The good news is, Arrow is awesome. Hardly news, but I thought I'd preface this by saying that before pointing out that the series is on a mini-hiatus and won't be back for its next new episode until Wednesday, February 26. So your best bet might be to get caught up in all the Winter Olympics sporting events and try to put the excellent CW series out of your mind for the next couple of weeks. But before you do that, watch the awesome preview above, which tells us that Revenge has a new target and "The dead are owed nothing."
So who's narrating and is it the same guy that asks Oliver to say his name at about the :35 mark, because we get a blurry look at someone's face at this point:
Is it someone we've already met like Count Vertigo? His voice and the narrator's are similar enough, no? I'm crediting Hero Blend guru Eric Eisenberg for this guess. As I recall, the last time we saw Count Vertigo, he made the foolish mistake of threatening Felicity and paying for it by taking three arrows to the chest before falling through a window. We saw his body presumably dead on top of a car, but I mean, maybe wasn't all dead? Use of the word "revenge" in the trailer implies history, but given the flashbacks, it's entirely possible that this new villain is linked to Oliver's island days somehow.
What we do know is that there are going to be some big villains coming up on Arrow when the series returns from its mini-break. Executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told EW that episodes 14-18 will feature "great, big villains one after another," and that "You're going to see a couple of returning favorites and a couple of amazing new ones." So it could go either way. Update: IMDB does offer a clue, as it includes an actor and a character name that may be the villain of this episode. If you want to be potentially spoiled, see who actor Robert Knepper is playing here.
Moving on to other aspects of the preview, we have the sight of Oliver as Arrow on the island...
And in front of a fire that could be some kind of pyre or maybe a signal for someone?
And then there's this glimpse of Oliver with the Lance family. Sara's lack of bangs and Dinah's straighter hair indicates that this is a current scene and not a flashback, which is just brimming for potentially awkward tension.
I'm in agreement with our Arrow recapper Jesse that I didn't love the way last night's "Heir to the Demon" ended, as I do think Oliver and Sara would work better as a kickass team than as a couple. But I also think their romantic arc needs to run its course one way or the other, and having them get back together would certainly get the job done. The preview showed a shot of them kissing that looked like it was from the same scene that closed out "Heir to the Demon" and now we see the whole family having dinner. And note the wine bottle right in front of Laurel. Not only does there need to be some resolution between Oliver and Sara to at least acknowledge the romantic relationship that they had --however briefly-- before Oliver thought Sara died, but the issue of Sara sleeping with her sister's boyfriend needs to come to a head. Because how can they not address that?
I'm not exactly Laurel's biggest fan, but I can't fault her for being angry over the situation. Plus, we saw her confused/devastated reaction when she first learned her sister was on the boat. Grief and betrayal have to be a pretty toxic mixture of emotions and she would've been harboring them for years. Now that Laurel knows Sara's alive, she can get good and angry if she wants. We saw a glimpse of it last night and I can't imagine she's feeling much better, especially if she finds out her sister and Oliver are involved, assuming last night's kiss and whatever followed wasn't just a one-time thing.
We'll have to wait and see where things pick up when the series returns in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, read Jesse's breakdown of last night's episode here.
