Oliver Queen has been released from prison in Arrow, although little about the circumstances of his release made sense. Between the inept and ill-explained efforts of Queen’s lawyer (who, it should be noted, is a supervillain pretending to be a lawyer) and a storyline that saw crime-boss Ricardo"The Dragon" Diaz being unrealistically lucky in his efforts to attack a maximum security prison, there is little about the events of the past two episodes that works on a legal or logistical level.
The effort to free Green Arrow began in the episode “Due Process.” It was here that Black Siren - the Laurel Lance of Earth 2, who is posing as the Laurel Lance of Earth 1 and serving as Star City’s District Attorney - began an effort to have Oliver Queen freed from prison, after he sent information to the outside world regarding the illegal medical experiments that were being conducted on the inmates at Slabside Penitentiary. Black Siren believed that the fact that a District Attorney was arguing on behalf of a defendant would help to sway the judge. She also argued that the FBI had not upheld their end of the plea bargain that saw Oliver Queen imprisoned, as he agreed to surrender in exchange for an immunity deal for his allies and the FBI’s assistance in destroying Ricardo Diaz’s criminal empire.
Ignoring that Black Siren didn’t seem to be sure if she was asking for an appeal of Oliver Queen’s conviction or a suspended sentence due to his heroic behavior behind bars, her plan didn’t really make sense. Any goodwill that might have been bought by having a prosecuting attorney argue on behalf of the defendant would likely be canceled out by the fact that said prosecuting attorney is one of the defendant’s oldest friends, ex-girlfriend and - as far as the rest of the world is concerned - his former partner in crime-fighting as the first Black Canary. Black Siren’s argument that the FBI didn’t hold up their end of Oliver Queen’s plea-bargain also didn’t hold water, as it was repeatedly stated in the Arrow season 6 finale that Oliver had agreed to surrender himself whether or not Diaz was ultimately captured.
Despite this, Black Siren was somehow able to persuade the FBI off-camera to agree to release Oliver Queen after Team Arrow captured Ricardo Diaz. This led into the events of “The Slabside Redemption”, which opened with Oliver Queen having six hours to go before he would be released from prison. At the same time, Ricardo Diaz was transported to Slabside Penitentiary and freed by a guard he had paid off. His grand plan was to destroy the prison with Oliver Queen inside it and make sure his arch-enemy didn’t live to see freedom, after tipping Oliver off to his presence by paying him a visit in the prison’s visitor’s area.
The scenes which follow beggared belief, even by Arrow standards. As Oliver attempts to warn the guards about the wolf in sheep’s clothing in their midst, he is met with total disbelief and multiple guards who are all too eager to pull out their shock sticks to silence him. By contrast, Diaz manages to walk into areas which should require an ID check to access (such as the visitor’s area of the prison) and is only confronted by lone guards whose response to finding him in places where he shouldn’t be is to ask him who he is instead of going for their weapons. Perhaps the most ludicrous moment in “The Slabside Redemption” comes when Diaz, having donned a guard’s uniform, is allowed to walk among the inmates in the exercise yard, loudly encouraging the inmates to rise up against the guards while waving a gun around. He does this for the better part of a minute before a guard approaches him, without a weapon, and tells him to be quiet.
Thankfully, as ridiculous as all of this was, the Arrow episode does end with Oliver Queen managing to overcome Diaz in a one-on-one fight, which ended with Oliver locking the crime boss up in his former cell. Oliver then walked through the prison gates without complaint, his six hours apparently having passed, to find his wife and best friend waiting for him. Hopefully the coming episodes of Arrow season 7 will see a return to the realism this series was once famous for now that Diaz is behind bars.
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Arrow season 7 continues Mondays at 8pm on The CW.
