ARROW Season 4×09, “Dark Waters” recap

10 Dec

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Damien Darhk and HIVE have been trying to lay waste to Star City this season, and have been running into delays as Team Arrow have been getting close to taking out these baddies. But with Ollie refusing to side himself or his mayoral campaign with Darhk, it looks like things are going to get harder for Ollie in and out of the mask.

Dive! In the flashbacks this week, Ollie and Taiana make their way to the location on Lian Yu that Reiter’s interested in. By coincidence, that place happens to be the wreck of the Amazo, so Ollie has to swim inside and find the mystery item, and its a scroll. On the way back to shore, he gets injured by a shark (!) and then finds Conklin there, happy to see Ollie and the prisoner he supposedly killed. Well, “happy” is a strong term…

Clean-Up Crew. In the present, Ollie’s with some volunteers as he helps cleans the bay in Star City. But this part of his mayoral campaign gets interrupted by a drone with machine guns firing into the crowd. Felicity is luckily there, and she uses her computer skills to shut down the drone before there are any fatalities. At Arrow HQ, Ollie’s aware this attack was all Darhk, and asks Diggle to question his brother and out why he’s so interested in destroying Star City. Andy’s still locked up, and apparently free from Darhk’s influence, but offers little answers as to Darhk’s plans or why he faked his death.

At the loft, Felicity arrives to find her mom setting up holiday decorations. And by accident, Donna finds something hidden in the box of holiday lights: an engagement ring from Ollie for Felicity! So now that she’s spoiled to that, let’s get to another big moment…

Well, some unlucky HIVE intern is going to Best Buy to buy a new TV…

Declaration of War. Ollie’s meeting with the Team to discuss what he’s about to do at a press conference, and that it could paint a target on all of them. They agree its worth the risk, and Ollie goes to his conference, where he makes a bold statement. He basically outs HIVE as the bad guy and gives out pictures of Damien Darhk to the press. How does Damien take this news as he’s watching it from his office? Well, he destroys the TV with his magic powers, so, well?

At Arrow HQ, everyone seems cool with basically making themselves targets for HIVE, so how do you follow that up? Well, have a holiday party for supporters of Ollie’s campaign, of course! It’s not like Darhk might crash the party, right?

Christmas Party Crashers. Before we get to party time, Thea runs into Malcolm, who is just checking on her whole bloodlust problem. Well, since her run-in with Darhk, it hasn’t been a problem, but Malcolm warns Darhk is something really scary, and that’s TO HIM. At the party, people are chatting it up (except Laurel, who pulled the short straw in handling the Damien Darhk tip hotline that night) and Felicity chats with Curtis and his husband about how they got married. She starts piecing together from this random conversation that Ollie was planning to propose before they went back to Star City.

Well, she asks Ollie about this (but not before seeing her mom get cozy with Quentin!), and he confesses he had concerns about proposing thanks to this fight with HIVE, but before he can elaborate, some HIVE goons come in and break up the festivities. Then Darhk comes in, admitting he’s disappointed in Ollie not taking his offer, and to teach Mr. Queen a lesson, he knocks Ollie out and kidnaps Felicity, Thea, and Diggle. When Ollie comes to, he finds out what happened and leaves to find out what Darhk is up to. How does he do that? By laying down some Green Arrow beatdowns on some HIVE goons!

“Its just…you’re the voice of reason this episode, Laurel! It’s just confusing to me!”

Games With People’s Lives. When those beatdowns don’t seem to work, he goes back to the HQ where Laurel keeps Ollie from going down the self-blame route as he usually does in these situations. While he goes back on the street, Laurel follows her own lead thanks to the tip line: that Quentin is working under Darhk! Well, Quentin corrects her and says, “well I was to protect you, but since Ollie found out, I’ve been working for him to keep tabs on Darhk”, and Laurel’s all, “Sigh. Dammit, okay, I guess”. But both get asked to back to Arrow HQ where–surprise!–Malcolm shows up! Beside Quentin having a lot of questions about why this mass killer is still alive and allowed to roam free (you and me both, buddy), Malcolm brings a way to contact Darhk: a HIVE-special cell phone.

Ollie’s plan? Give himself to Darhk in exchange for everyone else. That sounds like a bad idea, and everyone knows it, but Ollie isn’t going to rest on that. While Darhk is fending off questions from the HIVE bigwigs about why he’s interrupting “Project Genesis” with this campaign against Queen, he gets a call from Ollie on that HIVE phone. They meet, where Darhk is impressed how resourceful Ollie is and tells him that he needs to see what to expect now that he’s given himself up.

Lifetime Insurance Policy. Darhk takes Ollie on a tour of a HIVE facility, and shows him a gas chamber. There, Darhk orders a minion to go inside, where Damien shows him a new concoction he’s been able to make: a lethal gas! Darhk barely gives the dying minion the time of day as he takes Ollie to see Felicity. He gets to talk to her, and we end up back in that “delayed engagement” talk again. He’s afraid of losing her now that they are back into the world of vigilantism, but she’s cool with the danger…and she would have said “yes” to his proposal. Say “Awwwww”, everybody.

At Arrow HQ, Laurel’s suiting up to go after Ollie and gang, thanks to some traceable nanites he put himself so they could find where the Team is. Quentin wants to come along, but Laurel’s all, “no, I got this handled”. Well let’s see how that goes…

Catch Your Breath. Ollie is brought back to the gas chamber, and because–duh-doy, he’s a bad guy!–Darhk throws Felicity, Thea, and Diggle inside to die. What better way to suppress Ollie than by killing those he cares about? But as the chamber is coming to life, Black Canary and–the Green Arrow?–arrive to help open the chamber. Well surprise, Malcolm is doing some Green Arrow cosplay to keep Darhk from figuring out Ollie’s “other activities”. The Team makes their way out (with some unexpected help from Quentin) as Malcolm faces off against Darhk. Ollie arrives to save Malcolm from getting killed, and Darhk takes a few arrows to the chest. But Malcolm leaves an explosive one by Darhk as everyone leaves just in time for Darhk and the facility to go BOOM, baby!

Afterwards, we got to be reminded that Darhk’s maybe still alive since they didn’t find his corpse at the burning facility. Anyway, Felicity and company have a surprise for Ollie, which is of the campaign kind of surprise. At another HIVE facility, a surprisingly cleaned up for a man who was blown up Darhk is taking his superiors to see how “Project Genesis” is doing. He takes them into a almost endless building, where the crops used for his mind control drugs are being grown and harvested. And boy, there is a LOT of them!

“Here’s to our future, which doesn’t hopefully involve a Sonny Corleone style ambush in it!”

Engagement Present. Ollie’s to make a nighttime speech while lighting a Christmas tree, and while it all seems to be by the book positive talk, he eventually talks about Felicity. And then–he proposes! And then–she says yes! Double “Awwwwwww”, everyone! Meanwhile, Darhk is heading home…to his wife and little daughter? He’s got a family? Yikes!

After the tree lighting, Ollie and Felicity are being taken home by limo, and just basking in a great moment for both of them…until the heavily armed HIVE guys show up to shoot up the limo! Ollie has to move the now shot up limo driver, and drive the limo to safety. Once he’s clear, he checks on Felicity…who’s been shot in the abdomen!

And that’s it until 2016, everyone! Will Felicity survive into the new year? Um, probably? I hope?

–Comic book connections: The idea of Ollie running for mayor is not a new one, as he attempted to do that in a recent story arc in the Green Arrow comics.

–Felicity discovers a kid version of her is running around! Like, Kid Felicity or something!

–It’s perfectly normal to compliment a gay man on how attractive his husband is, okay?

–Oh, and Andy? Still playing himself to be a bad guy, so Diggle’s gonna leave him in his cell for the holidays. Also because he’s a total buzzkill.

–Laurel was useful this episode? Well, good on her!

–“Ah good, you brought your bondage outfit too.”

–“So chemically speaking, you’re no longer his bitch!”

–“You love having minions.”

–“I am never gonna be unable to see this.”

Well that’s all for now, but comment on this episode and your theories on the rest of the season below, but come back in January 2016 for the recap of “Blood Debts”…