Arrow 6x16 : The Thanatos Guild review

Be warned there will be *SPOILERS* involved in this review. With that being said let's get into it

Arrow returns and for what it's worth I don't think they could have come back with a more better episode. It begins as we're treated a flashback of Thea and Malcolm Merlyn from 4 years ago. Nothing really happens though as we've seen it before but it's a nice reminder nevertheless. The episode really begins in Nanda Parbat however as The League Of Assassin's now have a new leader after Malcolm's death. A woman named Athena. (Would have liked if it was Talia instead but nope) if it was Talia it could have lead to some interesting sister bickering but also no. We see Nyssa standing before her new leader. Shortly after this a fight breaks out among the league as Nyssa detonates a plastic explosive inside the building and makes her leave. 

Back at the bunker and the team are throwing Thea a going away party as she has decided to leave Star City with Roy and start a new life but as you can expect things don't go as planned as while they are driving out of the city the league attacks their car causing them to spin out of control but Nyssa comes to the rescue and they all go back to the bunker. Nyssa informs everyone that before his death Malcolm discovered a secret map and that the league are after it want to claim it for themselves. So it's mission time to find this map. Nyssa tells Thea that there is one person in Star City who trusted Malcolm and they go to see her to which she gives them the location of the map. The team set out and find it in cased in a Hellraiser cube as Felicity calls it. As they take out the map it's discovered that there is nothing on it. It's completely blank. This leaves Nyssa reeling as all this bloodshed is for nothing apparently or is it? as later in the episode as Thea and Athena fight Thea's blood gets spilled onto the map and it reveals itself. Turns out Malcolm found the location of 3 Lazarus pits before his death and the league want them all for their own devilish uses. More on Thea and this whole situation later. Dinah and Curtis get some much needed character improvement in this episode as they go looking for evidence of the SCPD captain to find out if she is indeed dirty and working for Ricardo Diaz. Even more interesting is later in the episode is when Dinah and Curtis sneak into the SCPD building Dinah finds drugs stashed in the captains office and as Curtis's analyses them turns out Diaz's drug of choice is actually Vertigo and this drug is not that. But later Dinah learns of captain Hill's corruption in trying to bring down Oliver and ultimately help Diaz take control of the city. It's all simple storytelling but it really worked in this episode. 

The episode ends as Thea Roy and Nyssa all leave. Thea and Roy finally decide to go start a new life somewhere while also trying to figure out more about Malcolm Merlyn along the way leading to a really emotional scene between her and Oliver. I don't know if Thea will ever be back but based off this scene I don't think she will be. And that's okay as her character has really done all it can on this show in my opinion.  There's a bunch more to the episode like John and Oliver bickering over John wanting to be Green Arrow again full time but Oliver kind of stringing him along and Curtis finding a new male companion to which they agree to go on a date together. This wasn't the best episode of Arrow by any means but considering what we've been getting this season it was a really fun and energetic episode that continuing on from the last really has gotten my interest back into this show again. Cheers to Team Arrow!

★★★★