ARROW Season 2×13, “Heir to the Demon” recap

6 Feb

Welcome back, Arrow-heads! What you need to know: Moira Queen is being set up to run against Sebastian Blood for mayor of Starling City, but needs to make sure certain things stay quiet, like Thea being her and Malcolm Merlyn’s love baby. Sara Lance has reappeared, being on the run from the League of Assassins, to supposedly help a really out of it Laurel, who’s been on hard times since getting fired from the DA’s office and maybe losing her law license. Sara finds Laurel rather disoriented, but seeing that someone slipped a liquid into Laurel’s drinks earlier, I’m sure something else is going on here. We got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s go…

Laurel at the Hospital. Before we get to the big arrival in Starling that opens up this episode, let’s talk about what happened to Laurel after she passed out in her apartment. Well, she got hospitalized and besides Quentin and Ollie, Dinah shows up at the hospital. Laurel seems okay, even as she tells Quentin she thought she saw Sara before she blacked out, but Ollie notices something in her eye. Later on, Ollie asks Felicity to get her medical records to check for something. Something doesn’t seem right about this, and Ollie knows it.

This pretty much says everything about watching someone else work the salmon ladder at Arrow HQ.

A New Arrival in Town. Before all this, a rather striking woman arrives at the city airport, and besides being rather hot, she sets off an internal security alert. She barely loses a step taking out the security before reappearing later to Sara, who’s being trailed by Ollie. The mystery woman introduces herself as Nyssa al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, and she wants Sara to come back to the League of Assassins. As if this wasn’t complicated enough, we learn Sara and Nyssa were lovers, and Sara really doesn’t want to go back, despite Nyssa really missing her. Sara suggests Nyssa can release her from the League, but Nyssa reminds all of us the last person who got that lucky retirement plan was Malcolm Merlyn, which is a bad standard to set for letting go of assassins.

Sara Visits, The Past. For our flashbacks this week, we get a change of pace with one just before the Queen’s Gambit took off, with college girl Sara arriving in town to spend the weekend with the family. She’s actually there to hook up with Ollie later, and has a little bit of tension with Laurel when suggesting Ollie might not be faithful. The girl who’s sleeping with her sister’s boyfriend behind her back has dating advice. No way does that come off as bitchy, except Laurel and most people disagree, which gets Sara interested in taking off with Ollie on the Queen’s Gambit. And when the Queen’s Gambit disappears at sea, Moira has to tell the Lance clan the bad news about Sara. Moira has her own bad news, but that’s further down the road.

“Hello, Sara. Don’t you remember this outfit? The League of Assassin’s New Year’s Eve Ball 2011? Rhianna was performing? Hello?”

Sara Visits, The Present. Sara wants to take off after her brief checkup of Laurel, and both Ollie and Quentin want her to stay and help heal the Lances. Her response: hey, did you not hear me say I’m being chased by a league of killers who will use all of you to get to me? This brings up Laurel’s medical records, in that she didn’t overdose, but had venom put into her system. She was drugged by Nyssa to bring Sara out of hiding, but that’s not all Nyssa has planned to bring her back to the League.

A Lance for a Lance. The Arrow and Canary arrive at the hospital to find Nyssa taking off with a kidnapped Dinah. There’s a nice scuffle on a moving van before both Arrow and Canary lose Nyssa. But, Nyssa is nice enough to let Sara know what’s up: give yourself up in 24 hours, or Dinah dies. With not many choices, Sara agrees to meet Nyssa, and tells Quentin what’s happening (which you should keep in mind, is a phone conversation happening in front of a panicked Laurel). What Sara doesn’t bring up is that rather than going back, she poisons herself with the venom used on Laurel in front of Nyssa.

Bittersweet Reunion. Good thing Ollie wasn’t going to let Sara go on her own and had a tracer put on her. Also, he didn’t want to have Nyssa killed, lest bring the whole wrath of the League onto Starling City. He almost does kill Nyssa, but is stopped by a nearly dead Sara, which gets Ollie into action to put some anti-venom into her. Nyssa can barely believe what Sara was going to do, and pledges that she will be released from the League. Good news for Sara, Quentin and a still surprised to see her daughter’s alive Dinah…and Laurel, who followed her dad to see her sister very much alive. She must be happy then, right? Um, well, later on at Laurel’s apartment she starts grabbing the nearest wine bottle and starts blaming Sara for all the trouble the family has been going through these last six years. Then she kicks Sara out. So, yeah, she’s happy.

The Tempest. The Queen clan isn’t doing all that swimmingly either this episode, especially when Felicity discovers a money transfer made from one of those crooked off-the-book accounts Moira used to have. She asks Walter about it, but he skirts the issue, which brings her to tell Moira what she’s discovered. And what she’s pieced together is an OBGYN was paid off, and that Thea may be Malcolm and Moira’s child. Moira lays down a guilt trip for Felicity to not tell Ollie this, because he’ll hate both her and Felicity for it. Too bad Ollie sees Felicity is hiding something, and she ultimately tells him…just before he introduces his mom at her campaign announcement! Ooooohhhh, that’s real bad timing, Felicity. He barely gets through it, and then later on back at the mansion, tells Moira he knows about Thea. Ollie agrees to help support her campaign and keep that secret, but as far he’s concerned, he’s done with her. After that, a heartbroken Sara arrives at Arrow HQ to see a heartbroken (yet still exercising) Ollie, and they both make out. At least they didn’t make out next to that giant tire Ollie was exercising/sledgehammering into submission in the middle of HQ earlier. That would have been weird.

Yeah, after all the stuff that’s happened this episode, I think Laurel has the right idea.

–Comic book connection: there is an actual Nyssa al Ghul that ran around the DCU for a while. Although, it’s a nice nod to the books that Raatko (her last name in the comics) is her false identity. Also, we get another Spartacus regular pop up on Arrow in Katrina Law as Nyssa.

–Slade isn’t all that pissed to hear Moira Queen is running against Sebastian Blood for mayor. Except he does say “(he’ll) handle this”. Something tells me Deathstroke 2.0 is about to let himself be known.

–It’s a great move to not show Felicity telling Ollie about what she’s learned about Thea’s real parentage. Credit has to given to Stephen Amell for the way he plays that shock and that rambling introduction, without revealing what it is he just heard.

–Felicity’s had a lot to deal with this week. She told Ollie about what she learned about Moira and Thea, had to deal with Ollie sledgehammering a tire for some reason, and then, had to watch Sara work out on Ollie’s salmon ladder. Does Sara not know whose salmon ladder that is? Plus, semi-kudos for evening out the shirtless exercise to not just Ollie this week.

–I just love Quentin’s reaction to hearing Sara had a relationship with Nyssa. And he’s pretty understanding of it too. A relationship with the daughter of an assassin’s guild is probably down there in issues Quentin has with Sara at this point.

–Hey, Diggle’s still available for support, you know. On the plus side, he’s probably catching up on some heavy reading.

–“British people are really bad liars.”

–Felicity’s response to saying something about Laurel’s venom poisoning: “That’s another thing I never thought I would say out loud.”

So, what did you think? Leave your thoughts and theories below as we come back next time (three weeks for those counting) for “Time of Death”…