Welcome back, Arrow-heads! Well, here’s what we need to remember before we get to this last episode of the season: Starling City’s under siege by Slade’s supermen, Sebastian Blood’s dead, Ollie has the Mirakuru cure, and none of this may matter if Amanda Waller’s drone strike on the city happens in a few hours!
The Sinking Ship. In the flashback on the Amazo, Slade’s getting advice from Head Shado to kill Ollie, who is trying to reason with his friend to stop his insanity. Too bad (or good for Ollie) that Anatoli has waited twice as long as he should have on the sub, and fires the torpedo at the Amazo. Water starts blasting in, pulling Sara away (almost exactly the way the last time she vanished from Ollie’s life), leaving Ollie to deal with Slade. That fight gets one-sided (because really, Ollie thinks he can kill a super-powered Slade, and that’s not smart) until some ship debris pins Slade down. So Ollie’s got a choice: use the cure or that arrow he’s got. Once Slade says either way he’ll seek revenge on Ollie’s family, Ollie picks the arrow…right into Slade’s eye! Then, Ollie gets knocked unconscious as the ship goes under, and…we’ll talk about what happens after that soon enough…
The Clock’s Ticking. Its barely been a few minutes since last we saw Team Arrow, and Roy still hasn’t awoken after being given the cure. But, he does come to (and slightly depowered) as Slade’s goons are making their way up the clocktower. The team repel down just as Lyla appears in a helicopter to blow up the clocktower with the goons inside. They all meet up at the Foundry, and discuss plans: Diggle and Lyla are going to ARGUS to stop the drone strike, and the rest of the team are going to stop Slade by using the cure on Slade’s men.
“Hi, Oliver. Some of my fellow assassins back here wanted your autograph and you to follow their Twitter accounts! Its a fair trade, right?”
At the precinct house, Sara has disappeared for a minute, and Laurel goes to find her, only to find Sara talking to someone about not involving Laurel and a dart to knock her out. The glimpse Laurel has before she passes out is confirmed minutes later when Sara arrives at the Foundry (where Roy gets his honorary hero domino mask) with Nyssa and several guys from the League of Assassins. Before we can ask, Sara lets Ollie know this help came at a price: she rejoined the League to get the extra help. It was a sacrifice she was willing to make, and tells Ollie he may have to do the same to stop all of this.
During this, Roy calls up Thea, who did actually shoot Malcolm square in the chest, and he did have on Kevlar (head shots, people! Head shots!). Malcolm talks about how this proves she’s more his offspring than Tommy was because unlike her half-brother, Thea was willing to shoot him. Before she can make up for that mistake by shooting him in the head, Roy’s call comes in and he wants her to meet him at his place. Malcolm warns her that he’s a liar too, like the rest of her family (notice how he leaves himself out of that argument), but she goes anyway.
Thea: “So wait, you’re not Captain Jack Harkness, but you are a mass murderer?” Malcolm: “Yes!” Thea: “I’m not going with you anyway, unless someone else betrays my trust.” Malcolm: “Then the mass murderer part of me won’t bother you anymore? Really? That’s all it takes?”
Trashing The Office. Team Arrow and the Assassins decide to pay a visit to the Queen Consolidated tower and start plugging super-thugs with the cure. Slade escapes, but Isabel is caught saying “kill me or not, but I took your family’s company—“, and that interrupt is Nyssa snapping Isabel’s neck. Now they need to figure out how to get Slade, since all the attempts to give him the cure don’t work with all that armor he’s got on.
Roy meets up with Thea at his place, and after a heart-to-heart about him being on super drugs, they both decide they can leave Starling City together as soon as this siege is over. Buttttt…that text from Felicity lets him know he’s got one more thing to do, so he leaves, and then Thea, while packing, discovers a bow and arrow set under Roy’s bed. I wonder how “serious problem with trust issues” Thea is going to take this?
One More Pawn To Grab. Back at the precinct house, Quentin finds Laurel coming to from that knock-out dart. Before they can talk about where Sara is, another super-goon comes in and sends Quentin flying through some office furniture (mark under: important to note later) and grabs Laurel. Quentin manages to get to the Queen tower and meets the Team Arrow team-up to let them know what’s happened (and be surprised the crazy assassin woman who held him hostage a while back is there). Then Felicity suggests all of Ollie’s plans to outmaneuver Slade have failed, so try a different approach: make Slade think he knows what Ollie’s going to do.
Slade: “Dammit, Oliver! Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a meeting here?”
This brings us back to the Queen mansion, as Ollie and Felicity arrive, and Ollie tells Felicity to stay there until things die down. She doesn’t want to, but then Ollie says why: its because Slade thinks he grabbed the woman he loves, but he has the wrong woman. Are we piecing this together, people? He says “I love you” and takes off. Apparently, Slade has figured out Waller’s drone strike plan and wisely decided to have his crew escape in one of the tunnels out of the city. And since they are all in one concentrated area, Arrow, Roy, Sara, Nyssa, and assassin buds head there and start shooting arrows full of Mirakuru cure into them. After a good fight, our heroes are standing and the bad guys are incapacitated. Then Slade calls in to hear the news, but doesn’t care too much because he wants Ollie to meet him alone to save his loved one. Ollie doesn’t want to play that game, until Slade says “yeah, I thought your loved one was Laurel, but hey, Felicity here tells me differently”. Oh snap. Its on.
Breaking Into ARGUS. Meanwhile at ARGUS headquarters, Diggle and Lyla break in to stop Waller from destroying the city. But to do that, they need help, and enter them breaking Deadshot and some of the Suicide Squad guys out (Bronze Tiger’s not there, so I’m guessing he’s getting his blades refurbished or something) for backup. They raid Waller’s command center, and are having a Mexican standoff with Waller and her people. Waller, being queen bitch she is, tries to appeal to Lyla’s sense of morals…being that Lyla’s expecting and all! Yep, Diggle’s going to be a daddy…if they survive this standoff, that is.
Just beat it…beat it…beat it…beat it…
FIGHT! Ollie arrives at the industrial factory (where else? You think Slade was going to pick a park or something for this?), and Slade’s there, planning to kill Felicity in front of him. Ollie tells Slade how ashamed the real Shado would be at him for all of this death he’s caused in her name. Then Ollie gives him another thing to think on: I recently found those cameras you placed at the mansion, so why would I leave Felicity there and tell her I love her knowing you’d probably hear that and come for her? Because Felicity had a syringe of the cure that she then puts into Slade! BOOM, baby! Laurel escapes her captor with the help of Sara and Felicity joins the Lance sisters in getting clear while Ollie and depowered Slade start fighting it out.
Slade’s all “kill me or not, I’m gonna win” with the crazy talk, but Ollie manages to capture him anyway. Then Ollie calls Waller to let her know problem’s solved, and she backs down from blowing up Starling City. So everything’s great, and I’m sure everyone, especially Waller, will let this all slide and forget how one of her own just tried a coup on her (probably not). Slade’s still with the “I win either way” talk, and based on the last time Ollie tried to kill him, what will our hero do now?
“Thank God this season didn’t end with a pool of glowing urine on the island”, I think to myself.
Loose Ends. Before we get to that decision of Ollie’s, Quentin and Laurel see Sara off with Nyssa and the assassins. She promises to come back, and leaves Laurel her canary jacket for good measure. Everything seems okay with Laurel and Quentin walking off as Sara leaves, and then Quentin starts coughing blood up. Those beatings from those super thugs caused some internal bleeding, and Laurel’s calling 911 as Quentin collapses.
Roy comes back home to get Thea, only to find a note by his bow and arrow set. Instead of asking the obvious questions to him of why you have that bow and arrows there like a sane person, she tells him she just can’t trust anyone anymore and takes off to reassess her life…with Malcolm Merlyn! Wow. I didn’t realize how screwed up Thea really is to consider getting fatherly help from a mass murderer. And Roy’s sad, and probably asking: “You could’ve just asked me about it when I got back, Thea! I mean, we were under a siege and I was busy at the time. Sheeesh!”
“You made me a hero, Slade. Thank you.” Slade wakes up in a large cell, with Ollie being his first visitor. Slade’s all “I still win even though I’m depowered and trapped in a prison cell I don’t recognize”, but Ollie drops his own truth bomb on Slade: “Yeah, you made me into a killer on the island, but you made me a hero who doesn’t kill here. So enjoy being in this ARGUS-run purgatory and don’t drop the soap, jackass”. Slade screams about revenge and Ollie leaves up a ladder to the surface of…the island! ARGUS made it a super-max prison, and Ollie talks about filling it up with more baddies, just as soon as he figures out what to do about his family company losing its acting CEO to crazy and being broke and all.
Ollie and Felicity talk a bit about how they were convincing in their performance at the mansion for Slade (yeah, “performance”. Suuuuuuure.) and about to ask Diggle about the news he was going to tell them about. But that can wait as they approach the plane they used to get to the island. Which brings up a question Felicity has wanted to ask on this visit to see Slade: “You were here five years. So, how did you learn to fly a plane?”
Ollie: “Good thing you got the point of all of that back at the mansion, or I was going to have to do other things with you to sell that to Slade.” Felicity: “Like what, exactly?” Ollie: “Well…we don’t need to talk about it.” Felicity: (shrugs as he walks away) Yeah. No need to describe all the sweaty details of that. Sigh.”
Cut to a flashback, as Ollie wakes up not near the Amazo, or even near the island. He’s in a bed, and several armed Asian men arrive to get him dressed. He’s taken out to a limo, where Amanda Waller is waiting. She says they have a lot to talk about, and by the way, welcome to Hong Kong. And that’s a wrap!
–Comic book connections: the Giordano tunnel is a reference to longtime DC editor Dick Giordano.
–Hey, did you see the promo for The Flash this fall? If not, you’re welcome:
–Man, what a great action sequence to end the season with the cuts between Ollie and Slade fighting in the past and present. Major freaking kudos.
–I actually didn’t see if Isabel got the cure pumped into her or not before getting her neck cracked. I’m just saying, Slade survived an arrow through the eyesocket, so a neck break may not be as permanent either.
–Roy had a blackout after going to Bludhaven and doesn’t remember his super rampage. Probably good for the moment Felicity doesn’t give an answer but there’s no way this won’t be an issue next season.
–“Waller’s never saw a problem she couldn’t solve with a drone strike.” Thank you, Diggle! That’s what I’ve been saying!
–The more I think about it, did we really need one more cliffhanger with Quentin being injured that badly? The guy’s had a crap year, couldn’t we just cut him a break for the end of the season?
–“You don’t have the guts to kill me.” “No, I have the strength to let you live.”
–Really, this line should clue Thea into why going off with Malcolm is a stupid idea: “Kill you, why? Because you shot me?” Although, it does deliver this zinger from Thea about wandering out into the city: “Better than here with my psycho villain dad who’s happy I tried to kill him!”
–“Do you know anyone hiring ex-billionaires with superior archery skills?”
–“Felicity Smoak, MIT class of ’09.”
And that’s it, sports fans! Well, technically its not it, because I’ll be doing an more in-depth season analysis for next week before calling it a day with the recaps of season 2 of Arrow. See you then…
dee2henry
intellichick
ladydethpool
magnitudev1
natashanerdlush
nerdlushguests
elizabeth ann
Billy
stewartmoncure
thetwoohsix
NerdLush 
What do you think?