YMMV / Arrow S 4 E 13 Sins Of The Father

• Badass Decay: Malcolm, who only lost to Oliver once thanks to a near-sacrifice move, and last season held off both Nyssa and Oliver at the same time, gets curbstomped by Oliver here. Justified because Oliver has been improving his skills to the point where he surpassed Ra's al Ghul, who Malcolm was too afraid to face.
  • Nyssa, to a lesser extent. She has to blackmail Oliver to fight Malcolm, because she is afraid that she can't defeat him, when in a previous season, she did so. Later on, she struggles in a brief skirmish with Malcolm. Again, arguably justified because she was in a cell and not training for several months.
• Character Rerailment: After the bizarre attempt last season to turn Malcolm into a quasi-ally in the face of all the horrible stuff he's done, here he's turned back into a straight villain, complete with a betrayal that Oliver will clearly never be able to forgive even with everything else he let go for Thea's sake.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Malcolm's betrayal of Team Arrow was foreshadowed back in "Legends of Yesterday" when he collected Vandal Savage's remains to resurrect him, even though the man just tried to kill Thea.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Nyssa credits Laurel most of all for her decision to turn her back on her family's legacy and disband the League of Assassins, which stems from the two of them bonding due to the death of Sara. Which means that the end of a centuries (at least) long secret society which has devoted itself to shaping world events owes its destruction, in part, to a shared meal of french fries and milkshakes.
• Moral Event Horizon: Malcolm spends the entire episode passing it, but Nyssa passes it at the beginning, when she not only holds Thea's cure hostage, but threatens the city unless Oliver kills Malcolm. It's ultimately subverted in her case, as she has a Heel Realization and decides to disband the League and destroy her father's ring.