ARROW Season 4×21, “Monument Point” recap

12 May

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Things are really revving up for the endgame of this season, as HIVE’s big plan is finally coming into shape. And that plan is stealing an ARGUS program that controls all the world’s nuclear arsenal, and annihilating Earth’s population! Meanwhile, Thea learns that HIVE is making their own super duper bomb shelter underneath the city, that happens to look like the suburbs, which, that’s a thing. Will the rest of the Team stop Darhk’s final plan? Will Thea get out of that giant shelter? Will Diggle get past killing his little brother? And oh yeah, how’s Quentin Lance doing after burying another kid?

First Plane Out. Oh, welcome back, flashbacks. So what’s going on? Let’s see: All the prisoners make their way to Reiter’s airstrip, and after hearing he’s still alive, Ollie goes off to finish him off. And after unloading a lot of ammo into Reiter, finds his efforts unsuccessful, because, duh-doy, magic. So Ollie and Taiana take off with the idol, and she gets possessed, and that’s it. Glad we talked, flashback.

Parents. Okay, let’s get the least plot connected thing out of the way first, being Quentin’s statement. Donna gets to see what the police want Quentin to sign, which is a statement claiming he did not know Laurel was the Black Canary, which is obviously a lie. And knowing he might lose his badge permanently if he says otherwise, he decides to not lie in that statement. Good on you, buddy. Now let’s get back to the big story at hand…

At Arrow HQ, Lyla and Original Flavor Team Arrow figure out it will take the Rubicon program twenty-one hours to prime all the nuclear missiles for launch. They need to stop it, and lucky they have the world’s best hacker to do that. Well, second best as Felicity admits they need the actual best hacker, her father, to stop the program. Since he got of Iron Heights when Darhk did, that may be a problem. While Felicity is figuring how to find dear ol’ dad, Ollie talks to Dig about finding that magic nexus in town he heard about last episode. They find it, they’ll find Darhk. Oh, and they all ask, where the hell is Thea?

“Oh no! I’m stuck in that horrible Under The Dome show! HELP!”

Unwelcome Visitors. Thea is of course, in that underground Wayward Pines (spoiler for that show!), as Malcolm is explaining why she’s down there and what’s going to happen to everyone above them. Instead of trying to unsuccessfully reason with Daddy Crazypants, Thea wants to see Alex. And speaking of people being shuttled into this sanctuary from nuclear Armageddon, guess who shows up? Our favorite scarfaced Thea fanatic, Lonnie aka Anarchy!

Meantime, Ollie and Dig are at a location discovered by Felicity that the Calculator might be at. But he’s gone, and his security records show why: he had uninvited guests. Those guests were HIVE goins and some other Iron Heights escapees: that Murmur guy and from last season, Brick! Darhk had the same thought about Felicity’s dad that the Team had, so now they have to find him before HIVE does.

Cabin In The Woods. Felicity is at work, and finds a lead in Calculator’s code, the phrase “Ravenspur”, so she calls her mom over to ask about it. Also, that annoying dude from the Palmer Tech board really needs her to see the board about something, but clearly that’s not gonna be important. Donna tells Felicity “Ravenspur” is where they had a cabin back before Felicity was born, so we gots a lead. At this time, while searching a couple of possible places for this magic nexus, Ollie is asking Dig, “Um, your wife seems to think you killed Andy in self-defense, but we both know differently, right?”. Diggle clearly doesn’t want Lyla to think differently of him, but Ollie reminds him, “If you haven’t been paying attention this season, lying about something like that tends to lead to big trouble, so just so you know.”.

The duo get Felicity’s info and make their way to Ravenspur, where Daddy Smoak is being chased by Brick and the HIVE goons. They fight off those goons, and Calculator is picked up by Felicity in a van. All our heroes end up in Ollie’s loft, and once Calculator is brought up to speed on what’s happening, agrees to help. But he’s going to need more processing power than what the Team has, but there is an experimental one at Palmer Tech that could do the job. Easy peasy, right?

Felicity should update her resume soon. Not with “failed to prevent a town from being nuked” but “former CEO”.

Breaking Into The Workplace. Remember that meeting the Palmer Tech board wanted with Felicity? Well, they weren’t happy with her non-profit donation of a super tech microchip, and they voted her out just as she gets to her office and gets kicked out by security! So she can’t get to the chip…at least not without help. So Diggle helps Felicity and her dad get to the microchip while Ollie causes a distraction. The father/daughter have to clone the working program for the chip, which is incomplete as they all escape…with Quentin as the getaway driver! Considering his cop career may be over, the job of vigilante chauffeur seems in his future. So now with the incomplete chip data, they need a large enough server farm to run the thing on.

Anarky In The Neighborhood. Back in the dome, Thea sees Alex, who is still a loyal HIVE zombie. Malcolm drops by needing some help, because Lonnie is holed up in the carbon dioxide scrubber room, and if that goes, everyone inside the dome dies, so why not get the help of Lonnie’s obsession to stop him? Thea arrives in the room to find Lonnie and say, yeah, I’m the girl who turned you into a burnt steak. After a couple of cringey “mommy” references to Thea, Malcolm hit him with an arrow and he flees. While Malcolm stays to defuse the explosives in the room, Thea goes to find Lonnie.

She gets outside to see a dazed Alex, and fights Lonnie. She isn’t fast enough to stop Lonnie’s little gesture to help Thea deal with her “man attachment” problem by killing Alex, but does knock Lonnie out. Congrats for playing So You Want To Be Thea Queen’s Boyfriend this season, Alex, but you just (like many of Thea’s boyfriends) got eliminated!

“‘Ello there! It’s Vinnie from British Bad Guys Incorporated! Course this is my weekday job. On weekends, I work for British Singing Telegram Services!”

Countdown To Extinction. Classic Team Arrow set up shop in a local server farm with barely an hour left before Rubicon is fully functional. With Lyla and some ARGUS troops running defense, Felicity and Daddy Smoak start things up, and realize they accidentally tipped off HIVE to where they are. Enter Brick and HIVE dropping by for a big throw down with ARGUS and Team Arrow, which ends with the baddies being knocked out. But in the mess, Felicity’s dad takes a bullet to the shoulder and even worse, him and Felicity put together a 24 hour delay to stop Rubicon, but too late to stop one nuclear missile heading for the U.S.!

Endtime Event. That missile is making its way to the city of Monument Point, so in a last-minute ditch effort, Felicity reroutes the missile to the small city of Havenrock. So instead of killing millions of people, the missile kills a few thousand people, which doesn’t sound like much of a win. While Felicity mulls accidentally entering Malcolm Merlyn body count territory, news comes of the Mayor’s office being evacuated, but nowhere else. So it seems Ruve’s mayoral campaign was to secure the Mayor’s office/magic nexus for HIVE, which, really? Can’t just kill everyone in the building to do that? Every other villain (HIVE included) had no trouble with doing that!

That aside, Ollie and Diggle make it to the deserted building, and find a secret entrance. After some looking (and amazement an ancient cave was hidden in a city building like this) they come upon a familiar looking magic chamber (its like the Target of magic chambers in terms of familiarity in design), and find Darhk there, absorbing the souls of those killed in Havenrock! Well, so now they have to fight a superpowered Darhk as opposed to a superduperpowered Darhk, which…gulp. Two episodes left, y’all!

–Comic book connections: Surprisingly, not really any ones this week. Although here’s a vague one: in the DCU, there is one noteworthy city that got nuked, and that was the home of Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Coast City, during the Reign of the Supermen arc that brought back Superman from his big death at the hands of Doomsday in the 90’s.

–Let’s just not ignore the fact a city just got nuked in the next two episodes, okay? That’s a BIG DEAL.

–I just love how Calculator tries to chat to Felicity about his parental problems during the whole heist. Yeah, he can multitask, but now doesn’t seem the time.

–Pretty sure Stephen Amell smiled more in that minute long teaser for that new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie than the last few episodes of this show. Just something I noticed.

–RIP Alex. You’ve joined a hallow hall of unfortunate boyfriends to Thea Queen. We honor you.

–“You’re not a pawn. You’re a Queen.”

–“I’m just really tired to tell you again that you are crazy.”

–“I made it clear to fix this in the line-item budget, and they got the gall to fire me?”

–“They’re not Halloween costumes.”

That’s it for now, but comment below and come back next week for the recap of “Lost In The Flood”…