Arrow Season 6 Episode 5 Review: Deathstroke Returns

Arrow's ongoing sixth season has been really good with the cliffhangers this season, including Oliver being unmasked, Oliver giving up the mantle of Green Arrow to Diggle, and the reveal of Diggle using drugs to battle his nerve damage.

While the previous episode's ending was known due to previous announcements, we still couldn't be anymore stoked when Slade Wilson called Oliver to ask for help, leading into "Deathstroke Returns."

The way this episode is structured is essentially with two separate stories, one in Star City and the other with Oliver and Slade. The Star City storyline revolves around the return of Vigilante, who popped up a few different times in season five before being tossed off a rooftop by Prometheus and not showing up again after the reveal of Prometheus' identity.



He first reappears this episode by trying to assassinate a politician that is for the anti-vigilante bill that will be voted on soon, who Dinah manages to knock out of the way, thus saving her life.

Dinah ends up following her home and prevents Vigilante from attacking her. In the process, she uses her Canary Cry on Vigilante, shattering his mask, forcing him to take it off to reveal his true identity.

When he first takes it off, my thought was who? But Dinah quickly interjects by calling him Vince, who was her former partner that she thought died the day of the particle accelerator explosion when he was shot in the head right before the dark matter came in. The guy was actually recast who played him initially, which took some of the familiarity out of the equation.

Even if it was the original guy, it's not like we would have really recognized him. Overall, this reveal didn't feel that rewarding, especially after the incredible Prometheus reveal last season.

Later in the episode, this same politician, who is very glutton for punishment at this point, is set to go on TV for an interview. The area is cased with police to prevent anything from happening, with FBI agent Watson showing up, which prevents Team Arrow from really coming to help.

Vigilante ends up being in the rafters and tries to attack again, which Dinah ends up stopping as Black Canary.

She talks with Vince for a bit and has a change to stop him after he gets shot protecting her. He reveals that he is also a meta and can heal himself, before Dinah lets him get away.

This storyline with Vince being Vigilante definitely will be interesting to watch with Dinah getting a meaty plot to work with.

I really am a fan of her character on the show, so getting a big story of her own is something I'm excited to see.

That is pretty much everything for the Star City side of things, but where the real action comes is with Oliver and Slade, who have flown to Kasnia to try and find his son Joe.

Flashbacks return this episode, where we see a younger Slade with his son prior to the events of the island as they are on a camping trip.

However, Slade is on a mission to extract information about where Yao Fei is from a Chinese spy and kills him.

In the present, Slade and Oliver visit a prison in which his son is supposed to be being held.

However, they claim he was killed. When they ask to see the body, they give up that he was taken by a group known as the Jackals, who they must go after.

While Oliver plans to go with Slade to help, Slade drugs Oliver here and says he must do it on his own and doesn't want him getting hurt in the process. This was a nice moment showing how Slade does respect Oliver and I actually think sees him as a friend here.

This also leads to the best moment of the entire episode, where we get a fight sequence where Slade just wrecks everybody in this facility on the way to trying to find his son.

He is killing everybody as Deathstroke here, similar to the Darth Vader sequence at the end of Rogue One. This was a real sight to see and is worth watching the episode for this sequence alone.

Even though the entire episode had been teasing it, we get another nice cliffhanger here to end the episode where it is revealed that Slade's son Joe is actually the leader of the Jackals himself.

This sets up some great potential for the next episode, which is the follow up to this two parter.

Manu Bennett's Slade is one of the major reasons why Arrow was so good in the early seasons and it is great to see him back again in a big role like this.

"Deathstroke Returns" had excellent moments of action and story and it will be great to see how this story is concluded for Slade, while waiting to see how the Vigilante story plays out moving forward as well.

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