TV Review: Arrow Season 3 Episode 3

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Join us each week as we review the latest episode of ARROW. Warning: the following review contains major spoilers for the newest episode of the show.

Episode 3: "Corto Maltese"

Synopsis: Oliver (Stephen Amell) decides it's time for Thea (Willa Holland) to come back to Starling City, so he packs for Corto Maltese, where Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) has traced Thea's whereabouts.

In Starling City: After two episodes focused on Oliver and the murder of Sara Lance, this week's episode opens with a flashback to last season's finale. Six months ago, Thea said goodbye to her family and Roy to accompany her birth father, Malcolm Merlyn,whereever she wanted to go.  He asks why she reached out to him and she answered that she never wanted to feel the pain she felt again.  Flashforward to the present, we see Arrow chasing a crook down a busy street.  When he questions the man based on his fingerprints at the scene of Sara's death.  The guy insists he saw nothing but Sara and Arrow walks away.

Back at Team Arrow's base, the group has hit a wall both in finding Sara's killer and Thea.  Thea's cellphone signal indicates she may be in Corto Maltese.  Roy tells Oliver he wants to help bring her back since he feels responsible for her leaving.  Diggle decides to go as well after some prodding from Lyla.  Laurel visits a boxing gym as she tries a case but is stalled by fighter Ted Grant (DC Comics' Wildcat) who offers her a chance to work off her anger in the ring.

Diggle, Oliver, and Roy arrive in Corto Maltese and Oliver decides to go alone to an address Felicity thinks may be where Thea is hiding.  Oliver arrives and a gardener tells him "Mia" works at a local cafe.  Inside the house, Malcolm Merlyn awaits, bow at the ready.  Oliver finds Thea who is surprised to see him but not angry.  She apologizes and said she needed some space.  He says he misses her and asks her to come home.  She says she missed him too but refuses.

Felicity arrives at Queen Consolidated and learns that her new position is not what she expected.  Ray Palmer introduces her assistant.  Palmer plans to begin the rebuild of QC by having Felicity try to restore a destroyed hard drive containing all of the company's Applied Sciences work.  As Palmer leaves, Felicity learns the old CEO office is now her own.  Meanwhile, Diggle and Oliver decide to investigate Lyla's local contact, Shaw, who has failed to check in.  Spotting him, Diggle approaches and the guy tries to stab him.  Calming him down, Shaw explains that someone has compromised a list of ARGUS undercovers.

Laurel attends an AA meeting and relates her feelings about Sara's death and how she worried it would drive her to drink.  Instead, though, she feels angry and doesn't know what to do with it.  Laurel's father walks in and she shuts down.  Another woman relates her story and shows bruises given by her alcoholic boyfriend.  Laurel asks her father who says he cannot bring his badge into the AA meeting without compromising the program.

Diggle accompanies Shaw to the buy for the list but soon realizes it is a double cross.  Shaw takes out Diggle with a tazer, sending Oliver into action to try and save his friend.  Shaw needed Diggle's authentication to make the buy happen and leaves with it in hand.  As Thea takes out the garbage at the cafe, Roy shows up and tries to convince her to come home.  Thea tells him it was not just him but everyone in Starling she had to get away from.  Roy tells her he wants her to be happy and if she wants to stay, she should.  Malcolm watches it from the shadows.

Diggle learns from Lyla they are still trying to locate the buyer and he reaches out to Felicity for help.  In a funny scene, Felicity gets a call from Diggle as she is meeting with Ray Palmer as well as a call from Laurel needing help.  Oliver tells Diggle to contact him once they have Shaw's location.  He plans to find Thea and tell her everything about his time on the island and his secret identity.  Diggle instead says she will see him as nothing but a liar and will lose her forever.  Oliver finds her and tells her that their father made it into the boat with him and that he killed himself to save Oliver.  He says he is telling her now to show her their parents sacrificed their lives to save their children and that makes them their true family.

Laurel takes action into her own hands and attacks the abusive boyfriend she tracked down and hits him with a bat while wearing Sara's Canary jacket.  The guy turns the tables on her, knocking her to the ground and leaving.  Beaten in the hospital, her father arrives and wants to know what she thought she was doing.  As an aside, how many episodes has Laurel been in a frickin' hospital bed?  Laurel says she needed the will to be different, worrying her father who wants to know what is going on.  Laurel does not reveal the truth, still fearing for her father's health.  She promises him she will never do anything like that again.

At the buy, Roy, Oliver, and Diggle watch as Shaw meets with someone representing a Mr. Armitage to buy the ARGUS list.  Using bows and arrows fashioned out of materials from their hotel room, Oliver and Roy suit up only to be ambushed by armed soldiers.  A firefight begins and Oliver unfurls every arrow before taking a gun to off more soldiers.  Diggle goes after Shaw while Oliver and Roy handle the troops.  Shaw says he wasn't doing what he did for money but to get away from Amanda Waller, hinting at a nefarious core at ARGUS.

Thea tells Malcolm she wants to go home and he questions how far she has come.  She says she will prove it to him and grabs a sword.  The father and daughter duel.  Malcolm disarms Thea but she gets the upper hand and he lets her go back to Starling City.  She then meets Oliver at the airport to fly home.  A man spills hot coffee on her hand and she doesn't flinch.

Arriving home, Oliver finds Laurel bruised and beaten.  She tells him that Sara's jacket makes her feel like she can be like her fallen sister.  She asks Oliver to train her and he refuses, saying it would destroy her father.  Laurel says she needs another way aside from drugs or alcohol but Oliver says he cannot and that Sara would never forgive him if he did.  Diggle gets home and embraces his wife who has to go into ARGUS.  Captain Lance also gets an anonymous tip that turns in the abusive boyfriend and Laurel returns to Grant's gym to begin her training.  At QC, Felicity fixes the unrecoverable hard drive and asks for two days off to go visit Barry Allen in Central City. Ray then looks over the recovered files, finding numerous weapons plans.

As Roy and Oliver discuss Thea, Nyssa Al Ghul enters the room armed with a bow and demands to know where Sara is.

Flashbacks: Arriving in Corto Maltese six months ago, Malcolm offers Thea some tea to help open her mind.  He relates how he learned to become a warrior after his wife's death and she can do the same.  He holds a burning liquid just above her arm and says a warrior must learn that pain is inevitable.  She winces and says she cannot do it, trying to leave.  Malcolm tells her to stay and that it is not her fault, embracing her.

Malcolm offers Thea to train as his student, and not his daughter.  He strikes her and she fights back.  He smiles and says now they can begin.

Episode Grade: 8/10

There is at least one episode in each of the first two seasons of ARROW that completely leaves the formulaic dynamic of the rest of the show and does something unique.  Last season, it was the Suicide Squad episode and this week it is "Corto Maltese".  Taking Oliver, Roy, and Diggle out of their comfort zone and putting them in a foreign country gives us a unique look at their skill set and how it would work when they don't have their costumes or trademark tools at their disposal.  It also offers a nice recap of Thea's life since last season and a more sympathetic look at Malcolm Merlyn than we are used to.  A solidly enjoyable episode with some nice action sequences, a funny if disjointed scene for Felicity, and the first hints that Laurel will become Black Canary.

Next on ARROW: "The Magician" – Oliver and Nyssa join forces and go after the Dark Archer, intent on bringing Sara’s killer to justice. Meanwhile, Oliver and Roy work on repairing their respective relationships with Thea, who has returned home. Nyssa discusses Oliver with her father, Ra’s al Ghul.