ARROW Season 4×10, “Blood Debts” recap

21 Jan

Welcome back from the holidays, Arrowheads! How has your break been? Well, it started out great for Ollie, now cementing his bid for mayor and proposing to Felicity. But leave it to Damien Darhk to leave a giant lump of coal in the Queen Christmas stocking by having the happy engaged duo ambushed, and Felicity being shot! Welcome to 2016, Oliver Queen and gang.

Whipping Boy. Our island flashback takes us back to Conklin leading the injured Ollie and Taiana back to Reiter’s camp. Once they all get there, Ollie tries to reason out of this mess, but instead gets left to Conklin’s punishment, which is being lashed in the back. While this public whipping is happening, Ollie’s mystical abdomen tattoo starts glowing which interests Reiter enough to stop things. But Ollie uses that to grab a gun and hold it at his head, bargaining to help him, but only if he keeps Taiana alive. Well it works, and Ollie is left to recover in the holding cells that ARGUS will use years from now. And Taiana is thankful, saying how even her brother would like him. “Oh, the brother I killed?”, he thinks. Alright, alright, done with that, so…

Critical. We briefly see Ollie go in with Felicity to the hospital to get operated on, but he seems to be almost immediately bashing his way through HIVE goons, trying to find Darhk. But all those goons seem to prefer killing themselves over revealing that, so Ollie’s left with little options but to get Diggle to get info from his brother. How does Diggle do that, exactly? Oh, beat him up. But that doesn’t do anything, so, great sibling talk, guys. Well, Lyla later suggests reaching out to Diggle not as a criminal, but as his brother. Meanwhile, Felicity seems to be alive and slightly chatty but groggy, waiting for another surgery to fix…something.

Ollie visits Quentin, and decides that it might be the time to risk Quentin’s cover and reveal where Darhk is holding up. Quentin agrees, but you can tell he’s concerned this might lead to Ollie killing people again. Ollie heads up to Darhk’s office building, and finds his office littered with dead Hive agents…and a blood made “A” is for Anarchy symbol. Looks like Ollie’s not the only one wanting payback on Darhk.

“Hey Speedy, you got a villain/stalker of your own.” “SHUT UP!”

Signs of Anarchy. It seems Anarky, the hit man Thea torched earlier this season, is back. As Thea and Laurel go to visit Felicity, Thea’s not feeling good about what she did to him, and responsible for his killing spree, which yeah, probably should be feeling bad about that. But that gets put on hold, because they stumble onto Quentin and Donna hugging in the hospital room! Good thing Felicity is in surgery as this happens, but Donna leaves just as Quentin gets a call. The bloody Anarky symbol from Darhk’s office is not made from the dead goons, but from two people: Anarky’s foster parents!

Team Arrow goes to the foster parents’ house and find Anarky there, wearing a sheer plastic face mask and watching TV. He was hoping HIVE and Darhk would use that blood clue to find him, but he’ll settle for them, and sets off some motion sensor controlled machine guns! Thea goes after Anarchy, and after being caught off guard by a stun blast, is cornered by him. Only, he doesn’t want to kill her, but thank her for that burning, because he had an epiphany because of it. Before Thea can go, “Um, thank you?”, the rest of the Team knock him out.

I’m Your Number 1 Fan. Ollie decides to not turn Anarky in, but tie him up in a warehouse to interrogate him. Everyone thinks is a bad idea, and Ollie’s “I punch you until you talk” interrogation method only proves that. Thea tells Ollie he has to go to the hospital, because something came up regarding Felicity’s surgery. Don’t worry, I’m sure Thea can watch after the tied up psycho fan of hers. I mean, she doesn’t kill him, even though she starts drawing blood from his throat.

Ollie gets to the hospital to hear bad news from Donna: Felicity’s alive, but thanks to a bullet lodged in her spinal cord, she may never be able to walk again! WHAT? Before Ollie can have a moment to take this in, he hears on the news what Thea discovers: the police were called to the warehouse by Laurel to capture Anarky! Now this might be the start of another “Everybody Hates Laurel” episode, until Ollie says, “Nah, I can do better than that” by disabling the police can holding Anarky, and…setting him loose to go kill Darhk? WHAAAAAT?!

Anarky Grill: when you’re here, you’re family is cooked.

Greenlit. As you can imagine, everyone on Team Arrow is thinking Ollie has completely flipped his lid, and after burning Laurel on releasing a murderous psychopath onto people earlier (yeah, it was Sara, BUT…), explains he put a tracer on Anarky so he can take care of him when he finds Darhk. Oh what’s that? He lost the tracer? So much for Ollie’s not-brilliant plan! Everyone’s all, “Go see Felicity, before you screw more things up, Ollie”. While doing that, Diggle tries to be all brotherly with Andy, and open up about his shortcomings. With that, Andy finally gives up a clue where Darhk may be.

So Ollie FINALLY goes see Felicity and she knows he’s been out fighting Darhk, but to be sure she’s convinced, gives her back the engagement ring taken off her when she was admitted to the hospital. Later as she’s sleeping, Laurel comes by with some news: the tracer went dead where Andy said Darhk may be. While Team Arrow goes to the place, we find out that place IS Darhk’s house, and he has Damien’s wife and kid tied up, ready to torch!

Flambé Party. Team Arrow arrives, and fights with Anarky while Dig and Laurel get the family out. Ollie and Thea split up as Anarky escapes out of the house, and Ollie just accidentally stumbles onto Darhk. Ollie tries to put an arrow in him, but–hey, magic powers, Ollie, remember?–and that arrow ends up in Ollie’s arm. Darhk allows Ollie to live since he was nice enough to save his family, but promises the good times won’t last.

Meanwhile, Thea manages to trap Anarky, who wants her to embrace her dark side and kill him. But she doesn’t and he manages to escape! Good one, Thea! On the other hand, she finally decides to start things up with the Queen campaign manager, so the night’s not a complete wash. Well, that and Diggle is playing cards with imprisoned Andy now.

While Ollie and Felicity are considering their future in the hospital, Darhk’s wife is a limo with her family, giving Damien crap for not killing the Green Arrow when he had the chance, especially when the Genesis program is close to completion. But Damien’s trying to be polite to the guy who saved his family, but reassures her he’ll meet his end along with the world as we know it.

“Really? Do you not remember what happened the last time you did that?”

“You know what you have to do, right?” So we get a brief flash forward back to that gravesite Ollie was visiting in the season premiere, and we see what happens after his talk with Barry about “killing him“. He goes to a limo, where Felicity is! YAY, she’s not dead! And doesn’t seem to be in a wheelchair! But, both Ollie and Felicity are not happy. Then she tells him they both know what he has to do? “You have to kill the son of a bitch!”, she says. DAMUNNNNNN!

So, who’s demise could piss off both ends of Olicity? And maybe more importantly, “him” is Darhk, right?

–Comic book connections: Anarky is a Batman villain, obviously, but who wore a metal mask for his crimes.

–Jeez, Diggle, you finally break the ice with your bro, then you decide to cheat at that card game by looking at his cards? Not cool.

–Okay, bad move that Laurel called the cops to collect Anarky, fine. But she’s not the one who broke him out of police custody and who’s flimsy tracking plan fell apart within five minutes. I believe Ollie wins the Stupid Move-Off this week.

–If Bali is wheelchair accessible, that would be an interesting episode.

–Ollie does offer to give Quentin a room at the Arrow HQ if things get too hot on the street for him. This sounds like a Odd Couple scenario in the making.

–“It’s a small world, huh?” “Microscopic.”

–“Aren’t we risking some Bond villain stupidity here?”

–“I have never been more ready to have a bunch of guys poking around inside of me. Doctors.”

That’s all for now, but leave comments and questions below, and come back next week for the recap of “AWOL”…