Review 5x17: The Key


This translation is made from a Spanish person whose happen to speak English. Any mistake and misspelling are honest mistakes. Forgive me those who I might offend with my poor translation. Thank you.


What an episode, what a season. And what a tv show.
Nothing else. Just like that.
After a season were we'e been given deeper meaning in the psychological aspects of each character, for me, this show is never going to be the same. Now, after episode 17, nothing will be the same. Thie show has shifted from just a comic book based show to a tv series with deep phycological meaning and a HUGE whole sense.
Forget about everything you thought Arrow was, because nothing's the same. This is the key turning point.



Oliver Queen is man trapped in sickness. He's a man that lived five years in hell five years in those he became a monster. Five years that gave him PTSD. That PTSD is showed since season 1, for one of the symptoms are the flashbacks. Those flashbacks we've been shown since the pilot are not just instruments to create parallels between past and present, they're the traumatic experiences that Oliver is remembering, whenever he is living his present.

Now I understand so much. I understand why Oliver and Laurel could never be together. Now I understand why Oliver chose Diggle, I also understand many of the things Sara told Oliver, even I'm not an Olicity shipper, I undertand why Felicity is the one for Oliver. I understand now EVERYTHING.

This episode has done something unique in the history of the show: past and present have converged in one thing, Oliver's confession.

Being tortured by Chase and everything he was telling him, has set Oliver's memories of the sotryline of the Bratva in Kapiushion, the exact moment where he became that killer monster. the moment when Oliver killed himself.

His need to keep feeling like a human being and to be able to live with some kind of calm after so many lives he had taken, made Oliver to name that worst part of himself, Oliver breaks himslef in two halfs: Oliver Queen and The Hood.

Oliver is creating within his mind another problem, because creating two different personalities is never a good idea.

We have, so far, a man with a deep PTSD and a behavior dissociation disorder. Do you see this wonder the show runners have created? Do you realise about the depths and complexity of the show? It's not just another tv show, it's not about just a comic book anymore... They've gone much further.

And it is fascinating.

Maybe it's because my profession that I feel like this right now. Fanscinated for what it appears to me to be a master piece of phycology. I could spend hours talking about this aspect...

Chase is, like I said yesterday, a redeemer angel. I have it so much more clear now. I have no idea if he's Claybourne's son, I'm not sure if his whole motivation is to redeem people at the very 'SAW' style, what I'm confident about is that, in Chase's mind, torturing Oliver is completely justified for the greater good. Make Oliver face during this whole season  an extreme situation whose peak it's been this episode. With this studied moment of physical and phycological torture to Oliver to make him get to the the point when and where his mind broke. And that moment comes in the flashbacks.





To get to that point in real life require a whole lot amount of therapy sessions. Chase has speed up the process with awful methods. But that was the whole point of this episode's torture: Make Oliver's mind to travel to his breaking point and to get him to confess to something he hadn't even recognized to himself: he liked to kill.

It's important to note that he confesses in the past tense, meaning that probably shows the hard work of those around Oliver, specially Diggle and Felicity. Speaking about it in the past tense could mean that his dissociation disorder might be healing.

Anatoly is been key in the show, and I'm sure he'll also be by the end of this season. "My family can't see what i've become". Obviously, if he was feeling some kind of pleasure while killing, Oliver was totaly aware that he couldn't go back to his old life just like that. He needed something else, to create that dissociated personality with Talia's help to mark a phycological line between the killer and the person.

But Anatoly was right, once again, that one sheet can't divide anything, can't separate the light from the darkness. Maybe Anatoly was the first to see the killer side of Oliver, and he alse knew that would bring Oliver's self-destruction. Because of this, it is quite possible that Oliver might need Anatoly's by the end of this awful time of our hero.

I don't think Oliver likes to kill, I do think though that creating that dissociation and to be able to feel control over the monster creating The Hood, Oliver allowed himself to feel and unleash many very dark feelings. Wearing that hood he was another person, and feeling that just by removing it he's just back to be Oliver Queen, he was allowed to be a killer. Creating this personality was when the pleasure of the kill was born, in Russia.

Probably that phycopathic feeling was with him most of the season 1. resurfacing during key moments along the whole series. That's why he fought himself not to kill, that's why he was so hurt when someone he loved called him a killer, that's why probably why he kept his "no kill vow", that's why he's been struggling with the idea of life or death, that's why Oliver's all "black or white" in that matter. For all of this. Everything that we've lived next to our emerad archer makes sense.

But now Oliver is different. He's still "sick", he's still got PTSD, but the dissociation Oliver Queen- The Hood isn't so iron clad engraved in his mind.

One could tell that thanks to all the people around him, that love him, have helped Oliver to "tame the beast", tame The Hood. Changing it from the darkness to the light. From The Hood to Green Arrow. This has been a great job from the whole cast & crew, because thanks to the dissociation existing in Oliver the show is slowly becoming a new one: The one with Oliver Queen AKA The Green Arrow, a hero.

Diggle, Laurel, Thea, Felicity, Tommy, Mckenna, Helena, Quentin, Moire, Sara, Slade, Malcolm... None of them come by chance. They all mean something and they all have given something to the phycological growth of Oliver. They're all a key piece and averything has happened for a reason.

The showrunners had a plan since the pilot. Now it's become clearer, and I like that.

Chase has fulfill his deed, partly of it at least. Oliver has confessed something urgent and necessary, because Oliver needs to be healed NOW.  Now that the dissociation between Oliver and The Hood is almost destroyed, it is time to get to bottom of this: the PTSD. This way Oliver will be healed.

That's why Chase is here and he's not come before, it makes sense that the EP's said "what we're doing with season 5 couldn't be done before, this is the time".



I don't know Chase nor where he's from, but he's just looking to push Oliver to his limits to make him chose between living or dying. If he lives it's just because he doesn't deseerve redemption, if he lives, it's because it's destiny. Chase is a Redeemer, and his goal is to create the way in which Oliver is forced to chose between "healing" over giving up and die.

Apart from all the phycological side I can't forget about Talia. She's leading an organization from which we haven't heard before., we doesn't even know if her vendetta is for real, or just a way to justify being close to Oliver. We know from the EP's that Talia doesn't follow the thought and beliefs of his late father. Maybe she's just leading an organization or Redeemers like Chase.


Plus, Malcolm Merlyn "revived" KovaR?! Well then, I'm wondering then if Malcolm knew about the real ID of The Hood since the pilot. Where's Kovar?

Now, Oliver doesn't want to keep up the fight, for after all his lived and confessed it is hard not to question himslef if it was all for his father or if it was just for Oliver's need to feed his beast.

We'll have to wait into the flashbacks to check what's Oliver's decision.
The flashbacks are coming to an end, Oliver is healing.

Big episode and big tv show.
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Por TodoArrow

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