Corto Maltese sees Team Arrow travel to Corto Maltese to retrieve Thea from her sequester. In so doing, Diggle must also run an errand for his wife, tracking down an errant A.R.G.U.S. officer. Meanwhile Felicity takes the job with Ray Palmer and Laurel tries to live up to her sister’s now empty shoes. In the end it’s a bit disjointed, but the crux of it all is in the right place. Sorry for the late review.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the Diggle side-quest they threw us in, upon arriving at Corto Maltese. It made sense, sure, but it was almost too perfectly coincidental that it didn’t seem realistic. It did lead to a great fight scene that included the most makeshift bows I’ve ever seen, so that was a nice touch. Overall, I wasn’t enthralled with the A.R.G.U.S. subplot at all really. I’ll just get it off my chest – I’m not a fan of any A.R.G.U.S./Suicide Squad episodes, which doesn’t bode well on my front seeing that this season might be rife with them.

Corto Maltese, or at least whichever location they chose to shoot on-location at, was deeply gorgeous. And Thea surprisingly made it even better. Can’t remember the amount of eye-rolling I’ve done in her name previously, but this episode really drove home that she’s grown as an actress. And that hairstyle looks fantastic on her. The entirety of her subplot was great, but I wished they focused more on it than they had. Especially the bits that included her father Malcolm Merlyn. Again, John Barrowman kills the role, and steals the screen.

Ray Palmer doesn’t get as much screentime this episode, and perhaps maybe he should’ve been left alone for this episode – perhaps it would’ve been a tad more cohesive. Regardless, Felicity is working with him now. The scene where she is helping him out, getting calls from Team Arrow and Team Flash at the same moment. Fantastic. Just ridiculous Felicity scenes to dig your teeth into. Interestingly, Ray Palmer pulls out a few files and on the bottom of the list is a logo that reads “O.M.A.C.” What on earth could this mean?!

Laurel was particularly annoying this week. I don’t even want to talk about it really, but I feel like I have to at least touch on it. She’s training herself to become the vigilante her sister was, after Oliver flat out refused to train her. She gets the snot beat out of her, naturally. Honestly, the guy let her off easy. If he were really so prone to violent tendencies, I could’ve seen that going far more south than that. But now it looks like she’s going to be trained by some puny featherweight. Alright Laurel.

Current ranked average of Arrow Season Three: 8.66.