As Arrow reaches the middle of it’s final season, episode four merges together the past, present and future in one timeline, as Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance are brought to the bunker to regroup with Rene, Dinah, and Diggle, but more importantly, Oliver turns to see that he isn’t the only one being shifted through time, as before him stands his children, Mia Smoak and William Clayton, as well as Diggle’s adopted child, and son of Bronze Tiger, Connor Hawke, but these aren’t the children they knew, and instead they are the characters we have followed from the future timeline, from Starling City 2040.

Reunion’s are usually a happy time for those being reunited, but this being the CW Network, not everything is sunshine and rainbows, as William and Oliver seem to be the only one’s that are happy with the current situation, since Mia is stubborn and still very angry at Oliver for leaving her and Felicity alone to be a hero, and as it turns out, John Diggle has not yet adopted Connor Hawke, so that makes things somewhat awkward for the two of them, since the only son Diggle knows at this moment in time, is his own son with Lyla, who is John Diggle Jr. who Diggle simply calls J.J for short.

As the episode goes on, we watch drama build between the two separate teams, either through Mia and Connor forcing William to lie to their parents about the future, especiall regarding the events that happened last episode with Rene’s daughter Zoe, or through characters like Diggle, who are struggling to come to terms with his adopted son Connor, and the longer the secrets are kept from each other, the more tension builds until William eventually snaps and reveals all.

There’s an old biblical saying that goes “The sins of the Father shall be visited upon the son” but in this episode of Arrow, it is the sins of the children that start to cause drama amongst the team, as William reveals Zoe’s fate to everyone and all of a sudden, Diggle and Rene fall out over their childrens future quarrels, but as always, the team eventually finds its feet again and become stronger for it, so instead of worrying about the future, they begin to make their own futures.

The cast have all worked so well together during their separate timelines in the previous season, and now, in this merged timeline, we finally got to see just how they would work together as one large group, in which they all performed spectacularly. Dinah became a neutral voice for the group, Oliver and his children fix broken bridges, strengthening his relationships with them despite their initial issues with him from their own futures. Even Curtis Holt a.k.a Mr. Terrific (Echo Kellum) returns to bring his usual spark of humour and happiness to the more intense scenes, somewhat replacing the role of Felicity since she hasn’t appeared yet in the season, and is rumoured to only appear in the season finale for the big sendoff of the show, and with the final scenes of this episode, it seems that Curtis is here to stay.

There’s plenty of great action in this episode, but there is also a lot of drama, and the writers of this season so far have all managed to balance the two better than any of the previous seasons in my opinion, because there doesn’t feel like there’s more of one theme than the other, which makes the episodes flow much better, giving the viewers that feeling of being truly entertained and enthralled in the story.

Arrow returns on the 27th November 2019, and will see Oliver Queen return to Russia.