TV Review: Arrow - Season 5 Episode 9 "What We Leave Behind"

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Episode 9: "What We Leave Behind"

Synopsis: After Prometheus attacks Curtis, Oliver realizes Prometheus knows all of Team Arrow's secret identities and is planning to come for them one by one. Felicity and Detective Malone discover a clue that links Prometheus to Oliver's past.

Review: Man, Arrow has certainly turned itself around after a rough first half of the season. It was only over the past three episodes or so that the show began to feel lively again. Still, the five year old show felt a bit stagnant compared to the spin-offs it spawned. So going into the mid-season finale, the writers needed to do something surrounding the Prometheus arc that has been on the backburner a bit despite seeming like it should be a much bigger deal. We dealt with the new Vigilante in town, Tobias Church as a starter baddie, and then last week aliens came to town to distract our heroes. But, back in the swing of things, Prometheus is once again front and center. Being the last episode of 2016, this is also Arrow's Christmas themed episode and is the least holly jolly hour of television you are bound to watch all month.

Despite my reluctance for flashbacks to be on this show, this week skips the Russian set storyline we have seen the last eight episodes and instead takes us back to Oliver Queen's first year as The Hood. The story involves a pharmaceutical magnate who appeared on The List in Oliver's father's notebook and whose death may be the secret behind Prometheus. At the Mayoral Christmas party, Oliver talks to the crowd about his favorite holiday movies (DIE HARD and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) while outside Curtis and his husband are accosted by Prometheus. A chemical in Curtis' blood sends the team to the former offices of Justin Claybourne whom they think survived death by The Hood and is now Prometheus. But it all appears to be a trap as Oliver fights with the masked villain who is helped in the nick of time by Evelyn. The two escape and now the team knows one of their own was a traitor who revealed all of their true identities to Prometheus.

But as Prometheus revealed to Evelyn at the start of the hour, he doesn't want Oliver Queen dead but rather to make him suffer and wish he was. I was expecting more from the team learning that one of their own was a double agent but that may come in the second half of the season. Instead, we have a lot of focus put on Curtis and his husband fighting over the secrets kept from one another. Curtis tells his husband that he works with the Green Arrow which further puts a rift between them. Felicity also has an arguent with her boyfriend, Billy Malone, who is determined to protect her and investigate Prometheus using the proper channels at his disposal as a SCPD detective. Clearly, things will not be going well for most of Team Arrow during the holidays. While Billy investigates Claybourne's offices himself, he comes across documents and a baby photo that he sends to Felicity and is soon after taken prisoner by Prometheus.

Analyzing ashes found at Claybourne's office, Felicity confirms that the man is dead but also finds a tenuous connection between the baby photo and a potential illegitimate child of his. Could this approximately 30-year-old son of Claybourne be Prometheus? He seems to be trained in the same methods Oliver learns and Queen himself says some of the villain's moves are ones he learned while in Russia. Oliver remembers where he had his showdown with Claybourne and heads there alone. Prometheus has staged the building with murdered bodies in the same positions as Oliver's victims the night he killed Claybourne. He confronts Prometheus who says he has been waiting for this moment for four years. It is confusing to know just what the hell is going on and who this guy is, but I have to admit the writers are keeping the secret much longer than I expected. Oliver and Prometheus fight and eventually Oliver is able to shoot him with an arrow, killing him. When he approaches the body, he realizes it was staged and under the mask is a gagged Billy. Oh shit, Oliver just killed his ex-fiance's boyfriend!

Oliver returns to the Arrow Cave to reveal what he did to everyone which sends Felicity into shock. He asks everyone to get as far away from him as possible, but they all stay and instead embrace him. While Oliver seeks solace in the arms of sexy reporter Susan, Curtis returns home to find his husband Paul leaving him because he cannot deal with potentially losing Curtis every night. Diggle gets an urgent call from Lyla but when he arrives at the safe house, a team of soldiers are there to take him back to prison. The episode wraps with everyone suffering the worst Christmas possible. Curtis loses his husband, Felicity loses her boyfriend, Diggle loses his freedom. We don't see much surrounding Rory or Rene but I assume something sucks for them, too. The final scene shows Oliver returning to the Arrow Cave the next morning to find a familiar face waiting for him…Laurel Lance.

The death of Laurel last season was a powerful moment on the show which will be totally undermined if they just brought her back to life. But, as Felicity said this episode, dead people seem to come back to life in Star City practically every Wednesday. It is a damn shame that we have to wait to January to find out what is going on, but the writers seem to have finally figured out some stakes that are making this season much more interesting. It should also be worth noting that the episodes withour Russia-set flashbacks have been the best ones so far. Arrow is more than capable of sustaining a contemporary set story without that narrative device any longer. While things ended on a dour note for most of the team, it is worth mentioning we did not get any updates on Evelyn's involvement in Prometheus' plan now that her duplicity has been revealed. Nor did we get more on Vigilante or Quentin Lance. There have been a lot of stories going on this season so far but I am glad the show decided to stick to the main one for this episode as we have a lot to chew on until the new episodes resume in 2017.