The show takes a dark turn as Oliver is forced to confront the real reason that he became the Hood....
When I saw things earlier in the week talking about a "game changing" revelation, I wasn't expecting the revelation that we got: Oliver started killing people because he liked killing them and he started using the list as an excuse to keep killing. So he created the persona of the Hood as a way of walling off those dark impulses from the Oliver Queen persona so that he could live with himself. That tells me that Oliver is not some psychopath who gets off on killing, because someone who truly loves killing for the sake of killing wouldn't need to create a whole new persona that way.
Given everything that happened to Oliver on the island, I think he was confronted with situations that he had never seen before and was looking for a way to get back control and power when he had completely lost the control and power he had as the scion of a rich family in Starling City. He also has only ever gone after people who did wrong, so there is that. Ultimately, however, the start of his crusade was rooted not in a desire to do good, but rather a desire to channel these dark impulses he had, which does undermine a lot of the initial good he has done.
All that being said, Oliver has changed a lot over the years. He recognized that giving free rein to the dark impulses of killing was not a good thing, so he turned from them and did start doing things in order to help people in the city. Oliver's conscious decision to turn from the monster the Hood was to become the Arrow and then the Green Arrow shows that he does truly have good intentions in mind now.
My other question lies in wondering why the act of killing felt good to him. Did he enjoy killing for the sake of killing? As I say above, I suspect that the answer is no, otherwise he probably would have been a bit more indiscriminate in his choices of kills. I suspect that he enjoyed killing people who had done wrong because he was able to help people who had been harmed and punish people who would not otherwise have been punished. Does that make the killings right? No, but it does make them a little less horrific.
Obviously, the rest of the season is going to be spent figuring out how Oliver can reconcile these dark impulses with his current set of morals and practices. I am curious about how the rest of the team will react when Oliver (or Chase) reveals this information. And I wonder how long Oliver's decision to quit being the Green Arrow will last. I suspect not long at all, unless he wants to start confronting Chase as Oliver Queen openly, which would not be a good idea.
Until next week!
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