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Television

Recap: ARROW S7 E10 – My Name is Emiko Queen

Arrow returns for its mid-season premiere and returns to its roots. My Name is Emiko Queen is essentially an origin story for the new Green Arrow. This episode has a strong connection to Oliver’s story, even going as far for the title to be a direct reference to the show’s intro. The episode is almost too familiar.

Emiko is the daughter of Robert Queen. She returns to Star City with only one goal, to avenge her mother’s death. Is this sounding familiar? This episode wants to focus on the parallels between Oliver and Emiko, but it becomes distracting. She’s just as brooding and stubborn as Olivers but it feels more like a retread than anything.

We also had more flash-forwards this week! This time we follow Rene, who grew some weird hairpiece or something. He’s also missing his scar, but maybe that’s some future tech at work. He is now Mayor of Star City and has a strained relationship with his daughter Zoe. The flash-forwards have lost steam as of late. It has mostly been reduced to Felicity is dead. Why? The Glades are in danger. Again. It’s not interesting and it’s not engaging. Not having Will and Roy involved made it drag even more. At least we can have them experience this along with us; instead, we are dropped into this conflict between Dinah, Zoe, and Rene with zero context.

While all of this is going on we have Lyla and Diggle interrogating Ricardo Diaz. They try to get information out of him, but he doesn’t break. Diggle decides there’s only one way to get him to talk: his freedom. Diggle tricks Diaz into agreeing to be apart of the new Suicide Squad. This is something that Lyla is against, but she goes along with it, mostly to save face with the rest of A.R.G.U.S. It’s nice to know that Warner Bros. is letting Arrow use the Suicide Squad again.

My Name is Emiko Queen is a decent episode but lacks the start that you would want from the premiere of the second half of the season. It glosses over the Oliver/Felicity conflict and makes it as if nothing ever happened. Instead of going for the Emiko/Rene team-up. That is an interesting development, but we need to resolve the issues with Oliver’s character first. Again, a decent episode but it lacks focus. Here’s hoping next week’s offers a tighter story.

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Michael Thomas
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