ARROW Season 2×11, “Blind Spot” recap

23 Jan

Welcome back, Arrow-heads! Here’s what you need to know so far: Laurel has discovered Sebastian is a stone cold psychopath who murdered his dad as a child and locked away his mom in a mental ward. Thea’s become aware of Roy’s super strength, but not of the possible side effects of the Mirakuru in him, like the tendency to rage out. In the past, Slade raged out and ran off from Ollie and Sara. And finally, Ollie is making friends with Sebastian as the Arrow. Oooh, let’s see how that plays out this week…

Visiting Hours. Sebastian comes to the hospital to visit Maya and ask about why Laurel was visiting her a few days ago. After a slightly veiled threat of pain, Maya tells Sebastian she told her everything. He leaves her room, forgiving her, but then reappears in his Brother Blood to remind us that means little to nothing. Later, Laurel hears about Maya’s “death by heart attack” and asks ADA Adam for an investigation into Sebastian. He declines, voting to save what little career he has left after being doped up of Vertigo on live TV, so she goes to her dad to get in touch with the only other person capable of investigating Blood. Arrow meets Laurel and Quentin and hears her story, which is met with some skepticism, mostly because he was starting to like Sebastian. Well, get ready to be disappointed by someone you trust again, Ollie, and oddly enough, I’m not talking about Blood this time…

“Hey, mom, you wanna see my mask? Why are you screaming?”

Looking for a File. Ollie decides to investigate Laurel’s claim about Sebastian (despite Diggle and Felicity being skeptical this isn’t some kind of trap by Laurel), and looks into whether he killed his father. The bad news is Felicity can’t download a copy because it’s an old file still on paper in the city archives. But, Ollie gets Laurel to join him on a nighttime hunt for the file, which gets dicey when security gets smart enough to send reinforcements down there. Ollie and Laurel escape with the file, but it turns out its empty. Even worse, someone erased the camera footage inside the archives that could point to who took the contents of the file, and that person wasn’t Felicity. Umm, that’s not good, is it?

Hitting the Bottom. After Ollie visits Sebastian regarding Laurel, Mr. Blood gets another visitor after hours: Slade. It seems the contents of the file were stolen by Slade, and he’s not happy that Sebastian hasn’t kept a firmer leash on Ms. Lance. The solution? Sebastian gets Laurel’s house searched by the police, where she has drugs that aren’t hers. At the police station, Quentin sees her daughter, who is convinced Sebastian is setting her up. Then there’s a surprising reveal about those opiates she’s been taking: they obviously aren’t hers, but she stole them from her dad! Oh, how awkward. He’s not happy about any of this, and leaves Ollie to take her home. I think its going to be a while before the father/daughter talk about how bad it is to steal one’s mood swing medication.

Staged Performance. No sooner does Ollie and Laurel arrive at her place does Ollie get knocked out and Laurel is taken by Brother Blood, mask and all (which is important to remember through this). Ollie awakens to see a blood scratched note for Arrow to find Laurel, who’s awakens in a warehouse being stalked by Brother Blood. Arrow arrives to fight Blood, but Laurel shoots down Blood to save Arrow. But–surprise!—it’s not Sebastian under the mask, but Daley, the corrupt cop. So Laurel’s claims about Sebastian are proven wrong in front of everyone, including Ollie, which is bad enough. But Adam arrives to let her know she won’t be charged with Daley’s killing, and is getting fired from the DA’s office, thanks to her substance abuse problem. Sebastian arrives at Slade’s place to let him know Laurel’s not a problem, to which Slade kills Sebastian’s bodyguards in a new Deathstroke outfit, warning him the next body dropping dead because of any future mistakes will be Sebastian himself.

This is going to be difficult to explain to Roy and the other guy’s insurance company.

“Not everyone’s what they seem.” While we see one Lance sibling hit rock bottom, in the flashbacks we see another deciding whether to take Ivo’s offer of salvation if they bring him the Mirakuru. Ollie’s against the idea, and both of them reminisce about the old days, like how Sara thinks Laurel schemed to date Oliver after finding out Sara was interested in him. What is it with Oliver, I ask you? Well, let’s hold on that question for another time, because Sara goes off in the middle of the night to call Ivo, where he tries to lay down some charm to bring her back. She sees through it, and he turns on a dime to reveal how much he’s planning to hurt her when she’s found. Ollie’s been overhearing this and both him and Sara decide to find Slade. Good plan, find the unstable super-powered badass, so what’s the worse that could happen? Oh, wait…

Not Knowing One’s Strength. Roy’s a bit distant and keeping his distance from everyone, like Thea and Ollie. But, he has to talk to someone, so he goes to Sin and tells her what’s happening. Super-Roy decides to take down local baddies, like a lawyer who cuts up local prostitutes, with Sin as bait. Well, they find said lawyer about to do all kinds of nastiness to Sin, and Roy bounces him around a parking garage like a soccer ball, hurting Sin along the way. Roy gets the lawyer sent to the hospital, where he’s barely alive, and Thea arrives, worried about what’s happening to him. Later on, Thea tells Ollie about what happened, and as Arrow, Ollie visits Roy. Ollie makes an offer to Roy to help him control his rage powers, which, he accepts. Probably a good thing too, because I’m sure Roy’s snide remark about “being killed with an arrow” was option two for Ollie.

–Comic book connections: New Deathstroke outfit, which looks sorta like the New 52 version running around DC right now.

Deathstroke 2.0: now with 100% more…stuff on him.

–Its hard not to feel bad for Quentin this week. He’s got one daughter who’s a highly trained assassin on the run, and the other is a fired assistant DA who’s stealing drugs from him. Just the way he accepts what Laurel has done and maybe why she did it is so heartbreaking.

–It appears Ollie’s been steered away from investigating Sebastian, but you never know. I mean, he’s barely convinced Daley is some kind of super-criminal.

–Not sure when I started being concerned what happened to Thea, but here we are.

–Let’s keep in mind, Sin borrowed that streetwalker getup from Thea. Um, moving on…

–Finally someone points out that a person with the last name of “Blood” may be shady.

–“You sure know how to talk yourself out of a victory.”

–“Am I interrupting?” “No, we would actually have to be talking for you to be interrupting.”

–“What color are your shoes?”

So what did you think? Leave your thoughts and theories below and come back next week for “Tremors”…