Arrow [Season 1, Episode 1]
Pilot
Shown 10/Oct/12
A castaway is discovered on a desert island.
He is Oliver Queen, heir to a billion-dollar fortune.
And much like Bruce Wayne, he becomes a masked vigilante by night.
Villain of the week is Corporate scumbag Brian Markinson (
Caprica, Continuum
). He usually plays senior Police officers, but here he exploits the poor and needy.
Our hero has a rich family life (pun intended),
but this is linked to a conspiracy which is key to the backstory and the series plot arc.
This is more like the
Sarah Wayne Callies
version of
Tarzan
than the more recent
Smallville
. Olly Queen is now a bloodthirsty serial killer.
The police detectives investigating The Arrow are Roger R Cross (
Continuum
) and Paul Blackthorne (the documentarian from
The River
). Naturally, there is a personal grudge attached -
the white cop blames Olly for the death of his daughter.
And the cop's daughter is Olly's ex, part of a love triangle with her (dead) sister -
and with Olly's (still-living) wingman.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 2]
Honor Thy Father
Shown 17/Oct/12
Our serial killer has a new victim on his hit list.
By strange coincidence, his list (albeit five years old)
is the same as that of his ex-GF Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) - even down to the order of the victims.
Diggle the bodyguard gets to show his skills.
And he also sees some of Olly's skills.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 3]
Lone Gunmen
Shown 24/Oct/12
The Arrow continues his vendetta against the rich and happy.
One target on the hit-list is also targeted by a pro hitman named Deadshot.
Now, the vigilante is a murderer who does not kill for money -
he was born with a silver spoon up his ass,
he got kicked out of FOUR schools and never learned any Shakespeare!
This arrogant, uneducated layabout dares to look down on a hard-working hitman.
The story is told with a clumsy voice-over to deliver exposition.
We also get flashbacks to his time on the desert island.
He was kept prisoner by a Jap, like in the Lee Marvin film Hell in the Pacific.
But this time, the Jap is actually Chinese - and has Ninja skills.
And dresses like Robinson Crusoe!
Olly and his wingman Tommy plan to set up their own nightclub.
It will be in a crappy neighbourhood named The Glades.
However, Olly's plan to save the neighbourhood by investing in it
(and thus gentrifying it) will probably backfire.
As property prices go up, so do rents.
Thus, the impoverished citizens Olly wants to help
would end up getting priced out of their own homes.
The supporting characters actually get a chance to breathe this episode.
Olly and his bestest buddy go out for a night on the town.
The bodyguard introduces them to his sister-in-law.
Olly's little sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) gets drunk, and reveals that the wingman had a fling with the ex-GF Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
). All in all, enough drama for a soap opera -
and hopefully, this show can flesh it out and keep it going for as long as necessary
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 4]
An Innocent Man
Shown 31/Oct/12
The big case in the news is a man on death row, 48 hours from execution.
But he was convicted of killing his wife,
and she worked for a corrupt industrialist on the Arrow hitlist.
The chances are that the employer was involved in the killing,
and that the condemned man is innocent.
He gets his ex-GF Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) to act as the convict's lawyer, to see if they can make one last appeal.
The Arrow approach is not in fitting with the legal approach.
His only approach is violence and extortion.
However, it comes in useful during a climactic prison riot.
The flashbacks are of the Oriental man giving Olly a choice.
Either he kills, cooks and eats a bird -
or else he slowly starves to death.
Walter (Colin Salmon -
Resident Evil
) discovers $2.6 million missing from the Vancouver office's accounts.
He starts following the paper trail, which makes Olly's mom very nervous.
He even involves Felicity the female techie who helped Olly in the previous episode.
The moral of the story is that too many people in the city are selfish.
A hero is someone who cares about others -
like Diggle, who enlisted in the Military wing of the Federal Government.
Completely the opposite of
Atlas Shrugged
. But Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman AKA Captain Jack from
Torchwood
) is on hand to to be self-serving enough for everyone.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 5]
Damaged
Shown 07/Nov/12
Olly gets the third degree from Detective Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
). He is the father of Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
), and has a personal vendetta against Olly.
Not that one can blame him -
his characterisation of the Arrow as violent and recklessly dangerous is spot on.
However, it is unrealistic for any TV Cop to be allowed to participate in the case
if he has a personal grudge.
Olly wants Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) as his lawyer.
This would be yet another conflict of interest.
Usually soap opera-type social drama is a GOOD thing in a show.
This may turn out to be the exception that proves the rule.
The island flashback is of Olly getting captured by the SWAT team.
Olly is under house arrest.
But a German arms dealer is in town,
trying to sell a hundred SAW LMGs to gang-bangers in The Glades.
Luckily, Olly has a sidekick who can pose as The Arrow,
thus providing him with the perfect alibi.
Didn't he already use this idea in
Smallville
?
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 6]
Legacies
Shown 14/Nov/12
A gang of armed robbers is on a bank-robbing spree.
They copy a number of famous bank heist films,
even to the extent of of having a trigger-happy cop-killer on the team.
Their escape plans are overly elaborate,
but that is the least of this show's problems.
Diggle the bodyguard-cum-sidekick wants The Arrow to catch the killers.
Apparently the local cops are not capable of doing their jobs.
Arrow wants to concentrate of the high-level crooks and corrupt businessmen who ruined the city.
His flashbacks are of him being harrassed by his father's ghost,
about trying to undo his father's corrupt legacy.
Which contrasts nicely with the family of bank robbers,
led by a father who was a victim of Olly's dad.
The soap opera aspects of this show are developing nicely,
insofar as the supporting cast actually have lives outside of the main plot.
Strangely, Olly Queen's family mansion appears to be the Luthor mansion from
Smallville
(albeit shot from a different camera angle).
His wingman has two potential love interest - Olly's ex Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) and Olly's sister Thea (
Willa Holland
)!
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 7]
Muse of Fire
Shown 28/Nov/12
Olly's mother (
Susanna Thompson
) is wounded in a drive-by shooting.
He swears vengeance on the shooter.
Little does he know that the shooter is a fellow vigilante, The Huntress.
Olly meets up with the local Crime Lord.
The Queen Family has been doing business with the Crime Family
- well, their legitimate front company, etc.
He gets to go on a date with the Crime Lord's daughter.
Olly's BFF Tommy and his ex-GF Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) go out for dinner.
However, the BFF relies on his father's money.
And we get to see who his father is!
Helo from
BSG 2003
was a straight-arrow in
Dollhouse
, but became a morally dubious politician in
Continuum
. Here he takes a step further, as a sadistic gangster.
But he is still a nicer person than the so-called hero of this show.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 8]
Vendetta
Shown 05/Dec/12
Olly and Huntress try to work together.
But she is a kill-crazy bitch who wants to murder her own father.
Well, she grew up in a Mafia household,
no wonder she is a sociopathic killer.
Olly's BFF Tommy and his ex-GF Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) have their own soap-opera subplot.
Can he adjust to living without vast sums of money?
Will he mature enough to stop comparing himself to Olly?
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 9]
Year's End
Shown 12/Dec/12
Olly hosts a big party at his family mansion.
But he has bigger things to worry about.
There is a copycat archer on the loose,
murdering rich people who had previously been terrorised by The Arrow.
Felicity the nerdy babe and Olly's stepfather Walter (Colin Salmon -
Resident Evil
) discover the secret of the notebook. But who made the list?
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 10]
Burned
Shown Jan/13
It is three weeks since the events of the previous ep.
Walter (Colin Salmon -
Resident Evil
) is still MIA,
so Arrow's family is still moping about.
For Arrow himself, this is just cover for the real reason he is moping
- because he got his ass handed to him by the Evil Archer!
He needs a case to get himself in gear again.
The sidekick of Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) at the Legal Aid place is the show's token Black chick.
Her brother, a fire-fighter, is killed in the line of duty.
But she suspects he was murdered ...
Laurel gets the Arrow to investigate.
He is not an investigator, but it takes a killer to catch a killer.
He discovers that a man dressed as a fire-fighter (reminiscent of the Miner in
My Bloody Valentine
) is bumping off members of a certain team.
Tommy, the Best Buddy, suggests using the half-built night-club
as venue for a charity benefit for the Firefighters' widows & orphans fund.
As predictable, this makes it bait for the killer.
Laurel may suspect who Arrow really is.
And her father plays nice with her,
but still has a plan to catch the vigilante.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 11]
Trust But Verify
Shown Jan/13
Someone is ambushing bank cash trucks, using military weaponry.
Olly suspects Ben Browder (
Farscape
), who is already on his dad's hit-list from five years ago.
But Browder was Diggle's mentor back in the military.
Diggle insists that the man is innocent until proven guilty.
So he goes undercover by taking a job at Browder's security firm.
Trust is also an issue at home.
Mrs Queen does not trust Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) - she wants Proof of Life.
But her daughter sees them talking,
and assumes they are having an affair.
The young girl wanted a car for her birthday,
but may relapse into substance abuse under the stress.
In the flashbacks, Olly disguises himself as a guard
and infiltrates the enemy camp so he can rescue his friend.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 12]
Vertigo
Shown 30/Jan/13
Olly's kid sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) is up in court on charges of drug possession and driving under the influence.
Because she just turned 18 (and is thus legally an adult)
the Judge wants to throw the book at her, and make an example.
Olly goes after the man behind the new drug his sister was caught with.
This not-so-super villain is The Count,
so-called because he injects his victims in the neck with a two-needle syringe.
He is played by the rookie Fed from
Fringe
. The character is basically a version of The Scarecrow from
Batman Begins
- ironic, because this story is set in the DC Universe too.
Can Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) talk her daddy Detective Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) into bending the Judge's ear?
Will the kid sister accept a sentence of community service?
After all, Laurel needs a new sidekick after the token black chick went walkabout
when her Firefighter brother died a few episodes back.
The cops are hunting The Count too,
including a lady detective who used to be one of Olly's flings.
They have had no success for the last few months.
However, somehow they managed to get an informer in place.
This is inconvenient for Olly, who uses his Russian Mob connections to go undercover.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 13]
Betrayal
Shown 06/Feb/13
Crime Lord Cyrus Vance (David Anders -
Alias
) gets out of prison.
He wants to make a big impression on the city,
and decides to take out the vigilante.
The villain's master-plan is to kidnap someone the Hero cares about, and use them as bait.
He stupidly chooses a certain lady whose dad is a psycho cop!
Can the so-called hero kill 24 henchmen in as many seconds?
He talks about cleaning up the city's crappy neighbourhood:
Looks like he is taking the easy way out, killing all males between 16 and 60.
It will make things easier for Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) and her Legal Aid folks - no trials necessary, just executions.
In the flashbacks, Olly meets Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
)! Not only does the stranger look and sound like Crixus
(he even has the Gaul's heavy antipodean accent!),
he has the same mistrust of amateurs and love for swordplay.
Diggle uses his initiative, and spies on Olly's mother (
Susanna Thompson
). She meets with Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) again.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 14]
The Odyssey
Shown 13/Feb/13
Olly gets wounded by the first of his victims to convincingly fight back.
He must tell Felicity the tech babe the truth ...
but will she help him?
Olly spends most of the ep in a near-death coma.
This is the standard gimmick used in clip shows,
because it allows the main character to flash back to clips of previous eps.
Because we are only half way through Season One,
there are no clips to use.
However, because the show steals from
Lost
's format of having each backstory as a flashback,
we get extra minutes of Olly's time on the island.
He and Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) try to take over the airfield.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 15]
Dodger
Shown 20/Feb/13
The Artful Dodger is a European art thief,
played by rent-a-villain James Callis (
BSG 2003
). He comes to town,
and with his typical flair he draws far too much attention.
His MO involves using bomb-collars to extort hostages into doing the stealing for him.
Felicity the blonde tech babe has misgivings about Olly's murderous habits.
Olly and Diggle take her slumming for burgers.
The guys dare each other to ask out their respective love interests.
Diggle has to go for his widowed sister-in-law the waitress,
while Olly has to go for the lady cop who is investigating Dodger.
Olly's sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) and her boss Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) get mugged by a hoodie-wearing purse-snatcher.
This pretty-boy has a sob story, but he is recognisable as the bully from
Teen Wolf
. Laurel calls her daddy the cop, not her own boyfriend.
Olly's mother (
Susanna Thompson
) chats with an old friend from China.
She is having second thoughts about The Undertaking.
She wants to hire Triad hit-woman China White (
Kelly Hu
) for some wet-work.
In the flashbacks, Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) is wounded.
Olly goes to Yao Fei's old cave, to find the super-herbs.
He meets a stranger,
who claims to have been shipwrecked and escaped from the soldiers.
But will Olly choose to trust the stranger?
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 16]
Dead to Rights
Shown 27/Feb/13
The psycho vigilante ambushes a world-class hitman.
Unbeknownst to him, this is the fellow that his mother (
Susanna Thompson
) hired (via the Triad).
Naturally, the Triad just hire a new hitman.
They bring Deadshot out of retirement.
He was not killed, it seems - just blinded.
But with a fancy red cybernetic eye, he is back in business.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) is up for a big Humanitarian award.
He tries to bond with his son, although he has set himself up for failure.
But we get some wonderful background info on him.
He actually has an interesting motive for trying to sort out The Glades.
Olly's sister bumps into the thieving Bart Simpson dude, Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
). She tries to get him a job at Olly's club.
Back on the island, Olly tries to fix the radio for Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
).
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 17]
The Huntress Returns
Shown 20/Mar/13
Huntress is back in town.
She wants to murder her daddy,
rather than see him testify against other mobsters
and get into the Witness Protection Program.
She extorts help from Olly, using his friends as leverage.
Diggle does not like this at all, and wants rid of her.
Olly is caught between the three women in his life -
Felicity (the tech babe), Helena (Huntress the serial killer) and the hot cop.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) has TWO English parents with Yank accents.
Her dad, the cop, was Harry Dresden in the
Dresden Files
. Her mother is back in town too -
Alex Kingston
- the second recurring guest-star from
Dr Who (2005)
. She holds on to the belief that Laurel's sister Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) is still alive.
Back on the island, Olly and Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) try to sabotage the villain's rocket-launcher.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 18]
Salvation
Shown 27/Mar/13
A serial killer is on the loose.
Much like
Dexter
, he is a vigilante who enjoys torture.
Wow, this has become the new cliché.
And although the perp starts by choosing the same victims as Olly,
the ante is upped when he chooses a recurring character for the climax of the episode.
The Perp used to work on the city's subway system.
It takes most of the ep before the heroes work out he might be hiding there.
In the flashbacks, Olly and Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) barter with Fryers.
He uses the Chinese guy's hot daughter as leverage.
Olly's mother (
Susanna Thompson
) has to cover her tracks.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) is out for revenge.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 19]
Unfinished Business
Shown 03/Apr/13
Vertigo, the made-up drug of previous eps, is on the streets again.
The Count is the obvious suspect, but he is in an asylum.
He is like the local version of Batman villains the Scarecrow or the Joker.
Detective Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
), and his sidekick Roger R Cross (
Continuum
), suspect that the Vertigo is being sold in Olly's club.
They take a very close look at the club, including the bank accounts and the basement.
Diggle is obsessing with Deadshot, the hitman who made his brother collateral damage.
The flashbacks are of Olly getting trained in the Martial Arts by Yao Fei's daughter, Shado.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 20]
Home Invasion
Shown 24/Apr/13
Diggle is obsessing with Deadshot, the hitman who made his brother collateral damage.
There is another hitman in town too - Gunn the Lawyer from
Angel
. He is after a young boy who is a witness, protected by Olly's friends Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) and Tommy.
Olly must choose which of the two hitmen to go after first.
The flashbacks are of Olly getting trained in Archery by Yao Fei's daughter, Shado.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 21]
The Undertaking
Shown 01/May/13
Olly investigates the kidnapping of his stepfather Walter (Colin Salmon -
Resident Evil
). Since Diggle has quit, the only field agent he can use is the blonde hacker chick.
She looks good in a dress,
and she has a tendency to make sexually-oriented freudian slips when talking to Olly.
However, she is not really cut out for field work.
The flashbacks are from before Olly got to the island.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) invited Olly's father to participate in The Undertaking
- Mr Merlyn's plan for catastrophic revenge on the underclass
residents of the dodgy Glades neighbourhood.
Nobody in the conspiracy realises that wiping out the working class
leaves nobody to work in their factories!
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 22]
Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Shown 08/May/13
The Dark Archer makes a reappearance,
killing off everyone who knows the secret of the doomsday device.
But the police check phone records,
and realise that Merlyn Corp is involved somehow.
Worse, they track Olly's hacker Felicity too.
In the flashbacks, Olly and Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) are monologued by Fryers.
Arrow [Season 1, Episode 23]
Sacrifice
Shown 15/May/13
The flashbacks and the main story are simple:
Olly must escape captivity,
kill the series villain
and prevent disaster.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 1]
City of Heroes
Shown 09/Oct/13
Olly has fled back to the island,
so Diggle and Blondie have to come looking for him.
A lot has changed in Starling City.
There are new supporting characters - the DA and local politician Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro -
True Blood
) are both keen to get involved.
Isabel Rochev (
Summer Glau
) wants to launch a hostile takeover of Queen Industries.
And with Olly having to run it,
his sister gets to run Olly's nightclub.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) is no longer interested in defending the Public.
Instead, she has joined the District Attorney's office.
Her only goal now is to avenge her BF Tommy and bring down the Archer.
A gang of copycat vigilantes are shooting rich people.
They are not following Olly's secret list of targets -
they hit the rich, and especially Olly's family.
After all, with Merlyn dead Olly's mommy (
Susanna Thompson
) is the scapegoat.
Back on the island, the three survivors discover they are not alone.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 2]
Identity
Shown 16/Oct/13
Olly's sister's BF Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) is still a wannabe vigilante.
He tries to interfere in a biker gang's hijacking of medical supplies.
But the bikers are led by Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
) and backed by China White (
Kelly Hu
) and the Triad ... while the cops are still cracking down on vigilantes!
Back on the island,
Olly and his friends discover the newcomers are after a secret from World War Two.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 3]
Broken Dolls
Shown 23/Oct/13
Arrow the Hooded Archer gets saved by the female copycat,
who has no nickname (and no objection to killing).
Olly sends his biggest fan to investigate at street level.
It is lucky that Olly arrested China White (
Kelly Hu
) last ep - this new girl has the same MO.
Black leather, peroxide blonde wig and kick-ass moves.
The killer of the week is an escapee from the local prison.
The earthquake did not just kill innocent people -
it helped guilty ones escape!
This perp was Detective Lance's biggest case.
And now that Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) is only a patrolman,
he teams up with the Hooded Arrow to catch him.
The Perp is a criminal genius
who is always one step ahead of the cops.
In contrast, Olly is a psycho who is willing to torture the perp's lawyer
for info that could have easily been gained from politely asking a prison guard.
Back on the island, the female is the most competent of the trio.
Not only does Shado have kick-ass moves,
she also studied pre-med before she was brought to the island.
But Olly will not trust her to look after herself,
and always goes rushing to save her.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 4]
Crucible
Shown 30/Oct/13
Olly discovers who the mystery woman is.
Without her wig and figure-enhancing corset (as worn by the stunt double),
she is a plain-looking teenage girl ...
An enterprising man in the Glades has nicknamed himself The Mayor.
He arms his gang with military-grade M16M4 rifles.
Only natural, since Olly's upping the level of violence in the city
means a natural arms race will occur.
Olly's answer to the increased gun violence is to finance a gun buyback programme.
Isabel Rochev (
Summer Glau
), Olly's new business partner, pops up long enough to tell him
she will not help him spend her company's loot on charity gigs.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 5]
League of Assassins
Shown 06/Nov/13
A Ninja is in town, looking for Black Canary (
Caity Lotz
). Since he cannot get her,
he will go after the people she loves - her sister Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) and her father (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
). Olly has to protect them both,
without revealing her secret or his own.
The flashbacks are of Black Canary's background,
and how she came to be aboard the freighter.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 6]
Keep Your Enemies Closer
Shown 13/Nov/13
Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) conscripts Diggle into visiting Russia to rescue his female secret agent friend, Lilah.
After all, she was only there to help Diggle find Deadshot.
Olly and Felicity come along to make his trip to Russia look legitimate.
Yes, Olly must have had his passport renewed since he got back.
Isabel Rochev (
Summer Glau
) thinks Olly is slacking off, so she comes along to keep an eye on him.
The flashbacks continue Olly's time on the freighter.
We find out more about Black Canary,
about how Olly got involved with the Russian mob,
and whether or not Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) and Shado the Chinese girl survived the bombardment.
Back in Starling City, Olly's mother (
Susanna Thompson
) is still on trial for her life.
Her lawyer (
Teryl Rothery
) advises Olly's sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) to dump her convicted felon of a boyfriend, Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
). But rather than be honest with him,
the young woman initiates a painful breakup with him for fictitious reasons.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 7]
State v. Queen
Shown 20/Nov/13
During The Undertaking, the prison guards evacuated themselves
but left the inmates alone and unguarded.
The Count, the insane drug-dealer (like a cut-price Scarecrow),
managed to escape.
The DA begins the trial of Olly's mother (
Susanna Thompson
). Worse, the Count uses this as an opportunity to dose certain VIPs with Vertigo.
Everyone he doses starts to feel withdrawl symptoms,
thus creating a vast market for his drug.
The flashbacks involve Olly taking the villains to the new mcguffin.
What are the chances of Fryers putting his HQ
on the same island that the other gang were looking for?
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 8]
The Scientist
Shown 04/Dec/13
A super-soldier attacks one of Queen Inc's warehouses.
Olly and his team investigate, as do the police.
An out-of-town CSI named Barry drops by to offer his help.
He can read a crime scene like a book,
but Olly realises the young man is hiding something.
Back on the island,
the four fugitives manage to find the Japanese submarine.
The Mira-Curu (Miracle) serum is on board.
They do not have a sedative for Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
), but if they do not give him the serum they will die anyway.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 9]
Three Ghosts
Shown 11/Dec/13
Olly is back, and wants a second shot at the super-soldier.
However, he is unhappy at having a new team-member.
Back on the island,
the villains catch up with our heroes.
Olly is given Sophie's choice:
which one of the two babes will he sacrifice?
We finally see who is behind the villains this Season.
Nice twist!
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 10]
Blast Radius
Shown 15/Jan/14
A mad bomber is on the rampage in the city.
Olly sets out to catch him,
but is hampered by Felicity's absence.
Yes, tech-girl is out of town in Central City,
at the bedside of Barry her new BF while he is in a coma.
But Olly is less than happy at the fact she is developing a personal life,
even if her other half is in a comatose state.
Back on the island, Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) is feeling the effects of the super-soldier serum.
He wants to kill everyone on the freighter,
before they regroup and hunt our heroes down.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) starts to become suspicious of her sort-of-BF, Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro -
True Blood
). She investigates more deeply into him
than she ever did into Olly - or into her last BF's father.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 11]
Blind Spot
Shown 22/Jan/14
The theme of the episode is ... can you trust your friends?
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) starts popping the pills she borrowed,
as a distraction from her growing paranoia about Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro -
True Blood
).
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 12]
Tremors
Shown 29/Jan/14
Someone pays good money to bust a murderous hitman named the Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
) out of jail.
An overseas villain will pay big money for Malcolm Merlyn's superweapon.
Since he and his son are officially dead,
their home and all their assets are in the hands of the receivers.
But instead of being under lock and key as evidence of mass murder,
the superweapon is just locked up in his garage!
Back on the island, Olly and Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) discover Slade's plan for destroying the freighter.
After all, Fryer's gear is still sitting around.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) is bottoming out.
She will not take advice from her father.
Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) is still in town,
and she is recruiting for a Squad.
Walter (Colin Salmon -
The World Is Not Enough
) introduces a new business partner to his ex-wife, Mrs Queen (
Susanna Thompson
). Nicholas Lea (
X-Files
) is a political manipulator, looking for someone he can put up against Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro -
True Blood
). It seems that Blood's policies would bankrupt the city,
and there is nobody else in the race that would provide an electable alternative.
However, Mrs Queen (having just been sprung from Death Row by her great lawyers) seems to be their best bet!
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 13]
Heir to the Demon
Shown 05/Feb/14
The League of Shadows sends a new assassin to town,
a beautiful Eurasian brunette called Nyssa (
Katrina Law
- the third recurring character played by a
Spartacus
cast member).
She is flagged on the police computers,
and does not hesitate in taking down every security guard in the airport.
Starling City Police do not bother to look for her,
although the fact she is Ras Al-Ghul's daughter!
Black Canary Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) is back in town.
She wants to protect her family, especially with Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) hospitalised.
But Ras' daughter has a personal agenda with her.
The flashbacks are of the Lance family six years ago,
before the boat sank.
The sisters were very close,
but there was an element of sibling rivalry.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 14]
Time of Death
Shown 26/Feb/14
Felicity the tech girl is uncomfortable now Black Canary is on the team.
Everyone except Felicity is a combat expert, to start with.
Will she prove herself this week?
A hacker named Tockman, AKA Clock King (Robert Knepper -
Stargate: Universe S2
) is masterminding high-level robberies.
He hacks the location's CCTV, and uses radio to guide his minions in and out.
Just like the Kingpin (John Rhys Davies -
Sliders
) did in the
Incredible Hulk
TV movie from the 1980s featuring the crossover with
Daredevil
. His other skill is to make computers explode as if they were full of dynamite
- like the villain does to MI6 HQ in
Skyfall
. Even an un-modified cellphone magically explodes on command!
Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) tries to fit in again.
The Queen Family nightclub needs a new barmaid.
She also gets a couple of parties thrown in her honour.
One is at Olly's mother's house,
even though Olly has childishly decided he is not speaking to his mommy (
Susanna Thompson
). The other is at Laurel's apartment,
where Sarah invites Olly to attend.
Yes, even more family drama!
Back on the island,
a tiny single-engine civilian plane gets shot down by the villains' freighter.
Sarah looks after the pilot while Olly and Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) run to the fuselage to get the first aid kit.
By incredible coincidence,
just like Olly and Sarah the pilot happens to be from Starling City!
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 15]
The Promise
Shown 05/Mar/14
This picks up from the cliff-hanger ending of the previous ep,
when Olly came face to face with his arch-nemesis.
Now he has to give him a guided tour of the family mansion.
Can Felicity and the others get a rescue plan formulated in time?
Olly reminisces about the plan that he, Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) and Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) hatched to take the freighter.
It is quite elaborate, involving unnecessary use of a fire-arrow.
It also requires the arch-villain to order all his guards to abandon their posts
and run into a cramped and ill-lit area where an expert assassin
can easily wipe them out with a pair of swords.
Also, it involves trusting a prison full of vicious gangsters.
All this, and prevent Slade from discovering the case of Sophie's Choice
involving a woman he barely knew but is now obsessed with.
What could possibly go wrong?
There are a couple of interesting aspects to this episode.
Firstly, the arch-nemesis is now financial backer to BOTH political campaigns
- Blood's social programmes and Queen's business-based one.
Yes, Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro -
True Blood
) will Tax and Spend while Mrs Queen (
Susanna Thompson
) believes in
only helping those who already have the means to help themselves.
But the thing is, the arch-nemesis has backers of his own!
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 16]
Suicide Squad
Shown 19/Mar/14
Olly goes hunting for Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
), never minding that Slade is hunting him.
First, our anti-hero burns his bridges with the Russian mob.
Then he freezes himself emotionally from Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
), despite her being the one person in the world who has shared his terrible memories.
Instead of flashbacks we get the main story.
Diggle and his ex-wife are conscripted by Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) into her Special ops team, the Suicide Squad.
The other members are convicted supervillains who Olly and Diggle defeated -
Deadshot and Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
). This is especially trying for Diggle,
because he blames Deadshot for the death of his brother.
But while Diggle considers that the supervillains are getting an easy time,
they are virtually slaves being used as cannon-fodder.
The mission is to steal a bio-weapon from the vault of an Afghan Warlord
who has now set up operations in a fictional country in Europe.
This is the same man who tried to buy Merlyn's earthquake machine.
Diggle has flashbacks to when he, his ex-wife and Ben Browder (
Farscape
) were on a Special Forces mission in Afghanistan.
They captured the Warlord, a big-time Opium dealer.
Of course, as a drug-dealer he was an enemy of the Taliban,
so the US Military-Industrial Complex recruited him.
Suicide Squad have the same agenda as
SHIELD
, but they use the tactics of Centipede.
However, to someone as morally dubious as Olly Queen
this should be something of an irrelevance.
The theme of the show appears to be that friends will become enemies,
and vice versa.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 17]
Birds of Prey
Shown 26/Mar/14
Officer Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) leads a Police Raid on a Mafia meeting.
He arrests ... the Huntress' father.
Unfortunately, this means that the Huntress herself will soon be back in town,
on yet another insanely murderous vengeance quest.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) is re-hired as an Assistant District Attorney.
She is assigned to prosecute Huntress' father,
even though he had a Witness Protection deal last time.
This is not the only unusual thing about this case,
but there is actually a reason.
Naturally, Huntress tries to attack her dad in the courthouse.
Somehow she managed to recruit a team of mercenaries
and smuggle automatic weapons past the metal detectors.
The result is a stand-off,
with Huntress taking Laurel (Olly's other ex-GF) hostage.
Of course, Olly's current GF Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) has to save her sister.
Elsewhere, Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) is exhibiting extreme anger issues.
Olly forbids him from seeing Thea (
Willa Holland
) again.
Roy already went through this Bad BF stuff in
Teen Wolf
, where he did a much better job of it.
The Flashbacks tell us that Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) decapitated the ship's engineer during the takeover,
so there is no way to get the engine working again.
The only one who can get the ship moving again
is one of the escapees who is now in Sarah's camp.
Will Sarah hand over an innocent man to save Olly?
And will Slade keep up his end of the bargain,
and forget his revenge for Shado's death?
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 18]
Deathstroke
Shown 02/Apr/14
Deathstroke and Brother Blood take Thea (
Willa Holland
) hostage. They do not demand a ransom,
but the timing is aimed to disrupt a live televised debate
between Mayoral candidates Blood (the Social Party) and Mrs Queen (the Business Party).
Back on the Island, Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) planned to trade the engineer for Olly and the mad scientist.
The Russian Mobster, Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate: Atlantis
), is of the opinion that Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) does not want the engineer as a permanent addition to his crew,
and thus will kill him as soon as his usefulness is at an end.
Sarah is already cold-blooded enough to sacrifice innocent lives to get what she wants.
Olly finally discovers what the mysterious Isabel Rochev (
Summer Glau
) is doing, hanging around his offices.
But the reveal is wasted and anti-climactic,
a pity since there was so much emphasis and foreshadowing of it.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 19]
The Man Under the Hood
Shown 16/Apr/14
Olly and his team, now outcasts, try to take out Queen Industries labs.
They have explosives, and a super-lockpick.
Has Deathstroke done what any good soldier would do,
using multiple redundancy to spread the risk?
No, so he ends up using facilities at Star Labs,
who are being shut down because they caused a major explosion in Central City.
The local supervisor (
Danielle Panabaker
) and her sidekick take on Deathstroke using a superweapon
left behind by a crazy scientist who got fired.
They are like the DC Comics version of OsCorp from
Amazing Spiderman 2
. The good news is, the characters become regulars in sister-show
The Flash
.
Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) is still infected with Mirakuru.
Can Olly and the team get to him in time?
Back on the island, Dr Ivo reveals that he knows how to cure Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
). He gives the info to Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
), in exchange for her promise of mercy.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 20]
Seeing Red
Shown 23/Apr/14
Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) is still infected with Mirakuru, and goes on a rampage across the city.
Can Olly and the team get to him in time?
Felicity is working on creating the cure.
But Roy's rampage involves threatening Thea (
Willa Holland
) and the brunette street-girl,
which sets him up as a potential victim for the murderous Black Canary.
Mama Queen (
Susanna Thompson
) is being pressurised by Thea, who is still stroppy after finding out who her daddy is.
When Thea gets business-like
and refuses to let Mommy use the nightclub as venue for an election announcement,
Mommy threatens to sue - and Thea becomes a little girl again.
This kind of soap-opera dramatics is ill-suited to an action show like this,
and is really not that well done.
The flashbacks are Mrs Queen, from before Olly got onto the boat.
He was an immature idiot who had cheated on his girlfriend.
His mother (
Susanna Thompson
), manipulative bitch that she used to be,
was on hand to sort out sonny-boy's problems for him.
It is a pity that she never showed herself as such a competent character in previous episodes.
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 21]
City of Blood
Shown 30/Apr/14
Olly is missing - he does not even get to the funeral.
Luckily, Diggle knows that Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) will have a way of finding him.
However, Olly only has the two allies he started with - Diggle and Felicity.
All the contacts he spent the Season making are nowhere to be seen.
The masked villain has an army of henchmen in the sewers,
ready to take over the city and cause havok.
Dark Knight Rises
, anyone? Instead of
Anne Hathaway
in a slinky catsuit he has Isabel Rochev (
Summer Glau
). Not a bad substitute!
The flashbacks are similar in tone.
Olly sends Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) away to safety, then he and two others start their final battle against the big bad.
Anatoly the Russian Mobster (David Nykl -
Stargate: Atlantis
) knows how to pilot the Japanese sub.
Unfortunately, they first have to blast it free ...
using a Kaitan suicide-bomber torpedo!
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 22]
Streets of Fire
Shown 07/May/14
Olly must save Helena, then get her to safety.
Her dad's police station is under siege,
but luckily there are some hand-grenades lying around!
Also, she comes from a family of ass-kickers.
Thea (
Willa Holland
) is a target as well.
But like Helena, she has a trained assassin in the family.
Yes, Olly may be unaware of it
but there are other champions willing to fight against Slade's army.
However, these champions may have their own agenda.
Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro -
True Blood
) told Olly that Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) always kept his promises.
Well, Slade has decided that a promise to Olly
takes priority over whatever he promised to Blood!
Back on the sub, Olly closes in on the freighter.
Slade has it underway, so Olly jumps to the conclusion that Slade captured Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) and has her aboard.
How he comes to this conclusion is not explained,
Arrow [Season 2, Episode 23]
Unthinkable
Shown 14/May/14
Not only is Black Canary back in town, but she has her girlfriend
- and half a dozen of Ras Al Ghul's ninjas.
Yes, once upon a time the Arrow and his allies were killing the League of Assassins,
but now they are apparently best of friends.
Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) plans to level the city,
so the Arrow sends Diggle and his ex-wife to stop the countdown.
However, seeing Diggle and Deadshot on the same side
is actually more believable than seeing Olly with the League of Assassins.
This ep cross-cuts between the two climactic confrontations Olly had with Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
). The first time, Olly tried to kill Slade - but failed.
Can he bring himself to do the job properly now?
Thea (
Willa Holland
) confronts her birth-father.
Will she side with him, or go back to Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
)?
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 1]
The Calm
Shown 08/Oct/14
With both his arch-enemies out of action, as well as all of his minor ones,
Olly seems to have an easy time of it. With Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) helping him at the sharp end, and Diggle and Felicity as backup,
they can easily take down illegal arms shipments.
Even better, Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne –
Dresden Files
) disbands the Police anti-vigilante task force.
Yes, all is well in the village of the happy people.
Perhaps the real reason the crime rate is so low is that the population
who survived the last two Season finales have now decided to leave town.
Queen Consolidated has gone under, so who knows how many jobs were lost?
Olly and Felicity have a plan to get the company back.
Unfortunately, Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
) is in town, and he has a cunning plan of his own.
Vertigo (Peter Stormare –
Armageddon
) is the new drug-lord in town.
He is arming up with RPGs,
and is willing to take out an entire crowded restaurant in order to get the hooded vigilante.
Olly takes a break from dating the Lance sisters, and looks for a new love interest.
Despite putting Felicity Smoak firmly in the Friend Zone for the last couple of Seasons,
and her being a love interest of
The Flash
, he decides to date her.
She has another potential love interest too – rival billionaire Brandon Routh.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 2]
Sara
Shown 15/Oct/14
Olly and the others become obsessed with getting the evil archer.
By incredible coincidence, a freelance hitman who specialises in the longbow is in town.
Olly goes after him, but this freelancer is so good
that he overcomes the good guys repeatedly
until the climactic denouement of the episode.
The truth is, since the only actual gunman in the show is Deadshot
- and he is a slave-soldier of Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) - then any of the other villains could be a suspect.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) wants revenge. And with her addictive personality, self-control is not her strong suit.
Billionaire Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
) is still in town, trying to hire Felicity Smoak.
She plays hard to get, ignoring the advantages that working in his IT department
(a big salary and access to top-grade equipment) would give her.
He seems to be a nice guy, giving a year’s worth of his annual salary to charity.
However, Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro -
True Blood
) got elected on a similar platform,
and look at what a piece of work he proved to be!
The Flashbacks are of Olly’s first mission for Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) in Hong Kong. He is told to assassinate a rich American – his best friend, Tommy!
Naturally Olly refuses, but he acknowledges that Tommy will keep looking for the person who logged into Olly’s email account at the cybercafé.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 3]
Corto Maltese
Shown 22/Oct/14
Olly gives up on finding the killer.
Instead he goes to find his sister Thea (
Willa Holland
).
Felicity tracks her phone to a South American island named Corto Maltese.
Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) goes along, because he was Thea’s BF until she dumped him and left town.
Or he dumped her – does anyone really care?
Diggle goes along to help Olly,
rather than stay at home with his ex-wife and new-born baby.
It is actually at his woman’s insistence that he goes along.
Apparently, the island where Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
), the fugitive billionaire wanted for 9/11-scale terrorism,
has his safe-house is also home to one of Amanda Waller’s spies.
This spy (David Cubitt -
Medium
) has gone off the grid, so Diggle has been unofficially asked to find him.
It turns out that the man’s disappearance involves a list of Waller’s personnel
– not the spies (like the NOC list in
Mission Impossible
) but the wives and children!
To get it back, Olly must slaughter the local rent-an-army (off-duty cops and peasants with AK-47s).
And can we really hate a so-called villain
whose only wish is to escape from the slavery of Amanda Waller’s murderous regime?
After all, the last few episodes have featured Olly’s flashbacks,
indicating what a horrible boss she was to work for.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) attends Alcoholics Anonymous with her dad,
where she learns that alcohol-fueled domestic relationships
have a lack of inhibition that may lead to violence.
She learns a few other things too – what anonymous means, to start with.
Also, that she cannot fight as well as Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) could (because Sarah was trained by the League of Assassins,
which puts her in the same league as Olly).
Felicity is stuck in the office today with her new boss, Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
). She gets uppity and refuses to make coffee for him,
which is quite rude when you consider how vast her salary probably is.
However, she is given her own flunky (a male gofer, as befits his lowly rank)
who can make coffee on her behalf.
Then she asks for time off to see a friend
who got struck by lightning and ended up in a coma.
Yes, this is a build-up to next-week’s crossover story with
The Flash
. However, Felicity has not even mentioned poor Barry for the entire Season so far.
In fact, he visited the city as soon as he got out of hospital,
but he only visited Olly instead of Felicity ... and Olly did not bother telling anyone.
Looks like they are all going to have a lot of explaining to do.
The flashbacks are to Thea’s training in the deadly arts.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
), daddy dearest, started by doing an homage to
Fight Club
- but instead of using sodium hydroxide and saliva he uses warm water.
However, she develops an important skill as a result
– she does not complain when someone spills coffee near her.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 4]
The Magician
Shown 29/Oct/14
Ras Al Ghul’s daughter Nyssa (
Katrina Law
) is in town, and she knows something bad happened to her GF Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
). It turns out that the girl was doing surveillance work for the Assassins,
on an enemy that someone leaked to them was still alive.
Yes, Malcolm Merlyn’s secret is out.
Olly reluctantly teams up with the assassin girl.
He has sworn not to kill again, but she is a natural born killer.
And if they catch Malcolm , they know no prison can hold him.
Not even Olly’s one on Lian Yu ... which means Malcolm could escape from Deathstroke’s prison.
The Assassin girl wanders around like she owns the place.
She may be on the Federal No Fly List, but the local cops do not mind her.
That said, she did help save the city a few months ago.
Also, Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) may be attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with his other daughter Laurel (
Katie Cassidy
) but he also gives out cash rewards to overzealous cops and promises to buy them beer after their shift.
The flashbacks are of Olly’s next assassination mission.
It turns out to be a cleanup from Season One.
Yes, we discover who Fryers was working for.
And it turns out that Fryers was not told the whole truth about his mission.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 5]
The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak
Shown 05/Nov/14
The gang are all sparring – Olly with Thea's ex Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
), Thea (
Willa Holland
) with her birth-father, and Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) with her trainer in the dodgy gymn.
Things have calmed down – there are no supervillains using brute force this week.
Instead, a super-hacker gets into the city grid and threatens to shut the place down.
Laurel is the acting District Attorney, since her boss is out of town.
She uses a riot squad against angry civilians, which is apparently a bad thing.
Felicity's hot mother, the Las Vegas cocktail waitress, is in town.
We see where she got her looks from, and we also get some flashbacks to her College years.
She was like Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous, and her mother is Patsy instead of Edwina.
However, in college she was a goth-chick who hung out with hacktivists who wanted to end peoples' debts.
The real focus is on Felicity's choices.
At college she pretended to care about other people, but ended up selling out
and getting a crappy job at Queen Consolidated so she could make money for herself.
She pleads innocence to Olly,
but she was happy enough to be his accomplice in mass murder during Season One.
And since the Suicide Squad, a team of convicts conscripted by Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
), is a major part of the storyline nobody is suspicious when a character is supposed to have died in prison.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 6]
Guilty
Shown 12/Nov/14
Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) is suffering from sleep deprivation due to his nightmares.
He is losing his edge, so he asks Felicity to screen his blood for traces of Mira-kuru.
Will he keep his mouth shut about the nightmares until after the freak-of-the-week is caught?
Olly and his team of vigilantes tries to take down a well-armed street-gang.
Poor Diggle does not have a fancy costume like Roy does,
but that is the least of their worries.
Unfortunately someone else gets there first and beats them all to death.
Yes, there is another vigilante with martial arts skills in town.
Olly discovers that Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) is training as a fighter.
He is unhappy at her choice of associates.
Despite her being the Assistant District Attorney,
did she even do a background check on the gymn owner?
It turns out that he has a past as a vigilante,
and either he is the new murderer or he is being framed.
Olly has a real sense of superiority when it comes to the rival vigilante.
But it seems they have a lot in common.
They both used sidekicks - and like Roy,
the original vigilante's sidekick went off the rails.
Should Olly ditch Roy for the good of the team?
Olly wants to help Roy remember properly.
He flashbacks to a time in Hong Kong when he had trouble remembering something.
His guard’s wife teaches him a trick to recover memories.
However, she does not like Olly and does not want him in her home.
Of course, she forgets that he is not there by choice
– he is being kept prisoner for use as a slave by Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
).
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 7]
Draw Back Your Bow
Shown 19/Nov/14
There is yet another murderous vigilante in town,
using arrows instead of a gun.
This one is a female, obsessed with the The Arrow.
She gets nicknamed Cupid.
Can Olly stop her before she kills more crooks than he did?
Once again a female ninja character uses Thea (
Willa Holland
) as a hostage.
When will she be allowed to do anything more than just spar with her birth-father?
Felicity gets called in to help her boss Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
). He wants her to be his not-a-date at a business dinner.
Is she his beard, or is he trying to seduce her?
The flashbacks to Hong Kong show Olly trying to bond with his Japanese handler's wife.
It turns out she is not just a home-maker, and shares some of her husband's skills.
We only discover this when her husband goes MIA.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 8]
The Brave and the Bold
Shown 03/Dec/14
This is a sequel to the crossover episode in
The Flash
. Yes, Barry and his back-room team head off to Olly’s town,
because although they give no assistance with tracing the rust from the killer’s boomerang,
they still want to help with the DNA trace of Canary’s killer.
It turns out that the killer is Captain Boomerang (Nick Taraby -
Spartacus: Blood and Sand
), an ex-Australian SIS operative who went rogue.
Not unlike Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
), who may be an old friend of his.
Will we get a team-up between Crixus and the Syrian?
Of course, Slade/Crixus is on the island in the North China Sea,
ten thousand miles away.
It would take days to get there and back.
The killer is after the US Intelligence Agency that runs the Suicide Squad.
Yes, they used him as an expendable slave-soldier and stuck a bomb in his head.
No wonder the poor bastard wants revenge!
The hypocrisy is that Olly decides to persecute a man whose vengeance quest mirrors his own.
Olly’s flashbacks are to a time in Hong Kong that Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) ordered him to torture a suspect.
Olly could not bring himself to do it.
Later a bomb went off – killing a civilian, and conveniently backing up Waller’s story.
This helped dehumanise Olly and turn him into the sadistic torturer he is today.
Barry points this out, but Olly refuses to acknowledge his valid point.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 9]
The Climb
Shown 10/Dec/14
The League of Assassins are back in town.
They give Olly a 24-hour ultimatum.
Either he locates and turns in the killer, or fifty civilians will be murdered.
Fifty every day, that is.
And since the League helped stop Slade’s Mirakuru army last year,
there is no way Olly and his team can realistically fight them.
Olly Arrow goes looking for Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
), who is still the main suspect.
This is in spite of his peaceful attitude and pleas of innocence in his previous episode.
Arrow confronts Thea (
Willa Holland
), who finally gets to do some actual fighting.
A pity she did not do this when threatened by female ninjas in prior episodes.
The DNA results from last week’s search come back.
But once the killer is identified, Olly has no choice.
He must challenge Ra's al Ghul (Matt Nable -
Riddick
) to a duel to the death.
The League gives Olly twelve hours to say his goodbyes,
and one hour after that to get to the site of the duel (on a remote mountaintop).
Naturally, the time-span makes no sense.
The flashbacks are of Olly and his Japanese handler
torturing the suspect in a robbery.
It turns out he was brainwashed and has no memory,
so he was innocent and the torture was a waste of time.
Worse, they have now come to the attention of their target - China White (
Kelly Hu
). She was a recurring villain (not even a Big Bad for a Season),
so she is a second-tier villain at best.
However, Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) wanted her dead so bad she paid Fryers and his army
to destroy the entire airliner she was on.
It could have been a lot easier just to catch her on the ground,
because if the Arrow can defeat her then so can any first-tier operator.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 10]
Left Behind
Shown 21st Jan 2015
What happened to Olly? How will the show continue without the title character?
Apparently being left hypothermic in a snow-drift
can counteract the damage of being impaled through the chest and then kicked off a cliff.
Also, his Hong Kong buddy knew where to find the body.
Back in the big city, there is a new crime lord in town – Brick (Vinny Jones –
Swordfish
). He has a plan – rob the police evidence warehouse,
and recruit every thug that Olly’s team put away in the last eight months.
There is a bit of a problem with this.
The evidence is only useful to the DA before the trial,
so this implies there is an eight-month backlog in prosecutions.
Worse, people who have not been convicted of anything are facing eight months on remand
(the UK maximum is about three months) before their trial!
Maybe if Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) spent more time on her day job, prosecuting the suspects,
the city would not need her to use vigilanteeism as a hobby.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 11]
Midnight City
Shown 28/Jan/15
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) is still doing solo missions in her Black Canary costume,
but she does not have her sister’s skillset.
Also, in the previous ep she remembered to use the sonic weapon first
while this time she just leaves herself vulnerable.
Luckily, Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) happens to be in the same dark alley at the same time.
Brick (Vinny Jones –
Swordfish
) has a new plan – abduct some city officials, and force the Mayor (
Christina Cox
) to withdraw the police from The Glades.
Well, it is the high-crime area of town,
and the cops would probably prefer the easy life of protecting rich people’s property rights.
But Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) disagrees, and wants to act as an army of occupation in the crappy neighbourhood.
He is heartened by the idea that Black Canary is back – he thinks it is Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
). Yes, he cannot tell the difference between his own daughters!
There are quite a few vigilantes in town now.
Felicity’s new boss Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
) has designed his own
Iron Man
suit, with which he can fight poor people – I mean, crime!
He already has his own personal helicopter.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 12]
Uprising
Shown 04/Feb/15
Olly is well enough to walk again.
Yes, despite being impaled through the chest he has made a full recovery.
The scary fact is that Ras Al-Ghul, despite supposedly being the greatest assassin in the world,
must have missed every single vital organ in his chest!
Brick the gangster (Vinnie Jones, last seen as Scales the gangster in
The Cape
) has taken over the Glades.
His plan is to steal all the cash from everyone in the area,
driving all the stores out of business.
He uses the Police station as his HQ, and the cops left all their guns there!
Luckily, the villain’s army do not use their guns when confronted with the good guys,
who only have sticks and stones.
The heroes are outmatched by Brick’s army.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) offers an alliance – after all, he has a personal grudge against Brick.
But the good guys prefer to create their own streetgang,
out of every unaffiliated thug in the Glades.
Naturally, the ensuing riot will destroy any property
not already damaged by Brick’s reign of greed and stupidity.
The insurance companies are unlikely to pay out,
meaning the Glades will be rendered unliveable.
We get some flashbacks to Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) when his wife was murdered.
He went after the suspect, in search of revenge.
But was he deliberately sent after the wrong man?
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 13]
Canaries
Shown 11/Feb/15
Drug-dealer Vertigo (Peter Stormare -
Armageddon
) escapes from custody, humiliating DA Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
). She is obsessed with tracking him down.
But she also carries repressed guilt about taking on her sister's role.
This climaxes in a fight between the two Canaries.
In the flashbacks, Olly gets let off the leash when the Japanese family
decide they have had enough of being Waller's slaves.
Unfortunately, Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) still needs Olly for the war on China White (
Kelly Hu
).
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 14]
The Return
Shown 18/Feb/15
Olly and Thea (
Willa Holland
) are camping on Lian Yu,
the lost island that is now busier than Tokyo at rush hour.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) has a plan to bring back Olly’s killer instinct.
Olly pays a visit to the Argus prison, for old times sake,
and discovers that Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) is on the loose!
Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) has a specific revenge planned on Olly and Thea.
However, he makes the sadistic mistake that supervillains always do
and he imprisons them rather than kill them.
Olly mentions there is another inmate, although Digger is nowhere in sight.
Olly’s escape plan is to extend a human arm’s reach by dislocating joints ...
while a normal person would just use a stick or other object as an extension of the arm!
In the Flashbacks, Olly was sent on a mission to catch China White (
Kelly Hu
) in Starling City.
He uses his access of his family’s company to find out what the woman’s minion
(a senior Queen Industries exec) is up to.
But he also keeps an eye on his friends and family.
Thea is hanging out with a drug dealer, so Olly pays him a visit.
The hoodie, the murderous attitude – yes, this is Season One Olly all over again.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 15]
Nanda Parbat
Shown 25/Feb/15
Everyone hates Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
). Not because he tried to wipe out the slums,
causing hundreds of deaths among career criminals and welfare dependants.
No, they seem to have forgiven him for that.
Instead, the fact that he killed their buddy
and told a few lies is what they hold against him.
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) wants revenge on Merlyn.
She does not have the skills necessary -
he can take on Olly and Thea (
Willa Holland
) at the same time in sparring sessions.
Thea also wants revenge, although her rage is typically misplaced.
And the Assassin king's daughter wants revenge too.
Yes, Merlyn may have to fight a few girls.
Olly plans his attack on Nanda Parbat, home of the League of Assassins.
Although the Assassins helped him defend the city against Slade Wilson’s Mirakuru army last year,
Olly has no hesitation to kill as many of them as possible.
He only takes Diggle as backup,
which means that the rest of his army (Robin Redbreast, Laurel and Thea) are left twiddling their thumbs.
In the flashback, Amanda Waller’s boss (Marc Singer –
Beastmaster
) debriefs Olly. Then he lets him and the Japanese couple go.
Can it really be this simple?
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 16]
The offer
Shown 18/Mar/15
Olly and his friends make it back to Starling City.
All seems to be quiet, with all major super-villains out of the scene at the moment.
Olly begins to give serious thought to accepting Ras Al Ghul’s offer.
After all, what good have the vigilantes done for the city?
Olly discovers that things have hotted up between Felicity and her boss Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
). This is one more step towards his alienation from his friends.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) spends most of the episode recuperating on Thea’s couch.
He should probably be pumped full of painkillers,
but his Assassin training makes this redundant.
Thea (
Willa Holland
) is resentful of his presence, but neither she nor Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) seem inclined to kill him.
In fact, Thea and Laurel and Nyssa (
Katrina Law
) all have something in common
– they all fall out with their respective fathers this episode.
Malcolm Merlyn and Ra's al Ghul (Matt Nable -
Riddick
) are both assassins,
but has Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) got similar skeletons in his closet?
The villain of the week is a man who was wrongly convicted by cops who beat a confession out of him.
He seeks revenge on Captain Lance’s Precinct – was Lance one of the cops who forced a false confession?
This would have been about the time of Sarah’s disappearance aboard the yacht.
Has Lance got some crimes of his own?
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 17]
Suicidal Tendencies
Shown 25/Mar/15
The Mayor (
Christina Cox
) and Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) believe that The Arrow has gone back to his murderous vigilante ways.
They bring in Billionaire Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
), who publicly promises to use all his assets to track the vigilante down.
Yes, the regular police are acknowledged to be completely out of their depth,
for them to allow the Mayor to bring in freelance help.
Felicity's Billionaire BF Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
) has his super-suit working.
It can fly, and thanks to Felicity
the facial recognition software is able to identify a suspect.
But can a rookie in an untested super-suit take out The Arrow?
What happens if he runs into the League of Assassins?
Diggle and his new (well, recycled) wife change their honeymoon plans.
They join Suicide Squad for a mission to save US Senator Stephen Culp
(the CIA guy in JAG) from hostage-taking terrorists in some foreign hell-hole.
They are partnered with Deadshot, naturally
– he is the guy who shot Diggle’s brother,
so the personal animosity angle is always going to get exploited.
The fourth team-member is the vigilante archery babe
who Olly citizens-arrested a few episodes ago.
The flashbacks are Deadshot's,
showing how his inability to adjust to family life after a tour of combat duty
led to his new profession, that of assassin.
This certainly humanises him,
even for those who judged him for his apparent amorality.
But there is a down side to this.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 18]
Public Enemy
Shown 01/Apr/15
Felicity's Billionaire BF Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
) gets hospitalised.
His doctors refuse to use his nanites, which are not FDA-approved yet.
Will Felicity accept the medical opinion of experts,
or listen to her mother's advice?
The flashbacks are to Olly and the Japanese kid, on the run in Hong Kong.
They meet a woman who is the spitting image of Shado.
Olly cannot believe his eyes - of all the women in the world,
what are the chances he would literally run into his ex's twin sister?
Ra's al Ghul (Matt Nable -
Riddick
) pushes up the pressure.
He meets with Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
), who is grateful for info on how to catch The Arrow -
despite learning that Olly's story about the League of Assassins is true!
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 19]
Broken Arrow
Shown 08/Apr/15
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) delivers her dad a message from the District Attorney.
Roy’s confession was public while Olly’s was uncorroborated,
so Roy (Colton Hayes -
Teen Wolf
) will get charged and Olly will walk.
Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) still tries to dig up dirt on Olly, searching his nightclub and his condo.
In fact, it is THEA’s nightclub and condo,
just as Roy is her boyfriend.
If anyone is likely to get a case built against the, it is her.
The freak of the week makes lighting come from his eyes.
The Arrow cannot fight meta-humans on an even basis.
Luckily, Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
) has got his ATOM super-suit working.
Arrow does not have a prison cell that can hold meta-humans.
Luckily, he has access to the Flash’s cells in Central City.
In the flashbacks,
Olly discovers that Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) was double-crossed by her boss (Marc Singer -
V
). He intends to use the gas weapon in the city,
and blame the Triad for the resulting loss of life.
Roy runs foul of the prison gangs.
Luckily they lack the reflexes of the gangs in Oz,
so he can easily take out multiple opponents before they even think of trying to shank him.
The ending is brutal and heart-rending at the same time.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 20]
The Fallen
Shown 15/Apr/15
Olly can save Thea (
Willa Holland
), but he must take her to Nanda Parbat
(not to be confused with
Parminda Nagra
). The reason Ra's al Ghul (Matt Nable -
Riddick
) can afford to lose half a dozen men every episode is explained.
He has a thousand ninjas at his command!
Felicity finally shares her true feelings with Olly.
In the flashbacks, Olly and his Japanese friends
try to stop the US military from gassing Hong Kong.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 21]
Al Sah-Him
Shown 29/Apr/15
Olly has been drugged and brainwashed by the League of Assassins.
Ra's al Ghul (Matt Nable -
Riddick
) sends Olly (now known as Al Sah-Him, AKA Heir to the Demon)
on his first mission, another test of skills and loyalty.
He must kill or capture the only rival to the throne of the Demon - Nyssa (
Katrina Law
)!
Back in Starling City, Nyssa is bonding with the new Black Canary
- her ex-sister-in-law, Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
). The rest of Olly’s gang are equally keen to protect Nyssa from the League,
If only to prevent Olly from doing something.
Ras Al Ghul’s final decision is shocking, as is his plan.
The flashbacks are of Olly and the Japanese couple
attempting to prevent the spread of the virus in Hong Kong.
The confusion will be their only chance to escape from the city,
although realistically it would have been locked down in quarantine.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 22]
This is Your Sword
Shown 06/May/15
Diggle is still enraged at Olly for putting Mrs Diggle in harm's way,
even though she is a professional killer whose last mission was as recent as
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 17] Suicidal Tendencies.
Even Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) shows more self-restraint than Diggle,
who mercilessly uses poverty-stricken gang-members from his old neighbourhood as punch-bags.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) has a plan.
Apparently he was in Olly's circle of trust all along,
probably because he is the most convincing liar of the bunch.
Will he revert to cliche status and betray the team yet again?
Or will he genuinely attempt to redeem himself?
Can he help save the city from destruction,
only a couple of years after he attempted to destroy an entire district of it?
The flashbacks are of Olly and the Japanese couple in Hong Kong.
They attempt to cure the son of the virus.
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 21]
My Name Is Oliver Queen
Shown 13/May/15
Olly’s crew have been left for dead.
However, he has a number of assets that have not been mentioned yet.
Olly originally got vaccinated against the Alpha-Omega five years previously,
so when he planned the operation he was able to arrange secret vaccination.
Also, he has the
Flash
on speed-dial, so super-human help is only a phone-call away.
Ra's al Ghul (Matt Nable -
Riddick
) takes Olly on a plane to Starling City.
The plan is to disperse the toxin.
However, both Olly and Ras have plans of their own.
The flashbacks cover the end of the Marc Singer arc in Hong Kong.
The plots get tied up, and the characters actually get some resolution.
This would be a great place to actually end the show for good,
perhaps replacing it with a Justice League.
But the typical strategy of US TV networks is to drag it out forever until it
Jumps the Shark .
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 1]
Green Arrow
Shown 07 Oct 15
Olly and his GF have settled down into domestic bliss.
Presumably they are paying for their suburban two-garage love-nest with her salary,
because he has no family fortune any more,
or a socially-acceptable skillset that he can use to apply for a mainstream day-job.
Star City is beset with crimes comitted by an army of mercenaries.
The minions take cyanide whenever the vigilantes capture them,
so Diggle and his friends tend to shoot to kill.
Worse, Olly's sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) has unveiled her murderous streak.
Star City has no Mayor since the last three were assassinated.
Instead the city is ruled by a committee,
which is ironic since the Mayor would just be chairman of the committee.
Unless the Mayor is a supreme dictator, that is.
Speaking of fascist dictators, Damian Darkh (Neal McDonagh -
Captain America: The First Avenger
) is in charge of the killer mercenaries, and takes out the city's committee.
Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) is the only familiar face on the committee, so presumably he will become Acting Mayor ...
Thea and Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) and Felicity insist on getting Olly back on the vigilante team.
Diggle is still enraged at Olly for putting Mrs Diggle in harm's way,
even though she is a professional killer whose last mission was as recent as
Arrow [Season 3, Episode 17] Suicidal Tendencies.
The others may want Olly around, but they will not obey his orders!
So what is the point of having him?
The flashbacks show Olly messing about as a vigilante.
He is conscripted by Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) again, and sent on a suicide mission on a certain island.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 2]
The Candidate
Shown 14 Oct 15
Jeri Ryan
is an old friend of Olly’s mother (they were both Borg in
Star Trek: Voyager
). Since nobody else has dared stand for the office of Mayor,
Ms Ryan is a slam dunk.
However, Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) is out to sabotage this DC franchise on behalf of his Marvel paymasters.
Why bother?
Luckily, it turns out that he is as inept as his paymasters.
Instead of getting a professional to do the hit, he auditions a psychopathic anarchist.
Yes, there is a cut-price Joker clone running around.
Olly’s sister is also a psycho.
He is worried that she will cross the line, and beat someone to death.
Since Dork’s goons all take cyanide when they get caught,
they are all as good as dead anyway.
However, Thea’s psychosis is linked to her resurrection from the Lazarus Pit.
This inspires Laurel to bring her sister’s rotting corpse back from the dead.
To be continued!
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 3]
Restoration
Shown 21 Oct 15
Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) is still sacrificing his men on a regular basis for no gain.
He and his partners in HIVE hire a super-powered assassin from Central City.
The assassin looks like a familiar-looking Canadian Actor (TJ King -
Teen Wolf
) and his weapons are playing cards – made of his own skin.
His mission – kill Green Arrow!
Olly and Diggle make it easy for the villains this week by splitting up
and following separate leads instead of working as a team and covering each others backs.
This is especially annoying because both leads are related to the same villain.
Felicity calls them out of it, and makes them talk it out.
Diggle is still childishly mad at Olly for risking his bloodthirsty spouse,
but has been running a secret investigation into HIVE for the last two years.
So who is the one with the REAL trust issues?
Thea (
Willa Holland
) and Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) are not in town to back up Olly and Diggle because
they are in Nanda Parbat, trying to persuade Merlyn (John Barrowman –
Torchwood
) to raise Sarah (
Caity Lotz
) from the dead. Nyssa (
Katrina Law
) knows how stupid the idea of raising her lover as a Fast Zombie would be,
but all Merlyn cares about is winning back his estranged daughter.
In the flashbacks, Olly helps slave guard Ryan Robbins (
Sanctuary
) keep the workers under control.
The slave plantation is a terrible place, very badly organised indeed.
The workers (including
Elysia Rutaru
) are badly treated and denied medical treatment.
No wonder they are not productive.
Someone steals some of the product – a hybrid of cocaine leaf and opium poppy.
Best painkiller ever!
The guards have to find it, but they lack the skills to interrogate the workers.
Except for Olly, that is.
His Argus skills help him torture a slave until he finds the culprit.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 4]
Beyond Redemption
Shown 28 Oct 15
Team Arrow have some new competition in the game of taking down big drug scores.
Police Lieutenant Warner (
Rutina Wesley
) and her SCPD SWAT team are remarkably efficient
– they also kill all the witnesses and keep the cash for themselves.
Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) is under-funded, so he needs help from Team Arrow to catch the crooked cops.
Laurel tells her father that she managed to raise Sarah (
Caity Lotz
) from the dead. Captain Lance then asks for advice from his new associate, Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Agents of Shield
).
In the flashbacks, Olly has to convince slave guard Ryan Robbins (
Sanctuary
) that he executed the worker who defied their control. She is
Elysia Rutaru
, a rising star who is a recurring character this Season.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 5]
Haunted
Shown 04 Nov 15
Olly’s sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) hires a campaign consultant for him.
The man’s first step is to point out similarities between Chappaquiddick
and the supposed drowning death of Sarah Lance (
Caity Lotz
) aboard Olly’s family yacht.
The advice given is for Olly to distance himself publicly from Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassiday
) and her father (Paul Blackthorne –
Dresden Files
). This seems impractical,
because one is the District Attorney and the other is Chief of Police
- so if he becomes Mayor he will be working with them on a regular basis.
However, Olly has a problem of separating his personal life from his work space.
Sarah Lance has not taken to being dead.
Yet again she has risen from the grave –
this time literally, due to the magical Lazarus Pit.
Now she has escaped from Laurel’s basement and is on a kill-crazy rampage.
She hunts down women who have a haircut similar to Thea’s.
However, she does not kill the women –
just any tough-looking men who get in her way.
Later it turns out that she and Thea have a psychic bond
because they were both in the Lazarus Pit.
Strange that the bond was not apparent at the start of the episode.
Olly has a flashback to his second time on the Island. Ryan Robbins (
Sanctuary
) has found the Argus communications gear, and assumes that Olly is responsible.
After all, Olly is the newest member of the team
and the guards never had any problems before they met him.
But the Island is quite large, and the guards did not encounter Olly
or the abandoned and unmarked minefield until they entered the unexplored portion.
And the best alibi of all – there is another stranger on the Island.
The boss is interrogating
Constantine
- Yes, the character created by
Garth Ennis
has now crossed over from the DC Hellblazer imprint
into the mainstream kiddie-friendly DC universe.
How soon before we have a crossover with Lobo?
Constantine was on the Island to retrieve a magical artefact.
He provides some exposition to Olly about how the Island is a nexus of evil.
If this sounds familiar, the magical Island was a key plot ingredient in
Lost
. Luckily, Olly is owed a favour so Constantine turns up
and helps locate Sarah’s soul in the afterlife.
There have been elements of magic in previous episodes – the Lazarus Pit was in the previous Season,
although it was used for healing and not resurrecting the dead.
One imagines that had the physical resurrection and soul recovery been possible
in previous Seasons (and Olly knew enough to put it all together)
then Tommy Merlyn and countless others might have been revived.
But despite use of minor parlour-tricks by Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) this episode is the first blatant use of magic.
The term Jump The Shark is a bit dated these days,
but the show has had its three years and is now straying from the original story.
While the Lance sisters have their Black Canary moments,
their father gets tasked by Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Agents of Shield
) to infiltrate a Federal base and delete computer info.
Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) takes John Diggle along to help.
And Diggle finally discovers why his brother was targeted by Hive.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 6]
Lost Souls
Shown 11 Nov 15
We start with an explanation of what happened to Mr Atom AKA Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
). He was not gloriously sacrificed in last Season's climax,
he made it back long enough to be unceremoniously written out off-screen.
He was trying to shrink his super-suit, like in
Ant-Man
, when it all went badly wrong.
He had great off-screen adventures fighting cockroaches
that were almost the same size as himself,
then got captured by some greedy super-villains.
Now Felicity must locate him so that Olly can rescue him.
This could be the final showdown with Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) and the Hive.
The full team is there, including TWO Black Canaries!
Will we finally get to the Season climax?
Other shows tend to do it prematurely at the mid-Season point,
because of the US TV tradition of Sweeps Week.
At a time like this it is evident that Olly has surrounded himself with blonde-haired women.
It looks like the Lance sisters are bottle-blondes
- they have matching sets of dark roots, and both their parents are dark-haired.
Felicity also dyes her hair, according to her mother.
But the point is that the prevalence of blonde women in TV shows and movies
means that brunette (AKA Ethnic) women are denied roles.
The flashbacks reveal that the leader of the drug traffickers knew about the island's magical powers.
However, Ryan Robbins (
Sanctuary
) is obsessed with getting rid of Olly.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 7]
Brotherhood
Shown 18 Nov 15
Team Arrow is back in business, with only one Black Canary.
The other one is off in Central City visiting her mother, so she will probably be in
Flash
next week.
The Ghosts are also back to their old tricks, hijacking truck shipments.
John Diggle is getting over the recent discovery
that his deceased brother was a major figure in organised crime
before he was assassinated by Deadshot on the orders of Hive.
Then he decides to check the face of a Ghost soldier ...
and discovers the man has his brother’s face!
This, combined with strange DNA results of samples taken from the Ghosts
might indicate that Nanda Parbat was not the only place with a Lazarus Pit.
Does Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) have his own Zombie army?
As cool as that would be, it makes no sense considering how
he already had a recruitment procedure in previous episodes.
We now discover this is augmented with a chemical brainwashing.
Olly hypothesises that if Hive destroys the city’s legitimate Government
and gains covert control of the city,
it will function as their base of operations.
Like Springfield was for Cobra in the
GI Joe
Comics. But Cobra only got away with it because they were covert.
Once the US Government knows where a nest of terrorists is,
especially if it is on US soil,
then they will deploy military-level assets to destroy it.
Anyhow, with Olly standing for election as Mayor he is Dork's next target for corruption.
Dork will pay Olly to cancel the Bay reclaimation project.
Will Olly be the inside man again, as he was last year?
Or will he make himself a target for every assassin that Dork can throw at him?
Back in the flashback, the villain uses magic to discover that Olly is telling the truth
about defending himself, and that Ryan Robbins (
Sanctuary
) is lying about setting up an attempt on Olly's life.
A pity that the villain did not use his magic to interrogate Olly better
when he was originally captured and recruited.
But as with all superpowers, this one is only used when it suits the plot.
There are other ways he could test Olly's loyalty, however.
To start with, he accidentally leaves a valuable piece of info sitting on his desk
and allows Olly the opportunity to see it.
This would be the perfect opportunity to feed the traitor disinformation
and to set an ambush for anyone helping him.
The same goes for Damian Dork, who has lost his trust in Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) and yet still allows him access to confidential info.
The heroes never suspect it might be a double-cross,
but luckily the villains are not smart enough to stage such an ambush!
Meanwhile, Thea (
Willa Holland
) has problems of her own.
Her blood-lust is rising, and she takes it out on everyone around her.
Poor Malcolm (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) does what estranged fathers do best,
researching the details of a local child-molester who Thea can murder without feeling too guilty about.
With any luck the League of Assassins has already been paid to kill the guy, so everyone wins.
Thea snubs her father, threatening to call the cops on him.
One pities the Police officer who tries to put handcuffs on Ra's al Ghul!
One also pities the Hive goons that Thea massacres pitilessly,
even though this does not sate her blood-lust.
And the horny homeless guy who interrupts Thea's date with the political advisor
also gets beaten almost to death.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 8]
Legends of Yesterday
Shown 25 Nov 15
This is the second part of a crossover with
Flash
. Since the villain tracked Barry's team to Olly's city,
Olly and his gang have moved into a safe house near Barry's city.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) has followed them as well, eager to play go-between so he can keep his daughter safe.
Strangely, the other Black Canary does not appear this episode but they must have maxed out the budget.
While hanging around, Olly recognises an ex-GF and realises he might be the father of her child.
Luckily, Barry can run a super-fast DNA comparison.
However, Felicity has no respect for privacy or boundaries,
and insists on knowing every little detail that happens in Olly's life.
She then harrasses Olly about trust - she obviously has no trust in his judgement.
Sisco's GF slowly gets her four thousand year-old memories back.
But can she learn to master her powers in time to face the villain?
And will Sisco actually get the girl?
Barry's time-travel power turns out to be useful again.
Yes, having a reset button is the best superpower in the world.
And at least he can control when it happens,
unlike Taye Diggs in that other show where he spends his life in a constant
Groundhog Day
scenario.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 9]
Dark Waters
Shown 09 Dec 15
Olly defies Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
), and goes ahead with the Bay reclaimation project.
Someone sends a drone helicopter to machine-gun the participants,
so Olly retaliates by naming and shaming Dork in a television interview.
Dork's next strategy in the tit-for-tat campaign is to gatecrash Olly's Xmas party.
He is not as imposing an interloper as Heath Ledger's Joker in
The Dark Knight
, but he manages to make off with three of Olly's associates as hostages.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) drops by to help Thea (
Willa Holland
). He is unwilling to make the League of Assassins declare war on Hive,
but he is capable of posing as Green Arrow while Olly makes a public appearance as himself.
Likewise, Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) is willing to arm up to help his daughter Laurel (
Katie Cassidy
) but only has four cops willing to help him fight Hive!
In the flashbacks, Olly gets the dive instructor (
Elysia Rutaru
) to teach him how to explore the wrecked freighter.
This episode was directed by
John Badham
, a famous action-movie director now reduced to working on TV shows.
However, this just means that he is on the same career arc as
Kathryn Bigelow
before she won her Academy Award!
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 10]
Blood Debts
Shown 20 Jan 16
We start with a flash-forward, four months in the future.
It is a continuation of the scene from the first episode of the Season,
where Barry and Olly meet up at an unnamed grave.
It turns out that an unspecified villain is on the loose,
and has presumably killed one of the sidekicks.
Back in the main storyline, Felicity has been shot full of holes.
Her mother visits her in hospital,
and discovers that Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) is the father of D.A. Laurel Lance.
Yes, it is a regular soap opera.
Olly is obsessed with wiping out Hive.
He even has Diggle torture his own brother,
although Diggle always had issues (see the Deadshot storyline).
Olly discovers someone else is after Hive as well -
the Joker wannabe who flunked their initiation test in
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 2] The Candidate.
Now he has two obsessions - the other one is Olly's hot young sister.
Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) has left his wife and daughter in a nearby suburb.
In the Flashbacks, Olly tries to talk his way out of being whipped to death by Ryan Robbins (
Sanctuary
).
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 11]
A.W.O.L.
Shown 27 Jan 16
Diggle has a date night with his pistol-packing baby-momma.
They find out the action-adventure way that here is a new player in town.
A small army of bloodthirsty mercenaries has been targeted by Argus,
and now they launch their counter-attack.
It turns out that the mercenaries are lead by a former US Army officer
that Diggle and his brother Andy both knew and served under.
This is before Andy was assassinated by Deadshot
and recruited as a footsoldier by Dork's Hive team.
And was this backstory not already covered in the Ben Browder episode in Season One?
Seriously, the Diggle brothers have a history repeating the same storylines.
The villain this week is meant to be corrupt,
because while serving in the War on Terror in Afghanistan
he started working for the Northern Alliance opium growers.
But since the Northern Alliance were allies of Russia (and the USA)
then he was merely following US Government policy.
And also, he is supposed to be worse than Argus.
But since Argus uses the Suicide Squad as slave labour,
risking convicts' lives as expendable cannon-fodder on suicide missions,
they can hardly be described as the good guys.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 12]
Unchained
Shown 03 Feb 16
Nyssa is still a prisoner in the dungeon on Nanda Parbat, Panda Norbert, Whatever.
However, she has her own clique in the Assassins' Guild.
They break her out of prison and prepare for a civil war.
The key is a magical elixir that will cure Thea's worsening bloodlust.
Olly is busy chasing a free-running cat-burglar.
It turns out that this is a recurring character
who has not been seen so far this episode.
Felicity is in a wheelchair,
but she is still a kick-ass computer hacker.
She goes up against a rival who calls himself The Computer.
He has a team of Mercenaries he hired on the Dark Net,
and plans to take down the city's infrastructure to make a name for himself.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 13]
Sins of the Father
Shown 10 Feb 16
Nyssa gives Olly an ultimatum.
If he does not deliver the ring of Ra's Al Ghul,
taken from the hand of Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
), then she will withold the magical elixir that will save Thea (
Willa Holland
). While Olly tries to find a way to save Thea's life without having to kill her father,
the League of Assassins stages its Civil War on the streets of Star City.
As well as Thea's father, the other super-villain this week is Felicity's father.
She wants to repair her relationship with him,
but Felicity has long been corrupted by her comfortable bourgoise lifestyle.
Her life of comfort has made her incredibly arrogant,
and she is completely unforgiving towards everyone and anyone
who has a more flexible moral code than her.
Her refusal to agree with the relativist statement
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
is admirable, but her condemnation of anyone who embraces it is inexcusable.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 14]
Code of Silence
Shown 17 Feb 16
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) has taken a seat on the committee of Hive with Damian Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
). It is only a matter of time before Olly and Team Arrow find this out.
One can hardly blame Malcolm,
because he needed something to do with his time
after Nyssa ruined the League of Assassins.
But he could have done a better job of keeping it secret.
Everyone else in the council now knows about him,
and since their only job is to rubber-stamp Damien's plans
then Malcolm would have been better-off remaining anonymous.
Also, can he not get Damien to magically heal his severed hand?
Hive send a gang of freelancers (including
Rachel Luttrell
) after Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
). He orders his girlfriend, Felicity's mother, to stay safe.
However, after the events of the previous episode
(specifically, concerning Felicity's father) she has trust issues.
This might be bad news for Olly,
because Felicity herself has trust issues. Thea (
Willa Holland
) discovers what Malcolm Merlyn (and Damien Dork) already know
- that Olly has an illegitimate son by a former lover.
But Olly has never told Felicity,
and in the aborted future of
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 8] Legends of Yesterday
this was the cause of Felicity's breakup with Olly.
In the flashbacks, Olly gets imprisoned with the dive instructor (
Elysia Rutaru
). He killed her brother, but now the other prisoners want him to kill the brutal guard Ryan Robbins (
Sanctuary
). Will Olly lower his moral standards yet again and become a killer once more?
Well, the flashbacks are about the moral decline that made him a serial killer in Season One,
so this story almost writes itself.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 15]
Taken
Shown 24 Feb 16
Damien Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) gets Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) to play his card. His ONLY card, to be fair.
They kidnap Olly's secret son,
and hold him hostage on condition of Olly dropping his bid for the Mayoral seat.
Olly decides he needs to stop messing around
and actually stop Damien Dark for good.
He needs magical assistance, but
Constantine
is in Hell ... literally.
However, he has another magic-user.
There is a girl in Detroit who uses the codename
Vixen
, and somehow Olly found the time to cross-over into her show.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 16]
Broken Hearts
Shown 23 Mar 16
Cupid is back!
She has been released from ARGUS because she served out her Suicide Squad contract.
Now she is a serial killer again, targeting celebrity couples on their wedding days.
The good news is, Olly and Felicity have got a chapel booked for their own wedding
so they can easily set a trap.
The bad news is, Felicity has dumped Olly due to him not
Meanwhile, Damien Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) is given a preliminary hearing to see if he should be put on trial.
His lawyer is portrayed as a bit of a weasel who uses legal technicalities.
However, Assistant District Attorney Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) does not have much in the way of evidence against him.
All the Hive goons who worked for him used their cyanide pills,
which means the city must have to pay for a hell of a lot of funerals over the last few months.
Diggle's brother is legally dead, and Diggle himself has a bit of a history.
Laurel's only option is to let her father Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) testify, even though it means incriminating himself.
Dork is facing a lot of time in prison.
Last week he was a supervillain with magic powers,
living in a mansion and controlling an army of terrorists.
Now he is in solitary confinement in a prison.
Losing the magic superpowers must have been the worst bit.
On the other hand, his wife is running unopposed for City Mayor.
Even if she cannot Pardon him, she can just use the Hive terrorists to jailbreak him.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 17]
Beacon of Hope
Shown 30 Mar 16
Bee Girl AKA the Bug-Eyed Bandit (
Emily Kinney
), Felicity's nemesis from
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 18] All-Star Team-Up
, breaks out of prison in Central City.
Somehow she crosses the country (probably seeing King Shark coming the other direction)
and pays the Palmer Tech skyscraper a visit.
Felicity already has company - her mother (in a cleavage-enhancing outfit) and Thea Queen.
Bee Girl confronts Felicity, and delivers a heartfelt eco-friendly plea on behalf of bees.
Felicity dismisses it in her usual corporate sell-out style,
and criticises Bee girl for killing people.
How many people have Olly and Team Arrow killed in this Season alone?
Since most of the Hive foot-soldiers were probably recruited locally,
Olly has killed more people from The Glades than Malcolm Merlyn did in Season One!
Diggle later refers to Bee Girl taking a dozen innocent hostages
- presumably he is referring to the corporate fat-cats who want to milk Palmer tech for all it is worth.
Funny how the lives of the rich are now more valuable than those of the poor.
The MacGuffin of the episode is the microchip that healed Felicity's severed spinal cord.
The prototype cost three quarters of a million dollars to make,
but the cost has now gone down to half a million per unit.
Surely if a production line were set up and they were manufactured in bulk
- Felicity states that there are twelve thousand seved human spines every year,
and presumably that is only in the USA - the economies of scale would cut that cost right down.
After all, the cost of caring for someone in a wheelchair would easily be in
the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of their lifetime.
Therefore a simple microchip would actually be the best long-term approach,
as well as potentially the cheapest option.
Damien Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) is in a top security prison, despite only being on remand before his actual trial.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) tells him that his Hive colleagues have abandoned him,
because (much like Darth Vader) his tendency to summarily execute co-workers
has made him somewhat unpopular in the workplace.
There is some irony in the confrontation - Merlyn recently had his hand severed,
while in Justified Dork's character actually died from such an injury.
Anyhow, Dork may once have been a leading member of the League of Assassins
but it seems like his reliance on magic has made him soft.
Luckily he has brains and contacts at his disposal.
In the flashbacks to the island, Olly and the dive instructor (
Elysia Rutaru
) confront the main villain.
It turns out that he wanted magic like Dork, so he could make himself a god.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 18]
Eleven-Fifty-Nine
Shown 13 Apr 16
We know that Olly will soon attend the funeral of one of his supporting characters.
As a result, we get a lot more of the backup staff this week.
That way, it will be a lot more tear-jerking when one of them bites the bullet.
Diggle's brother Andy tells Team Arrow about Dork's new plan.
However, Olly does not trust Andy.
This is after he first told Diggle to torture his own brother,
and then advised him to forgive the afore-mentioned sibling.
Thea has a couple of face-offs with her estranged-again father,
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
).
Assistant District Attorney Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) gets offered a promotion by the Evil Mayor.
However, if she is the top DA she will have bodyguards 24/7,
so she will be unable to sneak out as Black Canary.
As a result she has to choose - career DA or hobbyist vigilante?
Damien Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) may not have his magic any more.
However, he can still do what a normal, mundane villain can do
- start a prison riot.
In the flashbacks to the island, Olly and the dive instructor (
Elysia Rutaru
) have to take out the rest of the guards and free the slaves.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 19]
Canary Cry
Shown 27 April 2016
Someone starts running around the city dressed as Black Canary.
Olly investigates the copycat and discovers it is a teenage girl with a grudge.
Somehow she managed to hack the canary cry sonic weapon,
even though Cisco built it and he is supposed to be word-class.
The suit is also a perfect fit, despite the new wearer being a head shorter.
Diggle refers to the copycat as a scared young girl,
but she is a dangerous maniac with a bag of unlicensed guns.
Diggle is obsessed with getting revenge on his brother.
However, he is unconcerned with the urban terrorist
who is destroying the image of Black canary.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 20]
Genesis
Shown 04 May 16
Olly goes to meet a friend of Constantine's,
who will train him in magic so her can defeat Damien Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) in a fair fight.
Felicity tags along, which is just as well because the meet-up is in a casino
and while Olly can dress in a tuxedo like James Bond,
Felicity's childhood with a Vegas showgirl for a mother has given her amazing gambling skills.
Diggle goes after his brother Andy again.
A pity that he was such a scumbag to Deadshot in the earlier Seasons.
It turns out that Diggle's wife, the now head of Argus, is more important than Diggle himself.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 21]
Monument Point
Shown 11 May 16
Dork enters his endgame.
He hijacks an Argus computer program that controls every nuclear missile in the world.
Well, Russia and NATO.
And somehow the NATO deterrent is not just the superpowers (UK, France and USA) but smaller nations too.
Anyhow, the only hacker in the world who can defeat the program is Felicity's father, the super-villain.
She whines and moans about this, because he is her family shame.
Of course, other family super-villains in this show include:
Olly's mother (dead)
Diggle's brother (who he still feels guilty about murdering)
Thea's father (who is keeping her safe against her will)
Felicity's mother is still shacked up with Captain Lance.
He has worked out a deal with Internal Affairs.
All he has to do is sign an affadavit that denies he knew Laurel was the Black Canary.
The hot mama brainwashes him into being honest.
He modifies the statement to say that he knew of and agreed with her activities.
Basically, the Police Captain states he and the District Attorney believed in vigilante justice,
a system that is both unnecessarily violent and entirely unaccountable.
And since most crime is committed by citizens of the Glades ghetto
(which Malcolm Merlyn is deemed a super-villain for trying to destroy it)
there ought to be a #GladesLivesMatter movement.
Felicity is still technically CEO of PalmerTech,
and acts as if she owns the place.
She talks as if her dad's attempts to borrow technology was stealing her personal property.
However, the Board of Directors decides that an absentee CEO is a liability.
Felicity gets fired from the company,
so she and her father have to break into the building and steal the tech.
Just the very thing that Felicity criminalised her dad for doing.
The building has a small army of pistol-packing security guards.
Olly's policy, despite knowing that they are law-abiding citizens just earning a living,
is to sadistically deliver as many bone fractures as possible.
Down in Dork's suburban bunker, the Joker guy is on a killing spree.
He wants to shut down the CO2 scrubbers and kill everyone,
except his actual target (Damien Dork) who is not on the site yet.
Merlyn and Thea must save the day.
Dork sends some minions to kill Felicity's dad.
One of them is Brick (Vinnie Jones –
Swordfish
), so presumably Merlyn does not know that his old enemy is on the same team now.
In the flashbacks, Olly frees the convicts and massacres the guards.
However, the Big Bad has got magic powers now.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 22]
Lost in the Flood
Shown 18 May 16
Felicity and her father try to stop the villains from taking over the Rubicon computer system again.
The good news is, Felicity's (former) minion drops by the help.
The bad news is, Felicity's shallow mother drops by to fight with Felicity's father.
Even worse, Damien Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) has hired a new sidekick - Felicity's ex-boyfriend, the evil super-hacker.
Down in the subterranean suburb, Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) has to cope with both Thea and her pseudo-stalker.
Worse, Olly and Diggle decide to infiltrate and save Thea.
In the flashbacks to the island, Olly and the dive instructor (
Elysia Rutaru
) try to escape from the island.
However, the magic idol seems to have a corrupting effect on the woman.
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 23]
Schism
Shown 25 May 16
Damien Dork (Neal McDonagh –
Captain America: The First Avenger
) has lost hope, so he has decided to destroy the world out of spite.
He has been powered by the deaths of tens of thousands of people,
so his magic is now virtually unstoppable.
Everyone else has lost hope too,
so Olly's hope-based magic will not defeat Dork.
Olly's only hope is to give the people their hope back.
Despite the lockout in the previous episode,
Dork steals Felicity's laptop and gets his hacker to deploy the US Nuclear arsenal.
Yes, every ICBM in the USA - over 15,000 in total - is launched simultaneously.
Felicity tells us that they will not hit their targets for 45 minutes,
so this episode can go real-time like 24 and still finish the story in the allotted time.
However, since ICBMs travel at a thousand miles a minute
there would be a twenty-minute warning for missiles to cross the Atlantic Ocean
and a mere four-minute warning during the crossing of a small continent.
One of the nukes is visible in the sky as it arrives at Starling city,
and it is so slow-moving that Felicity gets to the rooftop before it even gets close to the ground.
Felicity and her team have trouble defusing fifteen thousand nukes simultaneously.
There is another option - change the missiles' trajectory and send them straight up into outer space.
However, this could actually be more problematic than it seems.
After all, that was part of the villain's plan in
X-Men: Apocalypse
. No, there was no EMP that should destroy all digital technology, like in
Dark Angel
. Instead the goal was simply to deprive the USA and its NATO allies of all their nuclear deterrent.
The bottom line is, even if Dork is defeated it could be a phyrric victory,
because the entire NATO nuclear arsenal will have been neutralised.
This leaves them entirely vulnerable to rogue nations with nukes, such as North Korea.
The strangest thing of all is, none of this ever gets a mention in sister-show
The Flash
. Worse, nothing in that show (which included an invasion of super-villains from a parallel universe)
gets mentioned here.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 1]
Legacy
Shown 05 Oct 16
Olly faces off against Lonny Minchin,
the psychotic anarchist who fought a vendetta against Dork last Season.
Despite our so-called her's return to the dark side,
happily wounding allies and murdering villains,
this does not extend to recurring characters.
Nameless minions get summary execution,
while major villains like Minchin (a mass-murdering anarchist)
get gift-wrapped for the police.
There is a new villain in town.
He is not a ninja-trained magic-using megalomaniac like Damien Dork or Ras Al Ghul,
he is just a street-brawler with delusions of grandeur - like Brick (Vinnie Jones –
Swordfish
). Yes, the stakes have really gone down a notch since last time.
That said, Olly's entire team has deserted him - except for Felicity,
although she dumped him last Season and is no longer his lover.
Olly's day-job is Mayor of the city.
Unfortunately he is too busy at his hobby (serial killer) to work for a living.
He could just leave law enforcement to the professionals,
but his policy is to publicly imply the police are institutionally corrupt.
Luckily, ex-Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) is in town again.
The bad news is, Lance is back on the bottle because he split up with his girlfriend.
Yes, Just like Olly at the start of Season Four
he has been denied his happy ending.
The good news is, out of the entire Police Department
he can recruit half-a-dozen reliable officers to help Olly.
In the flashbacks, Olly gets involved in the Bratva
- an organised crime syndicate in Russia.
Luckily, the Captain is Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
), whose life Olly saved in
Season Two
.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 2]
The Recruits
Shown 12 Oct 16
Olly gets together some new recruits to help him control the city.
After all, he has a day-job now that he is Mayor of the city.
One is the Wild Dog guy from the previous episode,
and another is the Black Canary copycat from
Arrow [Season 4, Episode 19] Canary Cry
.
In the flashbacks, Olly and some other recruits are given a test by the Bratva.
This is the same test as the one he gives his own recruits.
However, at the end we discover there is an important difference.
Elsewhere, Diggle is back in US Army Special Forces.
He helps a middle-aged colonel run an illegal operation in Latvia.
They must retrieve a superweapon before terrorists can get their hands on it.
Mayor Olly has to clean up the mess left
after three hospital closures in the previous eighteen months.
His plan is to get a MegaCorp to sponsor a free clinic.
A sort of voluntary taxation system to provide subsidised public health care.
Normally the lucky MegaCorp would be Felicity's PalmerTech,
formerly known as Queen Consolidated.
However, Felicity got fired by the PalmerTech board
because she refused to actually do the job they paid her to do.
As a result, she has a lot more free time to help Arrow.
Anyway, the VIPs of this new MegaCorp are targeted by a super-powered assassin.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 3]
A Matter of Trust
Shown 19 Oct 16
Olly gets a briefing from a police detective,
who is also Felicity's secret boyfriend.
Thomas Church has taken over the underworld.
However, there is an even bigger fish at work.
He is a Dark Archer type who calls himself Prometheus,
and his goal is to take violent revenge on the Green Arrow.
Olly is out to stop a new designer drug called Stardust.
Wild Dog and Teen Girl go after the boss, a man named Samson.
Unfortunately Samson gets exposed to his own drug - which acts like a super-steroid.
As a result he becomes like his namesake.
Worse, he could potentially create his own super-soldier serum
and thus create his own Mira-Curu army.
Diggle is in Military Prison awaiting trial.
His wife, now head of ARGUS, cannot pull any strings to get him released.
Yes, she could recruit a new
Suicide Squad
but she cannot get her husband transferred.
Meanwhile, he is given Deadshot as his new cellmate.
TV journalist Susan Williams (
Carly Pope
) slams Olly's sister for hiring Quentin (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) as Deputy Mayor.
Of course, Olly has been too busy to check his voice-mails.
In the flashbacks, Olly continued the Bratva's selection process.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 4]
Penance
Shown 26 Oct 16
Diggle is in Military Prison awaiting trial.
His wife, now head of ARGUS,
gets Olly to help break him out of prison.
She cannot use ARGUS manpower,
but she has no problem securing specialist equipment.
Unfortunately Diggle does not want to be rescued.
He feels guilty because he killed his own brother.
Well, he killed a lot of peoples' brothers
but he only cares about the one he liked.
Yes, the value of a human life is defined by a popularity contest.
Felicity is left to protect the city.
Ragman has quit, because she nuked his home town last Season.
Well, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
The rest of the team can just about take on a single drug-dealer
if they gang up on him, three against one.
They will not be much use in a stand-up fight.
Thomas Church goes on the offensive.
His targets include the Police evidence locker and the Anti-Crime Unit.
In the flashbacks,
the Bratva sends Olly undercover in a prison.
His mission is to get info from an inmate, then murder him.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 5]
Human Target
Shown 02 Nov 16
Mad Dog got captured by Thomas Church,
who then proceeds to torture him
in order to find out the Arrow's secrets.
Olly made a mistake when he told his true identity to the recruits.
After all, what they do not know cannot be tortured out of them.
Olly calls in backup - Christopher Chance,
a different take on the character from the Human Target 1990 and 2010 TV shows.
This version is a master of disguise,
who uses rubber masks to get close to a victim and then shoot them dead.
Definitely not as nice a guy as the previous incarnation.
It turns out that Olly first crossed paths with Chance
when he was in Russia, working with the Bratva.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 6]
So It Begins
Shown 09 Nov 16
Olly continues training his little gang.
Two of them are serial killers.
However, they get quite judgemental when they discover that Olly was one too.
It turns out that Prometheus wants to take revenge on Olly
for his original murder spree back in Season One.
The new Black Canary girl (
Madison McLaughlin
) is unhappy with Olly.
She confronts him,
and tells him she once blamed him for her parents' death at the hands of Damien Dork.
However, she agrees to stay on the team.
She even takes on Prometheus in a one-on-one match.
Luckily, Olly's personal parachute can take the weight of three people!
Olly's sister takes the Vice Mayor, ex-Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
), to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
In the flashbacks, the Bratva give Olly what he wanted.
They send him on a mission to blow up Kovar's casino.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 7]
Vigilante
Shown 16 Nov 16
A gang of armed robbers are on the loose.
They are being hunted by a trigger-happy vigilante serial killer.
Olly sends his own team out to gather intelligence.
The young brunette girl wears a tight red dress
so she can torture info out of a drunken ex-con loser in an alleyway.
Meanwhile Diggle tortures a gun dealer in the hope of tracing the Vigilante's ammo.
It turns out that the killer uses armour-piercing rifle slugs, although Olly's secret weapon
(an arrow that splits into eight harpoons and spreads a silken screen across a window)
is enough to counter the armour-piercing rounds.
Seriously.
The presence of a rival vigilante serial killer,
plus the fact that the ARV gang's leader is a hardcore ex-con who was somehow paroled,
makes Olly consider that the system itself
- which he as Mayor is responsible for - is broken.
He as much as admits this to the seductive journalist Susan Williams (
Carly Pope
) when he meets her for an off-the-record not-a-date.
Meanwhile, the District Attorney manages to coerce information without actual violence.
He monologues a suspect about how he once went to Hell ...
In the flashbacks, Olly meets his adversary - Kovar (Dolph Lungren -
Universal Soldier
). Since it is too early in the story arc for the compulsory monologue of his plan,
so he instead delivers a monologue that introduces some shades of grey into the issue.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 8]
Invasion!
Shown 30 Nov 16
Olly, Thea, Diggle, Sarah Lance and Ray Palmer were abducted by aliens.
Now they are trapped in an alternate universe straight out of
It's A Wonderful Life
... only nice.
Olly is about to marry his childhood sweetheart - Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
). Yes, this is a look at a world where Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) never sank Olly's boat.
In the real world, Wild Dog has problems with super-humans.
His prejudice holds him back from teaming up with
Supergirl
and
The Flash
. Until he runs into a cyborg woman, that is ...
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 9]
What We Leave Behind
Shown 07 Dec 16
Prometheus, AKA the throwing-star killer,
ambushes Felicity's black gay sidekick.
This is aimed at outing him - as a serial-killer's sidekick.
Olly's flashback are to four years ago, during the first Season of the show.
One of the targets from his father's book was CEO of a big pharmaceutical company.
Being a scumbag businessman is not illegal, so the police could not touch him.
Olly slaughtered a dozen bodyguards just to get a shot at the man.
In all fairness it is hardly his fault,
they just ran at him as if squirted from a victim dispenser.
Felicity's boyfriend, Malone the honest cop, gets a clue on the killer's identity.
Then he goes missing, obviously abducted by his quarry.
The District Attorney gets Olly to give a shoot-on-sight order.
There is only one outcome from this, it is completely predictable to anyone except Olly.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 10]
Who Are You?
Shown 25 Jan 17
Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy
) is back, apparently saved off-screen by her sister and the
Legends of Tomorrow
crew.
Felicity holds a small informal party of regular characters to celebrate,
even though after the previous episode nobody feels like celebrating.
Diggle is back in military custody,
facing a court martial for multiple felonies.
Olly gets the District Attorney to act as defence lawyer,
although as everyone knows this is quite an unlikely situation.
Somehow Prometheus managed to find out about the meta-humans in Barry Allen's basement,
travel all the way to Central city, broke into Star Labs and rescued a prisoner.
Nobody comments on the unlikeliness of any of this.
In the flashbacks, Olly has a face-to-face with the head of the Bratva.
The bad news is, he is a rent-a-villain from
Revolution: Season 1
. Worse, he does not trust Olly.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 11]
Second Chances
Shown 25 Jan 17
Olly has decided to recruit a replacement Black Canary.
There are many women who mix martial arts black belts with PhDs.
It turns out that the Canary Call is also a popular superpower.
There are two female supervillains in alternate worlds -
Earth Two has Black Siren and Earth Nineteen has Silver Siren.
Now there is a meta-human woman with the power.
However, she is still perhaps too much of a vigilante serial-killer to be trusted.
She is on a kill-crazy rampage against a Central City gangster (Steve Bacic
- who previously appeared as Green Arrow's mentor in
Smallville
).
In the flashbacks, this show's Olly meets his mentor - Talia (
Lexa Doig
). It turns out she also mentored Yao Fei,
the Chinese Secret Agent who mentored Olly in Season One.
She teaches by example, so she takes Olly on an assassination mission.
Felicity decides to take out her newest fan, Alena (
Kacey Rohl
), in part out of shame at her own past as a Hacktivist.
She states that taking on corrupt Corporations was a selfish power-trip,
but the only difference between her hobby and Olly's is that hers was non-violent.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 12]
Bratva
Shown 01 Feb 17
General Walker, the man who framed Diggle,
escapes and take the nuclear bomb trigger with him.
He and his team get to Russia,
where Argus and the CIA cannot follow him.
Olly and his vigilante gang go after him.
Unfortunately his Bratva contact Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) is unhappy at the way he dropped out of the organisation.
Olly does not believe in quid-pro-quo,
he merely takes what he can and gives nothing back.
Diggle is happy to torture a confession out of a prisoner.
Felicity uses blackmail and extortion to terrorise her victims.
They both try to justify their evil deeds by
claiming to be more morally justified than their victims.
In the flashbacks, Olly's new mentor Talia (
Lexa Doig
) gets him to take on drug suppliers.
This is his first mission as The Arrow vigilante.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 13]
Spectre of the Gun
Shown 08 Feb 17
Despite the Mayor's office having its own security,
a shooter breaks in and shoots the place up with an automatic rifle.
Olly and Thea are both present, but do not use their ninja skills.
Yes, they survived the previous four and a half Seasons
but nearly get take out by a lone nut with store-bought weaponry.
The bodyguards do not get a shot off either.
Luckily Wild Dog, there as ex-cop Lance's assistant, has a pistol on him.
The killer's agenda is to coerce the mayor into making a gun registry.
As the episode's title suggests, this story is an excuse to demonise guns.
Typically of the gun-control agenda,
the team point out that the civilian legal rifle (the most popular gun in the USA)
is basically a military-grade battlefield weapon the same as the army's M-16.
Wild Dog has a dishonorable discharge,
so it is apparently illegal for him to carry a gun.
However, he can buy one very easily.
Diggle is separated from his wife, so he befriends the new female recruit Dinah Drake.
He also goes back to his bad old ways of torturing info out of people.
Meanwhile, the other gun-toting vigilante is still in town.
We are meant to believe that he is morally worse than Olly
because Olly uses a bow and arrow instead of a gun.
The flashbacks are of Wild Dog.
He was married to
Samaire Armstrong
, but she was a recovering drug addict.
Since he is now a single childless vigilante psycho,
we know it did not end well.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 14]
The Sin-Eater
Shown 15 Feb 17
A group of female convicts break out of custody.
Two of them are ex-cops - Warner (
Rutina Wesley
) from the anti-vigilante unit and the cupid woman who was obsessed with Green Arrow.
The third one is Triad hit-woman China White (
Kelly Hu
), who has a line on a dead gangster's secret cash stash.
The new female Vigilante, Dinah Drake, is also a murderer and an ex-cop.
However, Mayor Olly is happy to swear her in
as an officer in the city's police department.
Yes, seems his condemnation of murderous female cops is selective.
The ACU is after Green Arrow because of what happened to Detective Malone.
Despite Olly's attempts to pull strings, he cannot change the facts.
Meanwhile, Olly's girlfriend Susan Williams (
Carly Pope
) has enough proof that Olly is the Green Arrow.
Unfortunately she does not bother with security.
Olly's sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) and ex-lover Felicity (
Emily Bett Rickards
) decide to interfere in his life.
In the flashbacks, Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) has been hospitalised by a rival.
Olly has to get him to safety
so they can carry out a coup against the treacherous Bratva leader.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 15]
Fighting Fire with Fire
Shown 01 Mar 17
Olly has been impeached for covering up the Green Arrow's involvement in Malone's death.
The District Attorney serves as his defence lawyer.
This is the second time he has stepped outside his job description.
He must be very keen to stay on Olly's good side.
After all, he is the only one of the Mayor's inner circle
who does not moonlight as a member of the Green Arrow's private militia.
Quentin's assistant is Wild Dog,
and their police security chauffeuse is the new Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
).
The vigilante gunman believes the press reports.
He assumes Olly is corrupt,
rather than just a pawn of rival vigilante Green Arrow.
Olly and his team deal with the expert assassin far more easily
than they did with the amateur last week.
Olly's sister Thea (
Willa Holland
) is willing to do some nasty politicking,
and suggests smearing the reputation of dead hero Malone.
She will also blackmail rival politicians.
Since her mother and father were both super-villains,
perhaps we should not be surprised she is ruthless in pursuit of her own agenda.
Diggle learns that Felicity (
Emily Bett Rickards
) has access to Pandora, the secret blackmail database from her fan Alena (
Kacey Rohl
). He realises that any tool can be used as a weapon.
It is ironic that he uses violence as his primary method
and yet gets worried about Felicity when she uses coercion herself.
In the flashbacks, Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) challenges his rival.
This is a parallel to the impeachment proceedings.
Can Olly find evidence in time to save himself?
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 16]
Checkmate
Shown 15 Mar 17
Olly visits a remote Kung Fu monastery in Asia.
It is run by Talia (
Lexa Doig
), the former mentor of Olly himself - and his new arch-enemy, Prometheus.
She gives Olly the name of his enemy, but it is too late.
Olly's ex-girlfriend Susan Williams (
Carly Pope
) is held prisoner by Prometheus.
In the flashbacks, the Bratva have a civil war.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 17]
Kapiushon
Shown 22 Mar 17
Olly gets tortured by Prometheus.
He also finds out what happened to the man's little sidekick.
Olly is a much better torturer than Prometheus.
He once skinned a man alive - not for information, but for practice.
His idea of controlling the city has been to kill everyone who disagreed with him.
We think of Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) as being a monster because he wanted to wipe out The Glades,
but Olly has killed far more people over the years.
No wonder the city has had such an economic depression.
In the flashbacks the Bratva civil war is over.
However, they still have to deal with Kovar (Dolph Lungren -
Universal Soldier
). He has bought a superweapon off Merlyn,
and plans to use it to stage a coup on the Russian government.
The weapon is supposed to be Sarin nerve gas.
However, the definition of nerve gas is that it is absorbed through the skin.
Whatever they are using, it is certainly not Sarin.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 18]
Disbanded
Shown 29 Mar 17
Olly has disbanded his team.
After all, he has come to terms with the fact that
his whole crusade against crime was an excuse for a murder spree.
Olly has a backup plan.
He hires Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) and the Bratva to kill Prometheus.
Their payment is in diabetes medicine.
In the flashbacks we learn their purpose -
the Bratva supports poverty-stricken Russian hospitals
by stealing supplies from big pharmaceutical companies.
We are meant to feel sorry for the greedy parasites
who charge diabetics excessivly just to stay alive.
Wild Dog claims that the company is about to go under
and that hundreds of jobs are at risk.
The reality is, the senior management are over-paid
and the company is heavily insured against theft.
Felicity and Curtis have another plan.
They team up with another criminal conspiracy - Helix -
and also decide to burglarise a local company and take what they want.
The idea is that if they can find a photo of Prometheus with his real face,
that will be enough to have him arrested.
In reality all they can prove is that he wore a fancy dress costume,
but this show has always valued violence over logic.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 19]
Dangerous Liaisons
Shown 26 Apr 17
Team Arrow, AKA Mayor Olly's entourage, go after Prometheus.
Lilah sends along a SWAT team from ARGUS to back them up.
Unfortunately their target had sixteen hours to boobytrap the place,
and then escape out his secret rear exit.
Helix are a hacker group that gathers info,
but now they have decided to do field operations as well.
Their first mission accidentally gets a suspect killed,
and Felicity gets very self-richeous about this.
ARGUS are holding Helix's leader.
It turns out that the US Government's Deep State,
built by Reagan and reinforced after 911 by Bush,
does not want citizen hackers running their own operations.
It seems like there will be a battle of the super-villainesses.
After all, Lilah is literally the new Amanda Waller.
She holds suspects without trial,
and uses phrases like Twenty times more dangerous than Snowden.
The ARGUS base has spy-drones overheard,
and mechanised gatling-gun turrets.
Instead of just hacking the system,
the Helix crew use human-wave tactics to overcome the defences.
This did not work for the monsters in the movie
Aliens
. However, like everyone else in this show
they consider their own people to be cannon fodder.
In a subplot, Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) teaches Mad Dog to take responsibility as a father.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 20]
Underneath
Shown 03 May 17
Prometheus' new attack is an EMP that takes out all the electronics in the bunker.
Cisco designed the facility's defences,
and unfortunately turned into an inescapable deathtrap.
This leaves Olly and Felicity trapped inside,
bickering like an old divorced couple.
The flashbacks are to eleven months ago,
before Felicity persuaded Olly to recruit the new team.
They still had a lot of sexual tension,
but Felicity has a lot of made-up reasons for not getting back together.
She has a problem with the fact that Olly operates on a need-to-know basis,
and does not burden her with excessive or irrelevant info.
The man is a serial-killer who runs the city like his own personal fiefdom,
and the only thing she has problems with is a perceived lack of trust.
Diggle and Lilah have couples issues of their own.
Specifically, he is upset that his wife has become the new Amanda Waller,
basically a super-villain who does what Olly does but at a Federal Government level.
Of course, she points out that Diggle has no problem working for a serial killer,
and that she has never judged or criticised him for this.
Perhaps the show would be better if it were more like
The Originals
, where the characters battling for control of a city
OPENLY ADMIT they are super-villains and serial killers,
and there is not phony pretense of anyone being a good guy.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 21]
Honor Thy Fathers
Shown 10 May 17
The District Attorney has been outed as a serial killer.
The gangsters and super-villains he successfully prosecuted
have been let off on appeal.
Thankfully nobody has outed the Mayor and his entire clique,
or else the city would really be in trouble.
Olly has his goon squad keep an eye on the gangsters,
and as always they do not care about taking prisoners.
By incredible coincidence,
the main gangster is now in league with Prometheus.
They have a plan to use a bio-weapon and destroy the city.
Prometheus sends Olly some evidence of an old murder.
It is not related to one of the cases on appeal.
The body is fifteen years old,
so it must be related to a previous conspiracy.
The obvious one would be The Undertaking,
which ended up as the main plot of Season One.
The main villain behind it was Thea's father Malcolm Merlyn,
but Olly's parents were also neck-deep in it.
Prometheus' father was just a greedy businessman.
Olly refuses to believe that his own father could be a killer,
but he forgets that when his yacht sank in the South China Sea
there were three people in the life-raft.
Sarah Lance was actually lucky she was picked up by the mad scientist instead.
And Thea forgets that Mr Queen was not her natural father.
In the flashbacks, Olly gets Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) to fly him back to The Island.
He wants to set things up so they are left off where Season One picked up.
The main plotline seems to have been concluded with a few episodes left.
However, there is still the subplot with Kovar (Dolph Lungren -
Universal Soldier
).
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 22]
Missing
Shown 17 May 17
Team Arrow hold a birthday party for Olly.
He might even get back together with Felicity.
Everything is a little bit too easy.
After all, nobody has seen Wild Dog
since he missed his daughter's hearing in the previous episode.
Also, Dinah the new Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) does not make it to the party.
Prometheus had a partner - Talia (
Lexa Doig
). They can hardly involve such a major character and not use her again,
so she has made a come-back.
Also, the half-pint sidekick has not been seen for a few episodes.
Prometheus is in an ARGUS cell, held without trial after peacefully surrendering.
However, Black Siren (
Katie Cassidy
) has been rescued - AGAIN. Off-screen, unfortunately.
This makes ARGUS look weak,
and we are still denied the excitement of the event.
In the flashbacks, Olly has been captured by Kovar (Dolph Lungren -
Universal Soldier
). Yes, not only did the villain evade the Russian police and escape the country,
he got to the last place on Earth - BEFORE Olly did!
His plan is to use a drug on Olly
that forces the victim to relive the worst things he has ever done.
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 23]
Lian Yu
Shown 24 May 17
Once upon a time,
TV show heroes approached a climactic Season-ending battle
as if it was just another freak-of-the-week story.
These days they make it a big deal, and make themselves an army of recurring characters.
Olly's friends are all out of action, so instead he recruits his enemies.
Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) volunteers in order to save Thea.
Prometheus has Talia (
Lexa Doig
) on his side, so Olly recruits her sister Nyssa (
Katrina Law
) to even the odds.
Since ARGUS has an illegal prison on Lian Yu,
Olly recruits the two inmates he dumped there - Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) and Captain Boomerang (Nick Taraby -
Spartacus: Blood and Sand
). Yes, this week there are THREE recurring characters played
Spartacus
cast members. If only Amanda Waller (
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
) were to turn up, and Weather Wizard from
The Flash
were to arrive, there would be a full house.
There are a lot of old scores to be settled.
Thea is unhappy to see her devoted daddy again,
although she gets to bond with Felicity who also had a supervillain daddy.
Black Siren (
Katie Cassidy
) is holding captive her alternate universe daddy, Quentin (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) and her replacement, Dinah the new Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
). The Al Ghul sisters also have a family reunion.
In the flashbacks, Olly has escaped Kovar (Dolph Lungren -
Universal Soldier
). He has time to build an Ewok-style boobytrap.
Also, the men who are hunting him are morons.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 1]
Fallout
Shown 12 Oct 17
The story picks up a few months after the cliffhanger ending of the previous Season.
Unlike Team
Flash
, the Green Arrow and his sidekicks seem to be intact and fully functional.
However, as the episode progresses we see that they are only papering over the cracks.
While they act as if it is business as usual,
the survivors all seem to have some kind of unresolved trauma.
Black Siren (
Katie Cassidy
) is back, and her rivalry with Dinah the new Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) means we get some good girl-on-girl fights.
However, she is presented as the main antagonist for Quentin (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
). After all, several characters (Olly, Thea, Diggle, Felicity) have faced their next of kin.
Now it is Quentin's turn for some contrived personal problems.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 2]
Tribute
Shown 19 Oct 17
Olly has been exposed as the Green Arrow yet again.
Someone has anonymously leaked a photo of him in the costume.
He laughs it off in the Press,
and states that even Bruce Wayne could have been photoshopped into the image.
Also, since he has a full-time job as the city's mayor
he can hardly expected to run around at night as a vigilante.
However, in reality Olly has severely neglected his official responsibilities.
Felicity got fired from Smoak-Corp for doing the same thing,
but now it takes Olly's status as a new father to make him realise he is over-stretched.
Bratva Captain Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) is in town, and he has business with the Markovian investors.
Yes, now Olly has to turn against his former friend and ally.
Last episode the secret HQ was smashed up,
but now it has all been fixed up and the damage repaired.
So where does the money come from?
Felicity discovers that her sidekick has a secret day-job.
Well, normally the vigilante status is secret and the day-job is openly known.
He admits that he did not get a penny when he divorced his husband.
Presumably he walked away from a great job as head of research at Smoak-Corp
after Felicity got fired a few years ago.
In contrast, Diggle is the only one of the muscle crew
who does not have a decent job as part of the Mayor's entourage.
He lives off his wife's salary, as head of ARGUS.
Yes, he is a kept man who plays vigilante as a hobby.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 3]
Next of Kin
Shown 26 Oct 17
Olly has set aside his responsibilities as chief serial killer.
While Olly spends time as a father,
Diggle must put on the Green Arrow suit.
Despite having a wife and child of his own,
Diggle has no apparent family commitments of his own.
Last Season, Diggle had issues regarding his dead brother.
Now he has issues regarding his physical nerve damage from shrapnel.
However, he also has psychological problems too.
Diggle has always been a follower, and now he must become a leader.
Luckily he has Dinah the new Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) for emotional support.
The villains of the week are a rogue CIA unit
who steal high-tech weaponry.
Apparently they are completely different from the hi-level mercenaries
that Black Siren hired in the first episode.
Yes, the US military-industrial complex
has produced at least TWO groups of renegades.
The FBI Agent is still investigating Olly,
even though she has no evidence and he has been repeatedly exhonerated.
She points out that as Mayor he has regularly undermined the Police
by stating that only the unofficial vigilantes can protect the city.
When the City Council tries to pass an anti-Vigilante law,
once again he plays the populist card and demands a public referendum.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 4]
Reversal
Shown 02 Nov 17
Black Siren (
Katie Cassidy
) is back, seducing and murdering lonely yuppies.
She is credited as a main character, not just a guest star,
so she will probably be in every other episode this Season.
Felicity decides to go out on a date with Olly.
She is tutoring his son in maths.
However, her fan Alena (
Kacey Rohl
) pops up and asks her to help save the world.
Her former mentor, Cayden James (Michael Emerson -
Lost
), has become a nihilist and wants to destroy the world.
Presumably he is suffering from the side-effects
of ARGUS torturing him for eight months last Season.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 5]
Deathstroke Returns
Shown 09 Nov 17
Olly is under FBI surveillance.
However, last week he acted like an over-protective boyfriend
and followed Felicity.
Now he joins Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) on a trip to a distant country where Wilson's son has been thrown into prison.
They get some help from an old friend of Wilson's - Kris Holden-Ried, the werewolf from
Lost Girl
.
The trigger-happy rival Vigilante from last Season is back.
He takes a shot at the City Councillor who proposed the anti-Vigilante Bill.
Evidently she is only intended as a generic opponent to make Olly look good.
Previously she was a Gun's Rights Activist,
and such a libertarian viewpoint is at odds with an anti-vigilante stance.
The FBI come along - not to protect the City Councillor
or even to catch the murderous gunman,
but in the hope of trapping the Green Arrow team if they turn up to save the day.
Dinah the new Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) has a personal conflict of interest.
She loved her old partner, and even committed cold-blooded murder to avenge him.
Now it turns out that he may have survived,
and become an even more murderous vigilante than she is.
Also, as a police detective she would rather torture suspects than do her job properly.
She has no faith in the Police department she works with.
However, in all fairness they are trigger-happy
and yet lack basic equipment like a personal radio.
The flashbacks are Slade Wilson's.
Before he went to Lian Yu, he took his son on a camping holiday.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 6]
Promises Kept
Shown 16 Nov 17
Diggle has been relying on illegal steroids to keep his edge.
As a good customer, he is introduced to the head dealer - Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
). Unfortunately Diaz is the next target of team Arrow.
Is Diggle smart enough to leave Diaz in business so he can get his steroid?
After all, Diggle was ruthless enough to work for Amanda Waller.
And now he spends some time with her replacement, his wife.
Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett -
Spartacus: War of the Damned
) has now joined the Jackals.
Olly keeps an eye on them, but falls foul of Nylander (Kris Holden-Ried -
Lost Girl
).
The flashbacks are Slade Wilson's.
After he escaped from Lian Yu, he was taken to an Australian SIS training base.
Instead of detoxing him so he got the mirakuru serum out of his bloodstream,
they let him train his son in martial arts like he trained Olly.
Unfortunately Wilson has mirakuru-induced visions of Shado.
She told him that Olly is alive - BEFORE a TV new broadcast verified this fact!
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 7]
Thanksgiving
Shown 23 Nov 17
Felicity is now publicly known as Mayor Olly's girlfriend.
She gets questioned by a media reporter,
and rather than just politely refuse to answer questions
she half-jokingly tells Olly to put an arrow into those people.
So much for freedom of the Press.
The FBI Agent decides to arrest Olly on suspicion of being the Green Arrow.
For some reason she decides to do it while he holds a press conference
at the opening ceremony of a new police station.
He has a great lawyer -
Teryl Rothery
, who got his mother off Death Row in
Season Two
.
Cayden James (Michael Emerson -
Lost
) is back behind a computer, controlling operations remotely.
Just like in Person Of Interest,
only his henchman is Black Siren (
Katie Cassidy
). Their agenda involves stealing ingredients for a thermobaric weapon.
Diggle gets Curtis to implant him with a version of the chip in Felicity's spine.
It works well at the start - too well,
because these stories work best when things all go wrong at the worst possible time.
And Diggle must have gotten a blow to the head,
because despite being a Special Forces soldier
he does not know what a thermobaric weapon is.
Olly assumes the villains will use it to bomb a thanksgiving-day concert at a stadium.
He leads the team, and gets a monologue from the villain.
Just like last Season, the villain's motivation is simply personal revenge.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 8]
Crisis on Earth-X, Part 2
Shown 27th Nov 2017
This follows on from
Supergirl
. Earth One has been invaded by super-Nazis from Earth X.
The Nazis have four head honchos,
each the alter-ego of a named character in the main shows.
The Fuhrer is Olly, the General (his wife) is Supergirl,
the Speedster is Ethan Thawne,
and Prometheus is Merlyn ... Tommy Merlyn!
The follow-up is on
Flash (2014)
.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 9]
Irreconcilable Differences
Shown 07 Dec 17
Olly and Felicity celebrate their marriage,
in a follow-up to the Crisis crossover storyline.
Thea is back, with no ill effects after her six-month coma.
Not even any muscle atrophy or lost motor functions.
However, despite appearing at social functions
she does not seem to have any work to do
either in Team Arrow or in the Mayor's office.
Quentin (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
) gets kidnapped by Black Siren (
Katie Cassidy
). Cayden James (Michael Emerson -
Lost
) holds him hostage in exchange for a super-weapon from the ARGUS vault.
Unfortunately ARGUS has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
This means they must consider Olly Queen to be qan unlawful combatant,
because they certainly negotiate with him all the time.
Will Diggle risk his marriage by stealing from ARGUS?
The FBI have a witness who will testify that Olly is the Green Arrow.
Olly immediately suspects there is a mole,
and puts all three of last Season's new members under suspicion.
He never considers that it might be an enemy.
After all, everyone on Lian Yu at the end of last Season knew who he was,
and it seems most of them are unaccounted for.
Last Season's arch-villain, Prometheus,
created an alliance of Olly's greatest surviving antagonists.
Cayden James has done the same thing,
although they are pretty much the B-Team in comparison.
Yes, the show has outlived itself by a few Seasons.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 10]
Divided
Shown 18 Jan 18
Jerry Bertinelli (Louis Ferreira -
Stargate: universe
) is the last surviving leader of his crime family,
after his cousin Huntress murdered everyone.
He gets a visit from Cayden James (Michael Emerson -
Lost
), Black Siren (
Katie Cassidy
) and Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
). They offer to buy him out,
although they have no apparent intention
of actually paying anything for it.
Olly goes after the villains.
He is typically murderous towards henchmen.
However, when he has a clear shot at Black Siren -
easily the most powerful and murderous of his foes -
he choses to use the non-lethal option.
Olly finds himself out-gunned.
Well, when he made the plan he already knew he was up against two armies.
Instead he lets the nameless footsoldiers get slaughtered
and then goes off to feel sorry for himself.
Olly's rejects decide to set up a rival team.
They are amateurs who do not stand a chance.
However, the villains are likely to underestimate them.
Their new base is a basement formerly used by Helix -
the hacker syndicate formerly led by Caden James himself.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 11]
We Fall
Shown 25 Jan 18
Cayden James (Michael Emerson -
Lost
) pays the Mayor a visit.
He has built a WMD capable of destroying the city,
but will hold off as long as he gets ten million dollars every day.
He also gives the reason for his grudge against Olly.
Apparently Cayden's son was colateral damage in one of olly's murder sprees.
The new Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) has trouble believing that her ex-lover is trustworthy.
This is despite the fact that she went on a kill-crazy rampage to avenge him in
Arrow [Season 5, Episode 11] Second Chances
.
We get flashbacks of their mission together
to infiltrate the Central City gang of Steve Bacic (
Smallville
).
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 12]
All for Nothing
Shown 01 Feb 18
Deputy Mayor Lance is being stalked by Black Siren.
After all, he is the nearest thing she has to a father.
Olly now has an undercover source in Cayden James' operation.
They plan to download the villain's databanks onto a USB drive,
then smuggle it out of his headquarters.
What could possibly go wrong?
Felicity needs help. Since her gay black minion is now part of the splinter group,
she has to use her fan - and Cayden James' former hench-woman - Alena (
Kacey Rohl
).
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 13]
The Devil's Greatest Trick
Shown 08 Feb 18
Cayden James (Michael Emerson -
Lost
) decides to set the bomb off at midnight.
He drives off by himself,
while his business partners wait for a helicopter pickup.
Eventually they realise they have been double-crossed,
and split up so they can all escape.
Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) is obsessed with murdering Black Siren,
in revenge for the execution of her lover.
Deputy Mayor Lance still wants to take Black Siren alive,
because in spite of her bad deeds he realises she still has the potential to be redeemed.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 14]
Collision Course
Shown 01 Mar 18
Mayor Olly publicly swears to recover the seventy million dollars
that he illegally paid to the extortionist.
Luckily, Thea discovers that Quentin has been hiding Black Siren.
Team Arrow comes to get her and find out where the missing money is.
The rival team, The Outsiders, also want the Siren.
Not for the money - they do not care about the city, they just want revenge.
The two teams come to blows.
Mad Dog has always had his ass handed to him by Olly,
will this time be any different?
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 15]
Doppelgänger
Shown 08 Mar 18
Black Siren decides to pass herself off as Laurel Lance.
It turns out that she does not have much choice.
Not only was she wounded in the previous episode,
but someone stole the money that she stole from Cayden James.
You know, the money that Cayden stole from Mayor Olly.
The insider goes to the FBI and retracts his testimony.
However, the Feds have a new rat to put Olly in the frame.
Somehow they managed to catch Roy Harper (Colton Haynes -
Teen Wolf
), even though he faked his death and left town years ago.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 16]
The Thanatos Guild
Shown 15 Mar 18
It turns out that although the League Of Assassins was officially disbanded,
Malcolm Merlyn had a few loyal followers who call themselves The Thanatos Guild.
Their leader Athena (
Kyra Zagorsky
) has a cunning plan.
Nyssa Al Ghul turns up and demands Olly's help.
Specifically it is Olly's sister Thea that she needs,
the blood descendent of Malcolm Merlyn.
She is the key to the Guild's plan.
Roy, Thea's ex-BF, is still in town.
He and Thea team up with Nyssa.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 17]
Brothers in Arms
Shown 22 Mar 18
The good news is that Curtis has a new boyfriend.
The bad news is that this boyfriend is anti-vigilante.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 18]
Back to the Basics
Shown 29 Mar 18
Olly goes on a kill-crazy rampage.
He decides to kill Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) and anyone who gets in the way.
Much like
The Terminator
, this means a full frontal assault on a police station full of hard-working cops.
It turns out that Olly has been dosed with Vertigo, the illegal hallucinogenic drug.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 19]
Enter the Dragon
Shown 19 Apr 18
Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) and Black Siren take a road-trip to another city.
This is not just a social thing, although she seems to have made herself his official girlfriend.
No, he has applied for membership of a national crime syndicate called The Quadrant.
Unfortunately there are only four seats and no vacancies,
so he has no apparent chance of being accepted.
Black Siren has superpowers.
However, Diaz goes through a team of Federal Agents as if he were
John Wick
. Yes, he certainly has what it takes to be the best villain this show has ever had.
unfortunately this dose of realism comes far too late.
Last Season's villain was Damien Dork - a ninja assassin with magical superpowers.
We also get some of Diaz's back-story.
He was an orphan, and was bullied by a bigger kid.
Totally unlike Olly Queen's silver-spoon upbringing.
However, like Olly he is interested in bloody vengeance.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 20]
Shifting Allegiences
Shown 26 Apr 18
Olly has gone solo.
He targets the weakest link in Diaz's team - Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) the Bratva Captain.
Instead of just doing his usual serial-killer thing,
Olly tries a new tactic - bribery.
Unfortunately Anatoly is playing both sides.
But at least this is the best way to ensure it is a fair fight.
Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) wants to get the new Mayor to sign over the rights to a city-owned building.
Since the new Mayor is Mr Lance, this puts Black Siren in a tight spot.
She must choose between her boyfriend and her sort-of-father.
Diggle now has a job at ARGUS, so he can pull in Federal resources to fight Diaz.
Just as well, because Diaz's new deal with the Quadrant has made this a Federal case.
Mad Dog gets out of hospital.
We are actually meant to care, in spite of the massive body-count the vigilantes have created.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 21]
Docket No. 11-19-41-73
Shown 03 May 18
John Diggle parachutes into a foreign country that looks like the Former Yugoslavia.
He starts blazing away with his rifle on full automatic,
even before he lands on terra firma.
This may seem to be a bad tactic.
However, the militia he massacres do not take cover -
or even stop running long enough to take aim.
Back in Star City, Olly has a good lawyer -
Teryl Rothery
, who got his mother off Death Row in
Season Two
. This may not be enough, because the Judge is apparently corrupt.
Well, the whole police department is, so why not the entire judiciary?
Olly's buddies are called in to testify.
There is one small problem.
Olly is guilty of being a serial killer,
and most of his entourage have blood on their hands too.
Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) has another secret weapon.
Black Siren is still posing as Laurel Lance.
She is called to appear as a witness.
Her foster-father tries to talk her into double-crossing her boyfriend.
Yes, she is literally a murderous super-villain
but she is pretty so she appears to have developed a conscience.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 22]
The Ties That Bind
Shown 10 May 18
Diaz's main plan was to have Olly convicted and imprisoned.
Even though Olly is guilty as hell, he is still above the law.
As a result, Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) goes to Plan B - with a bullet!
His hit-teams go after Olly's known associates,
including Diggle and his wife - the Director of ARGUS.
Arrow [Season 6, Episode 23]
Life Sentence
Shown 17 May 18
ARGUS may be the best Federal Agency in the world.
However, they have not been able to deploy assets sufficient to defeat Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
). Luckily, Olly manages to get help from a different Agency - the FBI.
They issue immunity to him and his team, and agree to take down Diaz.
This works great when it comes to deploying the HRT
so they can massacre an entire police station full of cops.
However, on the next raid they only send a cowardly rookie agent as backup for the vigilantes.
Since Diaz has only committed local crimes
(except joining the Quadrant, which is a RICO crime and under FBI jurisdiction)
the Feds need Mayor Quentin Lance to sign an official request form.
They never needed permission to investigate Olly's crimes as Green Arrow.
Diaz still has the fake Laurel as a hoatage,
and uses her as leverage against Quentin.
The ending takes place after the end of
Legends of Tomorrow (S3)
, so a guest-star makes a surprise appearance.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 1]
Inmate 4587
Shown 8th Oct 2018
Olly is in a maximum security prison, along with many people he sent there.
The place is run by Brick (Vinny Jones –
Swordfish
) and Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
). Well, it seems like ARGUS shut down the
Suicide Squad
when the DCU decided to make it into a movie,
which is why Deadshot was killed off in a pointless way.
Felicity's minion is now the head of Research at ARGUS.
Felicity herself, however, is a coffee barrista.
Rather than join the super-secret spy agency
she went into the Witness Relocation Program since Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) is still on the loose.
Yes, apparently secret agents are not as safe as coffee-shop workers.
Mad Dog has also retired, ever since he went public at the trial.
He runs a gymnasium for the local teenagers,
which obviously does not pay very well.
However, he is unhappy at the fact things are getting worse in the Glades.
Sixteen local businesses are going under - the legitimate ones, that is.
The only people who can earn a living are the crooks.
The police are apparently in the worst condition they have ever been.
They are so desperate for leadership that the lady detective is now the Captain.
Yes, she was fast-tracked past sergeant and lieutenant ranks.
As a result of police mismanagement, Mad Dog's neighbourhood is worse than ever.
Five months without a vigilante has somehow damaged the society.
Now they have a Green Arrow copycat on the loose.
The flashbacks are of a young man who visits Lian Yu.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 2]
The Longbow Hunters
Shown 15th Oct 2018
Since the safe house was exposed,
Diggle lets Felicity hang out at the ARGUS HQ instead.
She does not understand basic principles like Need to Know,
and deliberately interferes with ongoing investigations.
Diggle points out that she does not merely want revenge on Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
), she actually wants to turn back time to the end of Season Three.
Well, that was the natural end-point for the show's story arc.
Olly is still in prison.
He tries to team up with Brick (Vinnie Jones -
Swordfish
) but he is given a task to prove himself - get rid of a particular guard.
If this seems a familiar storyline,
it was already used in Oz when the Kirk Aceveda -
who now plays the show's recurring villain -
had to prove himself to El Cid (Luis Guzman -
).
Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) is now a police captain,
even though she is under-qualified and wears too much makeup for a working woman.
She puts aside her command responsibilities
and assigns herself as personal bodyguard to the DA - Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassiday
). Yes, this is the same Laurel that she spent half the last season trying to murder.
Diaz is still in town.
He does not bother with using gangsters as his minions any more.
Instead he hires a trio of expert assassins called the Longbow Hunters.
Their mission is to help him steal a super-weapon from ARGUS.
Well, it is a regular piece of high technology
but ARGUS has weaponised it.
In the flash-forwards,
Olly's son hangs out with an almost unrecognisable Roy on Lian Yu.
It turns out that Junior is of the homosexual persuasion,
so it looks like the Queen bloodline will die with him.
Finally, good news at last.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 3]
Crossing Lines
Shown 22nd Oct 2018
Felicity offers her services to the FBI.
After all, she has no proper job since she was fired from her CEO job
for never turning up to board meetings.
Unfortunately the FBI is not hiring.
Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) is only number 27 on the FBI's most-wanted list,
even though he is a member of the Quadrant and has open warrants out on him.
Strange that nobody mentions any other gangsters or rackets.
The Special Agent In Charge tells Felicity to go home and enjoy her freedom,
even though Felicity was attacked while in protective custody.
Felicity gets the FBI Agent to help her ambush Diaz and his crew on their next heist.
The villains intent to burglarise the CDC.
Rather than use the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team
they just take along the former Black Canary (
Juliana Harkavy
) and Wild Dog -
now a Police captain and a civilian gymn-owner respectively.
Diggle and Lilah go abroad for an undercover field mission.
Yes, the Director and Assistant Director of a top-level agency do not delegate to minions,
but instead they go on field missions alone.
Well, they have the gay guy for tech support but there is no actual backup.
So who will run ARGUS if and when it eventually goes wrong and they get killed or captured?
Olly holds Brick (Vinny Jones –
Swordfish
) to account for the bargain they made.
Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
) and Olly come to blows, and they talk out their differences
with reference to their encounters in previous episodes.
Tiger may have been a gun for hire and made alliances with gangsters like China White.
However, he also served in the
Suicide Squad
and saved Lilah's life, so he can be a good guy when he needs to be.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 4]
Level Two
Shown 29th Oct 2018
Captain Dinah (
Juliana Harkavy
) holds a town hall meeting for disgruntled citizens.
An arsonist tries to blow it up,
and then the fake Green Arrow pops up to save Renny's daughter.
Dinah's job is to try to arrest the vigilante,
while Renny wants to help the vigilante and catch the arsonist.
Yes, once again a couple of main characters are at loggerheads.
This is a good storytelling technique,
as it allows both sides of the argument to be represented.
Captain America: Civil War
is a good example, while
Batman Vs Superman
was a wasted opportunity.
Arrow has used the technique is a couple of times to good effect.
Team Arrow split in two last Season,
and there was also the Gun Control episode a few Seasons ago.
Felicity has a supervillainess locked up in a dungeon.
The plan is to torture the woman for info on Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
). Renny refuses to participate, because he now has standards.
He got tortured by Thomas Church, and he regards it as karmic justice.
Felicity becomes a victim-blamer, accusing Renny of being broken.
Then she goes and gets DA Laurel Lance,
a former supervillain herself, to torture the victim.
They mention how evil Diaz is, how he waited thirty years
to take revenge on someone who crossed him in childhood.
Yes, he went full Blassey-Ford on a school bully.
But he only tortured with good reason,
not to maintain a sense of smug superiority over anyone.
Olly is on Level Two, where the really dangerous criminals are.
The shrink makes him relive his flashbacks from the very first episode,
when his father murdered someone in front of him.
Yes, FINALLY someone points out that people have value
even if their surname is not Queen.
In the future, the two young men go home to Star City.
Felicity's gadget leads them to her old office at Smoak Corp,
formerly Palmer Tech.
The city has gone down-hill a lot, and that is saying something.
Apparently the Glades rose and destroyed the suburbs.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 5]
The Demon
Shown 5th Nov 2018
Olly is on Level Two, which is easier to get into than out of.
The middle-man he wants to find uses the codename The Demon.
Ras Al Ghul was known as The Demon's Head,
and while he is dead his daughter Talia (
Lexa Doig
) was never confirmed dead.
She previously teamed up with Prometheus,
so it would not be past her to work with Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) as well.
Olly is somewhat confused.
He tries to inspire Talia by telling her she inspired him to become a hero.
However, he also accuses her of unleashing the monster inside him.
Does he really want to break the cycle of violence?
Well, the prison psychiatrist is the only one with the ability and willingness to help,
but despite the shrink's good advice Olly still sees him as a villain.
Also, Olly claims compassion towards his fellow inmates -
even though they are just the ones who he did not bother to kill himself.
Felicity gets upset because she cannot visit Olly.
Yes, she thinks it is unfair that the worst of the worst do not get special privileges.
When she cannot find any info by hacking the system,
she calls in help from some other career women.
The DA (
Katie Cassiday
) and the Police Captain (
Juliana Harkavy
) help her go through the hard-copy paperwork.
This does not technically pass the Bechdel test,
because the hero and villain they discuss are both men.
John Diggle runs a sting operation to trap some arms smugglers,
and sends Curtis in as an African scientist.
He certainly seems to have picked the right man,
because Curtis has a very impressive CV.
The gay black nerd has fourteen PhDs,
fluency in six languages and was a bronze medal decathlete.
Unfortunately he appears to have gone back to his old nerdy self,
because despite being a former member of the vigilante squad
he now claims to be a coward and a pacifist.
How long will this change of heart last?
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 6]
Due Process
Shown 12th Nov 2018
Olly gets out of Level two, and gets back into his old cell on Level one.
Unfortunately things have gotten worse in his absence.
Someone killed one of the corrupt guards.
Brick (Vinny Jones –
Swordfish
) is in the frame for it.
Can Olly solve the killing and rat out his fellow inmate?
Felicity is obsessed with getting Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
). She is willing to use Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) as human bait when ARGUS send him undercover
against a weapons dealer who sold Diaz a bomb.
Anatoly has a great cover because he is a legitimate Bratva boss,
even if Diaz single-handedly killed off the entire Bratva.
Ironic, since Diaz needed Black Siren to help him take on the Quadrant -
and even Dolph Lungren could not take on the Bratva by himself.
Black Siren (
Katie Cassiday
), a non-lawyer posing as the city's District Attorney,
lodges an appeal against Olly's prison sentence.
Despite murdering hundreds of people
he has only served six months of his prison sentence.
So much for life without parole!
In the future, the rag-tag bunch of survivors try to access
the computerised info that Felicity has left for them.
It appears she has a new plan that makes the villain's plan from
Season One
look like an act of extreme moderation.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 7]
The Slabside Redemption
Shown 19th Nov 2018
Olly is on his way to freedom.
Yes, he served six months of life without parole
but now he has a get-out-of-jail-free card.
All he has to do is live long enough to testify against Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
), who is now in custody.
Diaz turns captivity into an opportunity.
He kills a few guards, then starts a prison riot.
The place is in lock-down, so Olly's henchmen cannot help.
They do not even appear in the episode.
Brick (Vinny Jones –
Swordfish
) and his sidekick do not care about Diaz.
They could break their old friend Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
) out of solitary.
Or they could forget about friendship,
and go after Olly for revenge instead.
The redemption of the title is that of Bronze Tiger.
Well, he was sort of a good guy when he was in the Suicide Squad.
Now Olly has him pegged as a no-good crook because he was born poor.
Naturally, this redemption is one fueled by brutal violence
as he and Olly join up to take on the entire prison single-handed.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 8]
Unmasked
Shown 26th Nov 2018
Olly gets out of jail, and attends a massive black-tie event.
Basically it is a party in his honour, with all the city's VIPs in attendance.
Yes, he is the disgraced ex-Mayor who just got out of prison
because he pleaded guilty to being a serial killer.
This somehow seems far more ridiculous than the idea of Oswald Copplepot being mayor of
Gotham
.
A masked archer shoots a couple of arrows at the party guests.
All the evidence points to the new Green Arrow,
but Wild Dog insists it must be a copycat.
No mention is made of the presumably fatal stabbings in the previous episode.
However, since Olly got out we must assume that his agreement with the FBI
to testify against Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) is still valid.
And even though the Suicide Squad is now defunct,
ARGUS will still be willing to make a deal with Diaz if it helps them defeat even bigger villains.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 9]
Elseworlds, Part 2
Shown 3rd Dec 2018
This episode starts with the usual intro monologue.
But since Olly and Barry are stuck in each others' bodies,
the monologue is performed by Grant Gustin.
Curtis provides tech support for ARGUS,
while Diggle leads a four-man unit to capture Deathstroke Junior.
Junior only has a sword, but easily takes out Diggle's crew.
Of course, he has no chance against three super-powered so-called heroes.
Olly, Kara and Barry go to Gotham City.
The Batman has not been seen in years,
ever since Bruce Wayne disappeared three years ago.
His cousin, Kate Kane (
Ruby Rose
), helps out instead.
She and Kara have a couple of scenes together,
a mutual admiration society between the distaff versions of real heroes.
While Superman only exists in Kara's reality,
both universes have their own version of Batman.
Kara's Batman is a frenemy of her cousin - a reference to the
Batman Versus Superman
scenario.
It turns out that Dr Deegan (
) is running experiments in Arkham Asylum.
The team break in to catch him,
but his office is on the same corridor as the dangerous inmates' cells
and he can unlock all the cell doors at the press of a single button.
The doors have names like Nygma and Copplepot, but
Gotham
is a different timeline so there are no familiar faces.
The heroes go back to what they are best at -
beating up people who are weaker than they are.
Caitlin Snow (
) goes head to head with a woman who uses Victor Freeze's cold gun.
Then Olly and Barry get dosed with the Scarecrow's fear toxin,
which makes them see their arch-nemesises from Season One.
They are so busy fighting each other that
Batwoman
has to do all the real work.
Well, this is basically a back-door pilot.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 10]
My Name is Emiko Queen
Shown 21 Jan 19
The copycat Green Arrow has conducted a reign of terror on the city.
She got away from every problem without any trouble.
Now she botches a simple burglary,
and crashes at Wild Dog's place to get some free medical treatment.
Olly is out of prison, helping the Police Captain (
Juliana Harkavy
) investigate the copycat.
They hang around the crime scene, and find a DNA sample before the CSI does.
The crime lab is over-worked, and will take at least a week to get the DNA results back.
Well, Mayor Olly must have underfunded it so he could give his rich friends a tax break.
Olly gives the sample to Felicity,
who used her tax breaks to buy better computers than the police department can afford.
The down side is that she must get conscripted into helping the cops for free.
She gets an instant match, and Olly discovers the truth about the copycat.
Olly is not the only convicted killer helping the cops.
Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) is now in ARGUS custody, overseen by Diggle.
Yes, the same Diggle who is also a convicted killer.
They are considering recruiting more killers - another
Suicide Squad
!
In the future, Wild Dog is the Mayor of the Glades.
His daughter is his assistant, and his conscience.
She wants him to help Dinah save Star City.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 11]
Past Sins
Shown 28 Jan 19
Olly and Black Siren (
Katie Cassiday
) go on a TV talk show, as vigilantes who are now public servants.
Someone later kidnaps the presenter,
and uses him as a hostage for leverage against Olly.
It turns out that Olly must face the consequences
for what his father did to his own bodyguard when their yacht sank.
Meanwhile, Laurel has a stalker of her own.
She is recognised by a figure from her past.
Well, this universe's version of someone she once murdered.
She calls in a favour from Felicity,
after that time they tortured a prisoner together.
Diggle and Lilah interview some recurring villains for the new
Suicide Squad
. Unfortunately they seem reluctant to join up.
China White (
Kelly Hu
), a woman so dangerous that ARGUS spent Season One
planning to take out a passenger airliner
just because she happened to be aboard it, has made the shortlist.
Curtis is not happy about having to work with the man who almost killed him.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 12]
Emerald Archer
Shown 04 Feb 19
This starts as Found Footage,
a TV documentary about the vigilante phenomenon in the USA.
The vigilantes and their friends cast themselves as heroes.
However, nobody points out that the vigilantes' success is due to inadequate policing.
Olly and his unofficial team, now operating out of the police station,
must hunt down a serial killer that they nickname Chimera.
He has a military-level super-suit, and a hobby of taking down vigilantes.
Meanwhile, the team have the documentary film crew breathing down their necks.
Olly's son is back from boarding school for a few days.
Felicity is reluctant baby-sitter,
so Olly Junior goes to hang out with Wild Dog's daughter.
Meanwhile, Wild Dog looks after Copycat Arrow.
Olly and his friends take on Chimera in a public battle.
Apparently this is a breach of the anti-vigilante law.
Olly is allowed to get away with it, because he is a police consultant.
Likewise the Police Captain has a licence to do whatever she likes.
However, Diggle and Curtis are charged ... despite being Federal Agents!
The answer is to have them deputised to the local police department.
There is a final scene set in the future,
with a couple of tweenagers watching the now-banned documentary.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 13]
Star City Slayer
Shown 11 Feb 19
Last week, Laurel (
Katie Cassiday
) was the only one getting mysterious threatening notes.
Now all of the team are getting them.
They assume that this week's serial killer is responsible.
After all, Chimera was sorted out last week.
Ironically, even though there were two completely unrelated serial killers in town
they were BOTH fanboys of Green Arrow.
Yes, this is the writers' way of bashing so-called Toxic Fandom.
In all fairness, one of the
Suicide Squad
recruits is Cupid - a female serial-killer who was basically a Green Arrow groupie.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 14]
Brothers & Sisters
Shown 04 Mar 19
Diaz (Kirk Acevedo -
12 Monkeys
) is now in the new
Suicide Squad
, overseen by Diggle.
Lilah, head of the Agency, goes along to personally oversee the mission.
She also needs Team Arrow for some unofficial backup.
The target of the mission is the mysterious leader of a group of assassins.
In other words, Ras Al Ghul in all but name.
He is Dante (Adrian Paul -
Highlander: The Series
).
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 15]
Training Day
Shown 11 Mar 19
Olly and Team Arrow have to go straight, as part of the police department.
This means they must learn police prodecures,
and more importantly a sense of self-discipline.
Their job is to track down the source of new weaponry that someone is selling to local gangs.
The villain decides to get rid of the evidence,
some barrels of toxic chemicals,
by dumping them in the city's reservoir.
Yes, this is Snidely Whiplash levels of cartoonish villainy.
Laurel the DA (
Katie Cassiday
) is assigned to investigate the murder in the prison.
The good news is, there was a witness.
The bad news is, he is Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
).
In the future, Felicity's kids have her secret message.
Unfortunately it is on a micro-cassette,
so they have to somehow get their hands on an obsolete player from the 1980s.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 16]
Star City 2040
Shown 18 Mar 19
We get Felicity's daughter Mia (
Katherine McNamara
) in a training montage with Nyssa Al ghul (
Katrina Law
). By the year 2039, the daughter is full-grown but Felicity has not aged a day.
They live together in a remote house which is quite luxurious,
because the daughter must be kept off the grid to protect her from her father's enemies.
In 2040, the daughter and her half-brother climb over the massive wall
so they can infiltrate the old and decrepit Star City.
It turns out that the Star City slum district is a thriving central business district,
home to the HQ of a major corporation named Galaxy One.
Dinah, Roy and the latina girl keep looking for more info.
They discover that the Mayor of the Glades, formerly known as Wild Dog,
knows more about the plan to bomb Star City.
He wants to do some urban renewal,
so destroying the slums will make rebuilding easier -
like a reverse of the Dark Archer's plan in
Season One
.
Felicity's daughter is impressive on a number of levels.
It seems they might have cast the role with someone who can do her own stunts, as they did with
Caity Lotz
. Unfortunately the character loves using lethal force
against rent-a-cops who have orders to take her alive.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 17]
Inheritance
Shown 25 Mar 19
Felicity has her new AI, Archer, on-line.
She has plans for a massive expansion,
so she calls in her old buddy Alena (
Kacey Rohl
) and prepares to set up Smoak Technologies Incorporated.
Somehow Smoak Corp has been returned to its original name, Palmer Tech.
Felicity's new product is the thing she set up for Team Arrow -
a city-wide sensor network that can scan for individual DNA patterns.
She wants to sell it to governments like Red China,
so they can use it to oppress their populations in places like Hong Kong.
Dante (Adrian Paul -
Highlander: The Series
) is in town with his small army of goons,
conducting a series of armed robberies at science labs.
This is like the good old days of Damien Dork and his ghost squad.
Dante's army is called the Ninth Circle,
and has apparently been manipulating global events since the Middle Ages.
Just like Ras Al Ghul and the League of Assassins.
Later Diggle reminds Olly that his own sibling
was secretly involved in an evil organisation.
Yes, the show has well exceeded its natural three Season limit.
Laurel the DA (
Katie Cassiday
) is not great at surveillance,
nearly getting shot when she messes up tailing Emiko.
She is also not great at being a DA,
since she uses violence and coercion on handcuffed suspects
when she is meant to arrange a plea deal.
The flashbacks are of Emiko's childhood.
She was abandoned by her birth-father,
and by incredible coincidence got recruited by a foster-father figure.
Ironically, we always assumed that Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) hired the League of Assassins for the sinking of Queen's yacht.
Now it seems to be part of a completely different villain's backstory.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 18]
Lost Canary
Shown 15 Apr 19
Laurel (
Katie Cassiday
) has been outed as someone who once had a conversation with Ricardo Diaz.
Worse, Emiko killed a suspect and framed her for the murder.
Laurel teams up with another female super-villain,
Shadow-thief, and they start robbing rich criminals.
This means they can leave a trail of bodies without anyone caring.
Yes, when one gangster gets killed it is called murder,
but when a string of security guards get taken out
... no charges are filed.
Felicity still believes that Laurel can be redeemed.
Dinah the Police Captain (
Juliana Harkavy
) condemns her as a cold-blooded murderer,
even though Dinah herself is a murderer.
In order to keep this a Bechdel-positive mission,
they do not get the male team-members involved.
Luckily White Canary (
Caity Lotz
) just happens to be in town when they need backup.
She tells Laurel
Redemption isn't a destination, it's a journey
- which marks the difference between well-written characters
and poorly done ones.
Shadow Thief wants Laurel to steal a super-weapon,
so they can sell it to super-villains and split the money.
Felicity thinks this is a bad idea,
because the villains will use the weapon to kill people.
Nobody points out that the people who already have the weapon,
who invested time and money in its design and construction,
also no doubt intend to use it to kill people.
Olly and Diggle trace the death of Emiko's mother
back to one of the surviving Longbow Hunters.
But who hired him?
In the future, Galaxy One has started a crackdown on the Canaries.
Mia (
Katherine McNamara
) goes to attack one of the warriors,
but discovers her fists are useless against his body armour.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 19]
Spartan
Shown 22 Apr 19
Team Arrow need backup against the Ninth Circle.
The local cops are not good enough, and ARGUS seem uninterested.
Luckily Delta Force turn up to help out.
Their General (Ernie Hudson -
Ghostbusters (1984)
) is Diggle's estranged stepfather.
Felicity and Alena (
Kacey Rohl
) have perfected their DNA-tracking software.
Before they can sell it to Red China,
who will weaponise it and use it for evil,
it falls into the wrong hands.
Well, wrong insofar as the the villains just steal it
and do not bother paying Felicity.
In the future,
the villains have developed armoured suits for their guards.
Felicity sends out her kids to steal a power module,
so she can analyse the strengths and weaknesses
of one of the helmets.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 20]
Confessions
Shown 29 Apr 19
A couple of security guards are found dead, and Olly is the main suspect.
For the first time in forever,
the cops actually demand a detailed report
about the circumstances surrounding some murders
involved in a Team Arrow incident.
Dinah, as Police Captain, interrogates the rest of the team.
Her sidekick, an African-American police sergeant,
helps her do good-cop bad-cop.
The main story is told in flashback.
Roy Harper is back in town to help Team Arrow.
He and Thea have been hunting down the other Lazarus pits.
Of course, nobody is going to tell Thea about her new sister.
Technically they do not share any parents,
as one was the secret daughter of Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman -
Torchwood
) and the other was foster-daughter of Dante (Adrian Paul -
Highlander: The Series
).
Team Arrow has left hundreds of bodies in its wake over the last few years,
and never been held responsible for its actions.
Olly did a few months in prison,
before he got a special deal,
but that is about as far as the consequences went.
Perhaps now things will be different.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 21]
Living Proof
Shown 06 May 19
Felicity thought she had deleted all the backups of Archer,
her DNA tracking programme, and went back to facial recognition.
This immediately led her to Emiko's secret base,
which she could have done months previously.
However, Emiko has been several steps ahead of the team.
Now Olly ends up trapped in the rubble,
with nobody for company except the ghost of Tommy Merlyn.
Yes, this is the best friend he has ever had -
who died at the end of Season One!
Emiko also framed Felicity, so the cops turn up to arrest her.
Felicity and her sidekick Alena (
Kacey Rohl
) go on the run, and hide out in the Team Arrow bunker.
They do not bother to secure the place against Emiko.
In the future, Galaxy One is on the offensive.
Their propaganda broadcasts complain about riots and lawlessness,
then blame the vigilantes and offer a Police State as the solution.
In all fairness, Team Arrow started as an extension of Queen Incorporated
and continued as the military wing of Palmer Tech.
Later, Olly sought personal power by political means -
which he maintained by putting Team Arrow in key positions.
At least Galaxy One is honest about its intentions,
although no more accountable than Team Arrow ever was.
Arrow [Season 7, Episode 22]
You Have Saved This City
Shown 13 May 19
The Ninth Circle's plans enter their final phase.
They release their drones, each armed with nerve gas.
Not only does Emiko want to destroy her father's city,
she wants to frame Olly and the vigilantes.
Olly calls in reinforcements.
Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White -
Spawn
), last seen in solitary confinement
in a top-security prison, is now on parole.
In the future, Galaxy One goes after Felicity and her team.
After all, she is the only one who can hack the Archer program.
Her kids go on the offensive.
The post-climax sequence ties in with the
Crisis in the Multiverse storyline
that has been persisting for the Season.
Season 8
-
Katherine McNamara
as Mia Smoak / Blackstar / Adult Green Arrow [ 8, recurring 7 ]
- Ben Lewis as Adult William Clayton [ 8, recurring 7 ]
- Joseph David-Jones as Connor Hawke [ 8, recurring 7 ]
- LaMonica Garret as Mar Novu / The Monitor [ 8 ]
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 1]
Starling City
Shown 15 Oct 19
Olly finds himself on Earth Two.
He goes through the same events from Season One -
he has to defeat the Dark Archer and prevent the Undertaking.
The main mcguffin is some Dark Star particles,
which the Monitor requires.
John Diggle from Earth One tags along to help out.
In 2040, Mia (
Katherine McNamara
) and her team stake out a party filled with VIPs.
The Deathstroke gang want to abduct the richest man in town.
Perhaps the so-called good guys should not have destroyed
the wall that protected the city from the slums.
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 2]
Welcome to Hong Kong
Shown 22 Oct 19
Olly and Diggle find themselves in Hong Kong,
which looks like Saigon in Apocalypse Now.
They need to find a scientist,
but they run into Triad thugs led by China White (
Kelly Hu
). She was set loose when the Suicide Squad was shut down.
Earth Two's Black Siren (
Katie Cassiday
) refuses to believe Olly when he says her universe was annihilated.
She teams up with Diggle's wife Lilah,
and coerces a tech nerd into trying to fix Diggle's dimension-jumper.
In 2040, Mia (
Katherine McNamara
) wants revenge on the Deathstroke gang.
Her black buddy goes to negotiate with the gang's leader - his estranged sibling.
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 3]
Leap of Faith
Shown 29 Oct 19
Olly teams up with Thea.
She split up with Nyssa once they had completed their mission,
so Olly has to recruit Talia (
Lexa Doig
) as a replacement.
Although the fortress at Nanda Parbat is destroyed,
the records are still in the catacombs.
Unfortunately Athena (
Kyra Zagorsky
) and the Thanatos Guild are still on the loose.
Bronze Tiger/Ben Parker is off on a mission for ARGUS,
but his wife and son have apparently kidnapped
by a millionaire with suspected terrorist links.
Lilah says that ARGUS is a web of corruption,
and she cannot trust an in-house rescue team.
Instead she outsources it to Diggle,
using him as her partner in a
True Lies
gambit. They fly off to Kasnia (which looks a lot like Istanbul, Turkey)
and confront the son of a man that Lilah had Parker assassinate in Season 3.
In 2040, Mia (
Katherine McNamara
) leads her team into the Deathstroke stronghold.
They plan to use the Galaxy One tech against the gang.
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 4]
Present Tense
Shown 05 Nov 19
The future crew have been sent back in time twenty years,
and have to team up with the present-day crew.
Just like Barry's gay daughter from the future in
The Flash
, although on the bright side nobody says Shway.
Unfortunately Olly's gay son cannot keep a secret,
and spills the beans so they can alter the timeline.
This leads to recriminations all round.
Deathstroke is now Slade Wilson's son, Grant.
His agenda is to end inequality and topple the city's corrupt government.
Of course, Olly and his gang want to prevent this from happening.
We should compare this to the events of
Supergirl: Season 6
, which has an episode directed by John Diggle himself
and concentrates on the slum's underclass overthrowing an elected official.
Of course, that is different because that underclass is Black.
In this show, the deracialised issue is treated differently.
Diggle is not against poverty or exploitation in principle,
only when it affects people who look like him.
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 5]
Prochnost
Shown 19 Nov 19
To fight the Monitor, Olly needs plutonium.
The good news is they can get some.
The bad news is that they have to go to Russia
and make a deal with a corrupt general.
He spends his time at what they call a
Fight Club
- not a real one, but a gambling den where rich people bet on cage-fighters.
Anatoly (David Nykl -
Stargate Atlantis
) is around to help out.
Unfortunately the Bratva has new management.
Earth Two's Black Siren (
Katie Cassiday
) wants her universe restored after it was annihilated.
She makes a secret side-deal with the Monitor,
and teams up with Diggle's wife Lilah.
For some strange reason,
BS looks down on Lilah for making the same deal.
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 6]
Reset
Shown 26 Nov 19
Olly wakes up in his apartment.
The good news is that Quentin Lance is the Mayor of Star City.
The bad news is that Olly is not just stuck in an alternate universe ...
he is stuck in a time loop!
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 7]
Purgatory
Shown 03 Dec 19
Olly and Laurel wake up on Lian Yu with Diggle and Lyla.
The good news is that the rest of the team are flying in
with the plutonium on a Hercules airplane.
The bad news is that someone has a surface-to-air missile ...
Olly and his friends have to take on the ghosts of Fryers
and the original Deathstroke from Season One.
Luckily, Olly teams up with the ghost of his Chinese ally.
Yes, this episode allows even more goodbyes
for characters we have not seen in years.
The story is all about Olly saying goodbye to everyone,
especially to his son and daughter.
However, there are three more episodes in the Season.
This is a setup for Crisis on Infinite Earths: Hour One,
to be continued on
Supergirl [Season 5, Episode 9]
.
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 9]
Green Arrow and the Canaries
Shown 21 Jan 20
Arrow [Season 8, Episode 10]
Fadeout
Shown 28 Jan 20
