ARROW Season 3×18, “Public Enemy” recap

1 Apr

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Ollie is learning that turning down Ra’s offer of becoming the next Demon’s Head is harder than he thought. Ra’s is a persistent headhunter for good employees, because he has pretend Arrows murdering criminals, but now its escalated to murdering the mayor and threatening several people in the room where said mayor gets shafted, like Felicity, Ray, and daddy and Laurel Lance. I’m sure Quentin will take this well and behave in a sane and logical manner…

Mirror Image. In the flashback, Ollie still is running with Akio, when he runs into, well, not Shado, but her twin sister Mei! He makes up a story about meeting Shado (that doesn’t involve her being dead) and asks for shelter. At her place, she asks about her sister, and talks about how Shado and her father are still missing (oh, that’s another story Ollie doesn’t want to talk about). She also sees that Shado dragon tattoo on his back, which tells her a different story. Mei wants answers from him, or she can tell the police, which makes those men who shoot into her apartment a surprise for her. Before things get dicey, Maseo and Tatsu take down the ARGUS interlopers. While Maseo and Tatsu are cleaning up, Mei just wants to know what happened to her family, and Ollie only says they’re dead, which seems like a relief to her. So how will this go bad? We’ll see.

Arrow: Wanted Dead or Alive. …AND we’re back at that meeting, as everyone is taking cover, except for Ray, who takes an Arrow in the chest! Add to that the mayor dead makes Quentin order a citywide manhunt for the Arrow and all his accomplices, which includes Laurel if it comes to that. At the hospital, Ray is given some mixed news: he’ll survive the arrow wound, but has a blood clot that could kill him sooner or later. Luckily he has some nanite tech that could fix the problem, but the hospital won’t allow such a radical procedure done. And oh hey, Felicity’s mom shows up to check on her baby girl! Felicity’s going to be occupied for a while.

“Oh, Felicity, sweetie, I saw this whole episode before you and you’re going to be crying a lot. Thought you should know.”

League Hunting. Thea and Roy hear the news (they had sex, so they were busy) and like the rest of Team Arrow, they meet at the HQ. It’s here that Thea finally hears about her brother’s job offer, but no need to dwell on that. Ollie finds Nyssa and convinces her to help by locating Maseo, but she tows the line at fighting the League. The rest of the team suits up and heads to the building where the League are. After a scuffle, Ra’s shows up to make clear he can either become the next League prez or he can have the city hunt him down. And like clockwork, Quentin and the cops show up as Ra’s vanishes.

And We’re Gonna Run, Run, Run, ‘Cause My Daddy’s Chasing Us Down! With Diggle on a perch over watching this, he leads our heroic trio out of danger, albeit separately. Roy gets clear, but injures a few cops in doing so. Ollie gets snatched up by Diggle. And Laurel is almost brought in by Quentin, until Nyssa shuts that down to lead her to safety. They all meet back at the HQ, and clearly are without a plan to fight Ra’s, let alone stop Quentin. Even Ollie’s call to reason with Quentin proves fruitless. They decide to nurse their wounds for now, which in retrospect, may have been a bad decision.

In other news, Felicity and her mom discuss saving Ray, even if using those nanites in the hospital might get them in a whole lot of trouble. So while Mama Felicity distracts the doctor, Felicity injects the nanites into Ray. Besides a slight jolt, he seems to be normal. Weird that the guy with several almost fatal injuries is doing better than our heroes are.

“Now that I have revealed to you all there is about the Arrow, Quentin Lance, now I will tell you how you can save 15 percent or more on your car insurance…”

A Chat Between Fathers. As Quentin is fuming over getting more men onto the street to bring in Team Arrow, he goes into the alley of the precinct, only to be snatched up by Ra’s. Quentin’s not really in a talkative mood to anyone right now, but all he has to do is listen. Just listen to how Oliver Queen is the Arrow! Sometime after Quentin has been taken back to the precinct house, Laurel drops by to talk some sense into him, and she gets to hear about that chat with Ra’s. Like how Ollie is the Arrow, and thanks to that, Quentin is now sending police everywhere Ollie could go. Oh, balls. At Verdant, Roy’s getting a bit self-reflective on how things are going, and before Ollie can him and Thea on a round of drinks, the police barge in. Since they are hunting Ollie, they chase him as he runs.

At the hospital, it looks like Ray’s blood clot has been cured, and he takes this time to blurt out he loves her. She can’t really respond to that, she later tells her mom. But mommy dearest knows why: because she still loves Ollie. And that’s when she sees the news conference of Quentin outing Ollie as the Arrow! Tough break there, girl.

Oliver Queen, Fugitive. Ollie has nowhere to hide but Diggle’s place (which is good that Lyla and the baby are on a family trip at that moment), and the rest of the Team meets there to figure out what to do. Every way out of town is being scanned by cops, Thea’s assets are frozen, and it looks like Ollie’s got no choice but to take that offer from Ra’s. So Ollie takes the one option no one in Team Arrow thought he would take. That option: walk into Quentin’s precinct house and surrender himself!

One Place Left To Go. The rest of Team Arrow drops by the precinct house after hearing of Oliver’s arrest, but that they’re not arrested right there is odd. At least, until they get to see Ollie, when he explains the deal Laurel has set up: he turns himself in, confesses, and immunity to prosecution is given to Team Arrow. He’s willing to go to jail for them, even though the rest of the team, Roy especially, is willing to do the same. But Ollie disagrees, and tells them to trust in what he’s done and what he’s about to do.

“Roy, dude, this episode, man. I mean…” “Totally, Dig. Just…sigh.”

“You’re no hero. You’re the villain.” Ollie is being taken under armed escort in a prison transport with Quentin to the local jail. There, Quentin basically confronts Ollie about lying about Sara being dead years earlier and about her being alive for months now. And on a brief aside, for a guy everyone feared would have a massive heart collapse over the littlest thing for months, he has been behaving in a way that should have caused him multiple heart attacks all night. Just saying. Anyway, while both men talk (Ollie talks about saving Starling, Quentin talks about how many weirdos and death has followed him since he came home), the transport jolts to a stop.

Quentin opens the door to see on the roof of the transport…The Arrow! Only the “Arrow” says he’s not Oliver Queen, but he pulls back the hood to reveal…Roy claiming to be the Arrow! Now that’s how you end an episode!

–Comic book connections: not any major ones, but are we thinking those nanites in Ray might lead to some super abilities in the near future?

–Despite him clearly overreacting to what he’s learning about those around him, it’s hard not to see Quentin’s side of the argument when it comes to Ollie coming back home and what has happened since being hard to argue away. I’m not saying he’s right, but at least he’s not being given a one-note of blind anger only to play in this episode.

–Speaking of which, its understandable how betrayed he feels when Nyssa comes to save Laurel, who he wants to protect, but wants to punish for whatever slight he thinks she’s done. At least he’s not drinking his troubles away, so this is a plus, right?

–This is like the third dead mayor of Starling City in two seasons. I’m just saying three people wanted this job and met with nasty ends in a compressed frame of time. Third world countries rarely meet with this kind of violent leadership turnaround is all I’m saying.

–So is Roy taking the fall in Ollie’s place on his own, or is this part of a bigger plan? It’s just that the promos for the next episode give me a bad feeling about what’s going to happen to Mr. Harper.

–“Did you just have hospital sex?”

–“I’m thinking of doing a reality show, so maybe I already have brain damage.”

–“At least you finally have a boyfriend.”

So, that’s it for now, but come back in two weeks for the recap of “Broken Arrow”…