#i didn’t double check if these were from s8 but looks good always anyways

[komilys]

he looks so good in s8 why is this the worst season for our relationship. what a cruel fate.

[msbeccieboo]

Arrow 8x03 Brain Dump

ASDADGHSADFSAF!! Back on form this week, with more returning guests, massive sibling feels and concentration on characters that we love, AND THE COLLISION OF FUTURE AND PRESENT TIMELINES IN THAT EPIC ENDINGGGG!!!!!!!!! YAAAASSSS!!! I’m still spiralling now!!!

Oliver and Thea

Welcome back Thea Queen!! Oliver had missed his Speedy 😍

So following on from last week, Oliver travelled to Nanda Parbat (which looked suspiciously like Lian Yu...the S8 Budget was clearly too used up on guest stars to recreate the outdoor Nanda Parbat scenery we saw in S3 😂), where he hoped to find some answers about The Monitor. I’m not actually sure if he intended on visiting Thea, or if her appearance was just a happy coincidence! But either way he was able to tell her about Mia and show her the picture of his new little family GAJKFSDGHFHDSGFS!!!

Source: oliverxfelicity

More below the cut...

In a shock move for Oliver Queen, he is open and honest with Thea straight away about his prophesied and imminent death. Thea wasn’t buying it, and Oliver even made a little sarcastic comment to “take as much time as you like to be upset” 😂😂 I’ve seen a few people say that they wanted to see more emotion from Thea here, and in later scenes. My take is that Thea/Willa’s nonchalant air is just classic Thea Queen Swagger™, but did feel like Willa maybe wasn’t really all that present in all of the scenes (mainly the LoA stuff though really). I however loved her total chill at the prospect of Oliver dying...not dissimilar to us...we know what's what! Our boy will be okay in the end!

Oliver seeks out Talia Al Ghul to use the Leagues archives (?) to find out more about The Monitor, because she owes him one. I love the idea of Oliver collecting his debts for once...this could fill the rest of the season to be honest; he’s racked up rather a few favours over the years. Talia’s help comes in the form of an Indiana Jones-esque scavenger hunt to uncover an ancient League book, and some special Demon’s head sword (?), with interruptions by the pesky Thanatos Guild from last season, who Thea is at war with. Honestly, plot-wise, I struggled a bit this week; even on rewatch I found it hard to concentrate😂 . I just zoned in on the character moments to get me through. But luckily, there were lots of those! 

One such beautiful character moment with the Queen siblings was on the side of a mountain, and reminded me a little bit of the Will/Mia scene up the Glades wall back in 7x16, I think? Oliver getting all emotional about missing his family and doubting his decisions every single day just punched me right in the feels 😭😭

Source: feilcityqueen

Then his explanation for trying to find answers before the Crisis: “My sacrifice, my death will protect the people I love. I need my family to be safe.” MURDERER!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭

Thea reassures him with some sage Queen family words, that their parents also made some questionable choices regarding them (that��s putting it lightly), but it ultimately made them heroes because of them. I think this scene was one of my favourites this episode, if not the season so far. Love me some Queen siblings 💗

The upshot of this random adventure with Talia was that Oliver read that the upcoming Crisis will actually be caused by The Monitor (dun dun DUUUNNN!!), complete with a lovely drawing of him 😂😂 But what Oliver doesn’t know, cos The Monitor doesn’t tell him anything is that there is also an Anti-Monitor, who will be the big bad of Crisis...so this may be a bit of a red herring for now!

Oliver ends his time in Nanda Parbat by saying one final (in his mind) goodbye to Thea, which actually made me sob like a baby out of nowhere, and has done every time I’ve rewatched the clip haha! Thea didn’t see it as a goodbye (cos Oliver dying? Pass!), but Oliver just cracks and won’t let go of her, and now I’m tearing up again 😭😭😭

Source: smoakmonster

I think by the way the goodbye scene played out that that will be the last we see of Thea, and ugh it’s such a shame because she has always brought out something special in Oliver, but we know she’ll be with him the whole time...😭😭😭

Stray thoughts:

They had Thea acknowledge Moira as her namesake (still think it’s a stretch, Moira-Mia? No.) but also had a callback to Thea’s Corto Maltese alias, which made me lol, and frankly, I find a better reference 😂

“All beings burn but a Phoenix rises from the ashes”. The Phoenix references this week were as subtle as a sledgehammer...Oliver is the Phoenix, and he will rise from the ashes following his death!

The Guild calling Oliver and Speedy ‘outsiders’ 🙄🙄 Oliver was Ras al Ghul and Thea is heir to the demon; get your facts right, biatch!!

Thea was a total badass this week, taking down Talia was sooo cool, and shows how far she has come as a fighter/hero.

Nice drop-in that Felicity gave the hozen to William!

Thea and Talia joining forces to raise a female ‘League of Heroes’; better than any faux-feminist Canary bullshit!!

The guest stars are fantastic, but their novelty and distraction is wearing off...I MISS FELICITY SMOAK 😫😫 Next week should hopefully tide us over, though!!

Dyla

Dyla had their own little adventure this week, that  echoed their suicide squad mission in Season 2. Bronze Tiger killed a bad guy whilst working for Lyla, and in revenge, that bad guy’s son kidnaps Sandra and little Connor Hawke, then also tries to kill Lyla, but obviously she’s a total badass so that doesn’t happen! Anyway, all’s well that ends well and Dig rescues Connor and his Mum, and that’s about all I can remember plot-wise 😂😂

What we got character-wise, though was really cool! We got the first hint of JJ’s story of being 'neglected' by Dyla...with Dig and Lyla being increasingly away on missions and unable to call him, and in turn finding Connor and obviously starting to fall in love with him because he is the softest little bean 😍 When ickle Connor said “thank you Mr Diggles” I was a goner 😂😂

We saw Dig having a crisis of faith (pun intended) after seeing Earth 2 disintegrate before him, but ultimately he realises (after some Lyla wisdom) that they just have to hold on to each other and do their best. Lyla made a few comments and pulled some ‘I’m keeping secrets’ faces, asking Dig to remember the good times no matter what happens, and I need to know what Lyla knows dammit!! I still believe that she is on the good side, and her appearing to double-cross Dig and Oliver with The Monitor last week is a little bit of a red herring. I need to believe, ok!!!

Flash-forwards

Plot-wise, I actually think the flash-forwards were the strongest storyline this week. Following on from last week we had the team rushing back to the bunker to check on William, after JJ threatened him. This scene brought us another “frack” from Mia 😍, and a mention of Felicity as “Mom” from William 😭, as he managed to electrocute the bad guys all by himself! Will being a techy little badass is a forever mood and is yet another reminder of our Felicity. She is never really gone.

With the Deathstrokes now targeting William and other members of the Star City Unification Movement (SCUM, really?? LOL), William offers himself up as bait. As Oliver’s daughter, you can imagine how that went down with Mia. Badly. Big nope from Mia, who decides on a more direct approach of going to their HQ and kicking all of the ass 😂. Zoe is very much against this, but Mia is all “I know best, we’ll just storm in and take them all out myself” (S1 Oliver anyone?). Said storming in leads to this absolute beauty of a moment:

I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!!!

Prior to kicking all of the asses, Mia and William have a heart-to-heart, with Will still angry at Mia for not trusting him to go into dangerous situations. Will thinks it’s because he’s not a fighter, but Mia comes back with “it’s because you’re my brother” 😭 😭 😭

Source: olicitygifs

In another Felicity-worthy pep-talk, William tells Mia that operating out of fear is not the way to go, and that they need to trust each other to survive. I’m really gonna need a Mia/Will hug soon, please and thank you. Honestly, Will is the perfect balance/offset to Mia with his easy humour and quick wit, but he ALWAYS brings the feels as well. He reminds me so much of Emily’s portrayal of Felicity, and not just in the way that his character has been written, but just by what he brings to the role. Ben is a wonderful actor; I adore him and he and William must be protected at all costs!

In the final confrontation, Mia, Zoe and JJ storm JJ and the Deathstrokes, but JJ gets Mia by the throat in an awesome 3x23 Felicity/Slade parallel. Mia couldn’t save herself like Felicity did in this instance, but we must remember that this is just the beginning of Mia’s journey. She has time. Unlike Zoe, who saves Mia, but is then fatally stabbed by JJ 😬 Poor Zoe dies in Mia’s arms. Kat’s acting here was perfection. I may have shed a tear. They had kept Zoe pretty much in the background in the FFs, so I wasn’t particularly attached; if one of FTA needed to die, then I’m good with her. Sorry Zo. But in all honesty, this fridging trope really needs to end. Another female character didn’t need to die in order to elevate JJ’s evil-factor, or to spur on Mia’s hero journey, or Connor’s struggle with his conscience. Enough now. Hopefully, being a bird, Zoe will be back from the dead soon enough anyway 😂

Source: 1-crazy-dreamer 💗

Connor sees Zoe die and goes after JJ. Hard. Tries to kill him. Between 2 generations of Queens and Diggles, the sibling parallels were so strong this week, and I’m loving it! I wrote a little meta here about it. But does Connor have the guts to actually kill JJ? JJ taunts that he doesn’t, Connor disagrees, but then the bright light comes for all of FTA and so we come to…

THAT ENDING

OH MY GOD ALL OF FTA IN THE BUNKER IN 2019!!!!!!!!!!!!

So most people following any kind of interviews or spoilers had a pretty firm idea that Mia would come back in time at the end of the episode. We were expecting it. What the show did was really quite clever...they allowed these pretty big spoilery-type interviews and tweets to be released, heavily implying that Mia would rock up in the last 30 seconds. They let us think we were all clever and had figured it out then BOOM! EVERYONE CAME BACK (minus Zoe 😬)! 

I am so pleased with this!! All the paparazzi pics etc that we’d seen of Mia in the crossover etc had made me so happy, but equal parts sad that William couldn’t go back and see Oliver too, but now he can!!!

Uggghhhh it was so fucking goooood!! Oliver’s initial confusion of being beamed back to the bunker, stunned Dig, Dinah and Rene (I can live with their 5-second appearances this season 😂😂), then the camera and Oliver pan around to Mia, William and Connor just stood there!! Mia still had tears running down her face from seeing Zoe die, and she has her Arrow suit on and is covered in blood and she sees her Daddy for the first time in her memory!!!!!!! Just one word is delivered in those last few seconds and it was still one of the best moments of the season so far!!

Mia’s “Dad”, followed by Oliver’s confusion, realisation, then shock was just gaaahhhh!! But my absolute favourite reaction (I decided after multiple rewatches, for science, haha) was William’s 😍😭😍 His eyes full of tears, and utter gobsmacked-ness was fucking sublime!!  

Source for all 3 reaction gifs: tylerposey

Next week is going to be so epic!! We have Mia, who has never met Oliver and who has built him up so much in her head and heart from Felicity and William’s stories, and also the tainted Star City archives, getting to finally come face-to-face with him. Then conversely, there is William, who got a few years to know his father, but then left him and eventually believed to have been abandoned by him and Felicity, and has had to live for 20 years until very recently still believing that, and now he gets to see him again, only a few months after little William left! Then there’s Connor, who Dig barely even knows in 2019 and he’s gonna call him Dad and then have to tell him that he nearly just killed JJ, who just killed Zoe, and Rene is right there and I AM HERE FOR ALL OF ITTTTTT!!!! 

There’s so much content coming in next weeks episode it’s going to be so beautiful!!  I wrote a post of things I really hope to see here, and I’m pretty confident we’ll get most of them and so much more!

Then there’s the implications of what FTA being in the present means for the future!! I had a bit of a spec meltdown here about how this could end up saving Oliver, and I think that’s pretty much just wishful thinking, but either way, them coming back to the present to help with the Crisis and to try and stop future Star City turning so bleak is going to make my head hurt and my heart sing in equal measure, I’m sure! After all, what is the point in having the multiverse, time travel, super powers etc in Arrow if we can’t reap some benefits from it somehow? The ending to this episode, and hopefully next week will be our reward for the fuckery we’ve had to endure with the more sci-fi-esque elements since Larry rocked up and the Arrowverse was extended. And I. cannot. wait.

Thank you to the beautiful, talented, and super speedy gifmakers for blessing us with all the amazing gifsets from this episode!! Mwah! 😘😘 (Uncredited gifs are mine)

💗💗💗

[mittensmorgul]

I've got Pac Man Fever on in the background for the meta rewatch, and one of the first things we learn is that the bunker isn't trackable to within a 20 mile radius. And all I can think is that like Dean with the Colt, trusting too much in it because it's apparently invincible.

Sam and Dean continued trusting in the security of the bunker because it was so incredible this way. We know the Colt still had five things it couldn't kill (and not WHAT those things are), yet Dean trusted it to kill an at-the-time unidentified god in 12.18. And nearly got himself killed by a plain-old human, because there's still the factor of reliably being able to point it at the thing and shoot it.

Even after 12.17 and how they missed Dagon with it...

It's just a tool, but they'd put ALL their faith in it...

Overconfidence is... a form of hubris.

And all season I’ve been yelling about how hubris is bad.

It seems like they’d put way too much trust in the security and sanctity of the bunker. You’d think they’d have learned after pretty much EVERYONE invaded the place at one point or another in the last few years...

Yet they STILL trusted in the building they’d come to think of as “home.” Even after finding the MoL’s listening devices. They brought Toni back there, even after hearing her prattle on about how the MoL was responsible for all the hunter deaths, even knowing that they killed Mick for being “too sympathetic” to the Winchesters’ views, and even after Mary’s warning phone call that they had a problem followed by their complete inability to find or contact her since that warning. Even knowing that the bastards HAD KEYS TO THE BUNKER.

That’s hubris, and hubris is bad.

Despite the pileup of subtext pointing to Dean’s instinctive mistrust of these people, the fact that he’s been so on-the-nose RIGHT about so much this season, he certainly has a couple of blind spots big enough to drive the Impala through.

He never even questioned how the MoL came by the Colt? Possibly because he was simply too relieved or pleased to have it back at all.

That’s hubris, and hubris is bad.

They trusted in Mary, who they don’t even really know. And who definitely doesn’t really know them. She thinks she knows them via John’s journal, and since the beginning of the season we’ve seen Dean resisting telling her the worst of the truth about their lives. He hadn’t wanted to overwhelm her. He hadn’t wanted her to feel like he was blaming her for what happened after she died. It’s not like she knew all of that stuff would happen-- that John would be consumed by revenge for her death, that their entire lives would become devoted to the one thing she never wanted for them because of her death. It seemed unfair to Dean at the beginning of the season to burden her with that knowledge when she was still adjusting to suddenly being alive again at all...

12.18 invited us to ponder what Sam and Dean’s legacy would be. In an episode where a horrifying family legacy of murder and greed had been buried and ignored for 20 years resurfaced and doubled down on the horror and greed. The sheriff had tried to bury and ignore the root of his family’s evil deeds while fixing up all the “surface level” wrongs his family had inflicted on the town they essentially owned. He sold it off to the people who lived and worked there. He even gave his half-brother the company that had been the backbone of the town, and he himself took on the mantle of justice for the people by becoming the sheriff.

Yet even when faced with the evidence that his family’s long-buried legacy might be coming back to haunt him, he passively ignored the threat. Yes, he eventually experienced doubt and went to check to make sure Moloch was still safely locked away, but while he’d been busy trying to ignore the monster’s existence, the other surviving member of his family had uncovered the secret for himself. His brother was lured in by Moloch’s promises, and a desperate, selfish drive to have the life he felt he deserved but had always been denied.

In his fervor, he not only capitulated to the monster’s desire for blood, HE FREED IT from the prison where it had been contained for more than a hundred years. Suddenly it wasn’t one death a year to appease the god, it was a string of deaths. Like the god had extra leverage over him because he hadn’t seen the bigger picture.

This is Mary, who was so desperate to make the life she’d intended to for her family, the life she felt she’d been denied by circumstance. But she didn’t have all the facts-- either about her own family’s history OR the Men of Letters. Yet she signed up to work with them anyway. Despite her doubts, despite the fact she instinctively, on some level, knew it was wrong enough that she hid her mission from Sam and Dean in 12.12, and then STILL didn’t tell them the truth when she discovered how shady the whole operation was.

Mary’s hubris has led to the loss of her free will, now subsumed by the Men of Letters’ agenda. She realized too late that she’d put her faith in the wrong place. She’d pinned her personal hopes and desires to an evil force because on the surface they seemed to share her end goals, and was willing to turn a blind eye to their blatantly obvious faults. To the hubris of the underlying agenda itself.

This is also Crowley, whose motives for diverting Lucifer from the cage in the first place seem like pure hubris anyway, A hubris compounded by his willingness to deal with the Men of Letters and his repeated tormenting of Lucifer. And Crowley’s hubris has led to him seeking refuge from the fate he’d made for himself by literally becoming a rat and being tossed out with the trash. Not fucking subtle, bucklemming.

So Sam and Dean have ended up trapped within their own “legacy,” the bunker that they’d gradually made their own without knowing the full extent of the baggage that came along with it, that some portion of the Men of Letters survived Abaddon’s slaughter in 1958 to become even more secretive and radicalized in their isolation. Sam instinctively wanted to trust them, because nothing he’d found in the bunker had made him believe that the Men of Letters might have evil intentions. He desperately wanted to believe the best of these people despite the evidence of his own experiences at their hands. He didn’t trust HIMSELF over their self-proclaimed superior knowledge and goals. Now that’s all come back around to bite everyone in the ass.

Dean’s been ignoring or suppressing his own instincts all season, despite being confronted with confirmation that his instincts were right all along. But his lack of faith in himself has a lot of baggage attached to it and THAT is what I believe he’s been working through. In the past he’s tried to enforce his will over that of others (see: his instincts about Ruby and how he pushed Sam away by trying to enforce his will, his instincts about Cas in s6, his own poor choices in s8 and s9 that culminated in him practically destroying the universe because he tried to enforce his own will by thinking it was a good idea to slam the gates of Hell... which led to the COSMIC CONSEQUENCES (i.e. cavalcade of dominoes falling that ended up releasing the Darkness and nearly ending the universe), and then having God himself rest the burden of looking after the Earth in Dean’s hands in 11.23. But he blames himself for ALL of it.

I’m watching 8.22 right now (hello, Dabb), watching Sarah Blake die because of his choices.

I can’t honestly say this loud enough. EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED ON THE SHOW SINCE 12.09 IS THE COSMIC CONSEQUENCES. Really, everything that’s happened since Mary was resurrected at the end of 11.23 has been a cascade of increasingly dire consequences. Billie had tried to set the natural order to rights SEVERAL TIMES over the early part of the season, asking Mary to choose to go back to Heaven where she belonged, but it had still been her choice at that point, and she rejected the offer.

In 12.09, Mary was ready to accept her own death in the fulfillment of Dean’s deal with Billie, but Cas spared her from paying the price. Honestly, he didn’t do it for MARY, but for DEAN. What would it have done to Dean at that point to have Mary pay the price for his own failure? Because that’s how it would’ve felt to him. It would’ve broken him. Instead, Mary’s been given a free pass to continue existing, and to continue screwing with the Natural Order.

COSMIC CONSEQUENCES.

Dean still hasn’t found the balance in himself that he’d helped bring about in the universe. The balance between trusting in his own will versus forcing that will on anyone else. Trying to bend others to his will has a long, long history of failure attached to it. And yet standing all the way back like Chuck and just passively observing these consequences unfolding despite that itching instinct to intervene hasn’t actually resulted in anything good either.

COSMIC CONSEQUENCES.

Cas felt like he’d failed Sam and Dean in 12.09 by not being able to find and save them from prison. He doubted himself so much that he wasn’t even able to carry out a normal hunt on his own when we know he’d become a shockingly effective hunter in his own right over the last few years. Self-doubt, lack of self-worth, all over the loss of Sam and Dean... led directly to the events of 12.12 where he nearly paid the price with his own life (except for the interference of Crowley, he would have).

(Heck, I’m watching 8.23 right now. This isn’t a new theme for Cas...)

He’s still trying to atone from his decision to say yes to Lucifer in 11.10. That’s the genesis of an awful lot of the cosmic consequences we’re dealing with now, after all. His failure to protect Sam and Dean in 12.08, however, is a driving force behind his current spate of terrible choices in a misguided attempt to protect them from paying those cosmic consequences on his behalf.

The tricky thing about cosmic consequences is that you simply can’t walk past them and ignore the inciting incident that kicked them all off in the first place. Like the Barrett family’s buried secret-- the literal god buried under their basement floor, the foundations of their entire lives, or even Dean refusing to kill that little girl in 6.11, our original introduction to Cosmic Consequences-- you can push them down and try to ignore them and hope they’ll go away. You can run around trying to clean up the resulting chain reaction of terrible consequences as they erupt into flames all around you, but until the original imbalance is corrected and the truth is unearthed and dealt with directly, that’s all they’ve been able to do.

Cas’s self-doubt, like Dean said in 12.19, has blinded him to the danger he was in. He’d said yes to Lucifer in 11.10, voluntarily handing his free will over to Lucifer, and he’s never really had a chance to reclaim that agency. It seems that everything he’s tried to do since then has been a rather futile effort to reclaim that agency.

I’ve said it so many times this season, but Cas “wished” for faith, and he was slammed with it. And the wishes turn bad. The wishes turn very bad. I think one of the main reasons it was so easy for the nephilim to inflict its will on Cas was that he’d surrendered that will in 11.10 and never fully reclaimed it. He hasn’t asserted it for himself again, instead acting on his own, scrambling around blindly trying to put everything else right while the original act of surrender remains unrevoked.

COSMIC. CONSEQUENCES.

That’s all any of this is, really. That’s the whole story right there.

It’s not about who has to pay the price, it’s about going back and reversing the entire original story. It’s about getting a second chance to put right those original wrongs. It’s about realizing that we can’t just have what we want, because that’s not how life works. Back in 4.08 Sam and Dean were in a very different place to where they are now. Even back in 6.11 when Dean began learning this lesson on a cosmic scale. It’s not just about cleaning up their messes, it’s about finding balance between the natural order and free will. And remembering that no one person’s will should decide the fate of the entire universe at the expense of the natural order.