ARROW Season 4×15, “Taken” recap

25 Feb

Welcome back, Arrowheads! With the mayoral campaign heating up, now Ollie and Felicity think it would be a great time to get married. Yeah, there’s going to be a few hold-ups to that, despite Felicity getting a chop that can cure her paralysis. One being Ollie’s secret son being kidnapped by Damien Darhk, thanks to the help of Malcolm Merlyn! I guess those two wont be getting wedding invites!

Witnesses. In the flashback this week, Reiter takes Ollie and Taiana to that hole being dug in the prison. He wants them to go in, but a spectral version of Conklin shows up, warning them in a completely foreign tongue that they cannot enter. So Reiter locks the two of them in with ghost Conklin, which stops from probably killing them all when Ollie’s ab tattoo starts glowing. Ollie is told he is worthy to pass by ghost Conklin before it vanishes. So that hole leads into a giant cavern, which, well who knows? Anyhoo…

Kidnapping. Felicity is getting some physical therapy from Curtis’ husband, and it seems that newly implanted chip in her spine is taking a slow time to get working. With that marginal progress in her therapy, Ollie is taking her to her car when Darhk drops by to interrupt things. He suggests seeing the message that has just come up on Ollie’s phone…which is a picture of William! Darhk gives Ollie a demand: drop out of the mayoral campaign or William dies! As Darhk leaves, Felicity finally asks who William is. Well I’m sure she’ll take this news about Ollie hiding a son in a completely rational and unemotional way–you know that won’t happen, right?

At Arrow HQ, the rest of the Team gets to hear the news and Felicity sulks over being the last one to know about this (which, btw, Laurel and Diggle are the last in the Team to know this, and they take this news better than you, drama queen!). Just in case, Ollie sets up a potential press conference to withdraw, and Now has to figure out how to find William. The other problem is beside finding William is fighting a magic-powered Darhk, which the team has kind of sucked at. Going through options of magical allies, Ollie has an idea: Mari, a hero he knows working in Detroit (see the Vixen animated series on the CW website for more on that) by the name of Vixen! Her powers as we see in a scene where she’s chasing villains in Detroit is being able to summon up animal powers to use to fight baddies. Ollie drops by and asks her for help.

Magic Woman. The next day, Ollie arrives at campaign headquarters to find Samantha there, surprisingly still alive as William was abducted literally under her nose. Ollie tries to reassure her they’ll get William back, but when she’s not convinced, he decides to reveal he’s the Green Arrow! That fast, huh? Anyway she’s taken to see the Team, like Laurel. You know, the woman Ollie was seeing when Sam slept with him and got knocked up? Awkward meetings aside, Vixen asks for some kind of possession of William’s to work from. Sam happens to have William’s Flash figurine, then Vixen touches it and feels he’s somewhere in this city.

Before we find out where that is, and as Diggle talks to Ollie about the responsibilities of being a dad, Laurel goes to see Quentin. She admits to being surprised she’s a bit bothered by Ollie’s other dalliance with a woman behind his back, but hey, hold on that because the Team finally have tracked William to a hotel penthouse. The Team busts in to find William taken away, and Ollie and Vixen fight Darhk to, well slightly better but still failing results, as Vixen’s magic powers are almost a match for Darhk’s Force-choke skills. Darhk flees, and the trail for William has gone cold.

Totems. The Team gets back to the HQ, and start thinking about how to fight Darhk. Vixen suggests, like her with her mystical necklace, he’s getting his power from some magic trinket. Quentin confirms Darhk has something like that, and him and Vixen try to figure out how to locate it. And then Darhk calls Ollie, telling him thanks to the Green Arrow’s involvement, he wants Ollie to announce his campaign is over NOW and throw his support to Ruve Adams!

As Ollie preps for his big speech, Thea visits Malcolm at her apartment and asks him if he blabbed about William to Darhk. He says “no”, but you get the impression she doesn’t completely believe it. At the HQ, Felicity gets to finally talk to Samantha, who admits her decision to bribe Ollie to not reveal William’s existence to Felicity was a wrong call. Way to point out the stupidly obvious there, lady. And anyway, Ollie goes through with the press conference, and does what Darhk asks for. I guess that’s the end of Queen for Mayor.

The Burden. Ollie finds himself packing up campaign headquarters, and Felicity rolls in, hearing his concerns over not being contacted by Darhk about returning William. She actually seems to grasp why Ollie had to make the decision he made to lie about William, when they both get called downstairs. Vixen has discovered through some contacts the equivalent of “magic Wi-Fi hotspots” throughout town, and Samantha voices the same concern of not hearing about William being returned. Ollie and Vixen talk, and she suggests that maybe its best Ollie doesn’t tell William who his dad is, especially considering his after hours activities.

Then, Darhk calls up to set up a meet to return William. Everyone thinks its a trap, and now that they think they know which of these “Ley Lines” Darhk is hanging around that, everyone comes to the decision to just hit Darhk and take him out of play.

Cutting The Power Supply. The Team sets up around Darhk’s new mansion lair, as Vixen flies in through the roof! Darhk is surprised, and more so when she sees his magical totem and takes off with it. The Team moves in and starts knocking out HIVE goons as they reach the house. But Darhk is still powered up and holds Ollie, Laurel, and Thea in Force-choke holds. Vixen has heard taking the totem away isn’t working, so she gives it a few gorilla super powered slams and shatters the thing! Darhk’s power seems to vanish, and Ollie knocks Darhk out. William comes out of the house, unharmed, and Ollie and company leave as the cops arrive.

At the precinct house, William is reunited with Samantha, and is interested in getting a Green Arrow figurine now. Meanwhile, Quentin talked to the kid after locking up Darhk and learned William’s abductor wasn’t Darhk, but a man missing a hand. Sooooo, Thea gets to see Malcolm again and confronts him about his lie, not wanting to have anymore to do with him. Well, he goes batstink angry as you would expect him to, wanting respect for protecting his daughter by drugging her to kill a friend, I mean, teaching her to fight and keeping her safe. Seriously, NO ONE is going to kill this guy, are they? Sigh.

Bringing On The Heartbreak. Before we get to other head-slapping decisions, Ollie records a message for William where he talks about who he is and what he does. The thing is that the message is meant to be given to William by Sam (after the two move to a location unknown to Ollie) on his 18th birthday, to give Ollie’s son a chance at a normal childhood. Felicity shows up, hearing most of that, and realizes that Ollie’s trust issues are a problem that marriage is not going to survive with, so she returns the engagement ring to him…and then is able to walk! And she does, out of the loft!

Felicity, the man has just finished recording an emotional confession to a son he may never see again, and you pick THAT TIME to break up with him…AGAIN? Yes, he deserves this moment to reflect on things he did wrong, but give him some time to finish recording a message TO HIS ONLY CHILD! And let’s not glaze over the fact you finally walk, and just in case that chip in your spine hasn’t completely fixed things, leave your wheelchair behind? Felicity Smoak, I question your competency as a human being.

Is Olicity done (at this rate, I’m starting to lean towards “yes” for the first time in a looooooong time)? Can Ollie run for mayor now? Is Malcolm going to do evil stuff…more? Well, we got a month to find out!

–Comic book connections: Vixen was a character in the DCU that popped up as a member in the Justice League twice. Once in the 80’s when it was in Detroit with lower tier heroes (like Vibe) and in a reboot of the team in the early 2000’s.

–That was a nice thing to have the actress who voiced Vixen in that recent animated short (Megalyn Echikunwoke) play Vixen here, and hopefully, see more of her again in this TV DCU as she was a fun addition to things.

–Laurel has been insanely level-headed about all of this Ollie having a son thing, right? It’s surprising, seeing how this news should be affecting her the worst. See, Felicity, some people can act like freaking adults.

–So surprise, Malcolm is all about Malcolm. And that is being a power-hungry super protective psychopath.

–Um, where were Darhk’s wife and daughter during all of this? Just wondering.

–“Well, that happened.”

–“You almost make me believe in love again.”

–In regards to why John Constantine isn’t available: “He’s in hell. No, literally, he’s in hell.”

–“I never thought I’d be the one to say this, but, ‘huh’?”

That’s all for now, but come back in a month (!) for the recap of “Broken Hearts”…