This Wednesday’s Arrow (“Kapiushon”) continues to intrigue as we get more teases about what sounds like will be a pivotal episode this season.
With Oliver Queen being held by Adrian Chase/Prometheus and Talia al Ghul following the events of the previous episode, the question becomes: “Why?”
Prometheus has made it damn clear that he has no intentions to kill Oliver. Prometheus is setting out to destroy Oliver by destroying those he cares about. So while it’s looking more and more like Prometheus set this up to potentially have Felicity spiral with Helix in order to find Oliver, we can’t help but wonder Prometheus’ plans for Oliver while they wait for an inevitable rescue.
“What you’re going to see is Chase is torturing Oliver and trying to get him to confess a secret,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim told TV Insider. “We are going to flashback to Russia and a pivotal moment in Oliver’s experience. It’s a really powerful episode. I will say, I don’t think the series will be the same after it…because of the actions in the present day. Oliver will confess a secret to Adrian Chase. The big mystery of the episode is what is Oliver’s secret?”
With Guggenheim’s tease it sounds like this is a secret that us as an audience are not yet aware of, which definitely ups the intrigue. especially given how Guggenheim promises that “the series will never be the same” after it’s revealed.
Does the secret have to do with Prometheus? Is it something Prometheus is aware of that we, the audience, and Oliver’s friends aren’t aware of? Because in the promo Prometheus is egging Oliver to tell him his secret. Then it ends. What the hell did Oliver do? Again?
The episode also proved to be quite a grueling trek for Stephen Amell, who tells TV Insider that filming the episode gave him anxiety because of the implications of the hour.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever worked so hard on an episode before, aside from maybe the second episode of the entire series,” Amell said. “I was just in everything…it could literally be called the deconstruction of Oliver Queen. It’s pretty gnarly. It gave me incredible levels of anxiety, because it felt like if there was a misstep, it could be something we couldn’t come back from.”
Amell warned that following Oliver’s time with Prometheus that Oliver leaves “very changed. And resolute, in the wrong way. Resigned. Chase isn’t trying to kill him; Chase is trying to sell him something…That causes a lot of problems with the team.”
Based on the promo alone (watch it below), we can definitely see just how “gnarly” this episode is looking to be. Anytime you take things down and focus on the character — especially one who has been lost this season — it’s really something special.
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
