ra’s attacked her. Malcolm fills her in on what happened. He also tells her that although he’s free from the League, and can go wherever he wants, there’s no place he’d rather be than there with her, taking care of her.
A tearful Felicity stops by Laurel’s office and tells her that Oliver joined the League and isn’t coming back.
Ra’s al Ghul confronts Oliver, saying that League blood has been spilled. He demands to know the traitor that helped them get to the catacombs, but Oliver doesn’t know. Maseo confesses that it was him, and offers Ra’s his life for his betrayal. However, Ra’s says that it was not Sarab who betrayed him, but Maseo, and that for a moment, his old life took hold, but by coming before him, Sarab proved his loyalty, so he won’t spill Sarab’s blood for Maseo’s actions. Ra’s al Ghul warns Oliver that Oliver Queen must be extinguished from memory.
In the final scene, Oliver is branded with the symbol of the League of Assassins. We then see him dress in League of Assassins gear, casting off his identity as Oliver Queen, and emerging as Al Sah-him, heir to the Demon.
In the flashback, Oliver, Maseo, and Tatsu spy on General Shrieve, and see that he is combining the Alpha and the Omega, which will be released as a bio-weapon. Oliver steals a car and picks the other two up. They follow the army truck transporting the bio-weapon. The soldiers realize they are being followed, and shoot at them. They shoot back. Oliver climbs out of the sun roof and jumps into the back of the army truck, fighting off the soldiers. Tatsu helps out as well. But when Oliver opens the briefcase, nothing is in there. Tatsu makes the soldier tell them that the bio-weapon is in a food cart at the market.
At the market, gunfire breaks out as Oliver, Maseo, and Tatsu try to recover the vial. Oliver locates the food cart, and attacks the man hiding behind it, demanding the vial. As they fight, the vial flies into the air, then crashes to the ground, breaking open.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 3 Episode 20 of Arrow: The Fallen
So, I’m not sure why, but for some reason, I had thought that when Oliver agreed to become Ra’s al Ghul, that the current Ra’s al Ghul would immediately retire, and that Oliver would become Ra’s al Ghul right away. That didn’t sound quite so bad to me, because he would immediately be in charge, and could order the League of Assassins to do good, and he wouldn’t have to be bad. But now it’s become apparent that Oliver is going to have to be in training for awhile under Ra’s al Ghul as Al Sah-him before he gets to take over as Ra’s al Ghul. Yeah, that is pretty bad, because he’ll be ordered to do a lot of bad things that he doesn’t want to do. How will Oliver react to that? Will he question those orders, or just comply, like he’s supposed to?
What’s going to happen back in Starling City with Oliver gone? With no Arrow? With no Roy? I don’t really see how the story can progress without the Arrow being allowed to exist (because Starling City thinks that Roy was the Arrow, and that Roy is dead), so whatever happens next will definitely be a surprise to me. I haven’t read the comics, so I don’t know how this is supposed to play out, or if this even happened in the comics at all. But I do know that he is supposed to be the Green Arrow, so one would assume that Oliver would resume his position as the Arrow at some point. The question is, when?
There’s also the situation of Thea, and Malcolm’s warnings that it would be a different Thea who came back. Different how? She seemed pretty normal to me once she got back to Starling City and got over the initial confusion. Will she become evil? What about Malcolm, what his role in all this going forward? It sounds like he’ll be sticking by Thea’s side, or at least in Starling City, whether she likes it or not.
As for Olicity, it seems like those two are just never going to have the chance to be happy together. It was nice that they were able to have a night together to say goodbye, and express their feelings for each other, but that has to be even more devastating for the two now that they are forced apart.
This kind of felt like a season finale the way it ended, with Oliver suiting up as Al Sah-him, so it’s kind of cool that we get to see what happens right away.
Josh’s Thoughts: Arrow, Season 3 Episode 20: The Fallen
So it finally happened. I was going back and forth on whether he would become Ra’s Al Ghul, but I knew when Thea died, Oliver would make the change in order to save her life. It was dirty trick by Ra’s. But I guess it was an effective one. I am still a little iffy over this whole storyline, since Ra’s came into the picture and wanted to make Oliver his heir, but I guess we will see where this all goes. I had thought that Ra’s would be making Oliver his replacement immediately, but after this episode I think it is more along the lines of Ra’s will remain in power until his Lazarus Pit can no longer give him life, and he dies. This could be a very long time, so Oliver will probably be the sidekick for a long time before he is able to actually even command these men. Based on the scenes from next week, Ra’s is going to mess with Oliver’s memory anyway, so the Oliver that went into the League will be gone pretty soon.
Speaking of people not being themselves, I wonder what we will see with Thea after coming out of the Lazarus Pit. Malcolm seems convinced that something will be different with Thea, and for a while there was, but by the end of the episode she seemed to be straightened back out.
I guess it was finally time for Felicity and Oliver to “get their groove on.” Call me old fashioned, but I wish there was more courting before it moved that quickly. I guess when you are going to be initiated into the League, you don’t have a whole lot of time.
I think the one other thing that this episode showed was through Maseo, which was that sometimes members of the League could slip back into their “previous” selves. I imagine that will be what will happen to Oliver after his team knocks some sense into him.
Scenes from Arrow, Season 3 Episode 21:
Al Sah-him
Here are scenes from the next episode of Arrow, titled Al Sah-him:
