ARROW Season 5×03, “A Matter Of Trust” recap

20 Oct

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Last we left Ollie, he got himself a brand new team to help fight crime, and that’s, well, gonna take some work to get working like Original Team Arrow. Speaking of the Original Flavor Team, Thea has hired the not-quite sober Quentin to be the deputy mayor and Diggle finds himself in military prison framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Before you can say “how can things get worse?”, did we mention one of Ollie’s recruits lost their family thanks to a nuclear bomb Felicity sent their way? So, let’s settle in to see what happens…

Nothing As It Seems. In the flashback this episode, Ollie is recovering from that big Bratva test that he succeeded in. But he’s feeling a bit guilty his fellow recruits got offed in the process, until Anatoly shows him that those guys were scum that were probably going to be killed anyway. So, no guilt there, Ollie! Then he has through another test where his back gets cut to prove trust, so, he’s doing well.

Dogs At Your Heels. Ollie’s new teammates get to watch Ollie in action…from Felicity’s makeshift computer console in the training area…as he grabs a low level dealer in a super strong drug called Stardust. After watching Ollie interrogate the guy (who probably survives that fall from a rooftop?), they have a lead of the boss supplying Stardust: Sampson, a low-key crime boss staying under Tobias Church’s radar. Wild Dog wants to go after this guy now, but Ollie’s all “let’s get all we can on this guy first” for plans. I’m sure that will go over great.

“I’m the only one who wears a hockey mask around here!” “But you don’t wear a hockey mask–” “WHAT DID I JUST SAY?”

The next day, Ollie gets to hear the news of Quentin being hired as deputy mayor, not from Thea, but from the news report bringing it up! Thea offers to fix this mess, but at that moment, there’s another mess brewing. Wild Dog and Evelyn have done some recon and found Sampson’s Stardust making lab, but instead of calling the Team in, Mr. Dog decides to handle things himself. And the end result is Sampson takes a fall into a vat of chemicals, which if anything that comic books tell us, is that nothing good comes from a bath in mystery chemicals.

No Pain, No Gain. Not long after that, Ollie gets to meet the new DA, Adrian Chase, who is really pissed off because some vigilante in a hockey mask just killed Sampson, who was making a deal to give up intel on Church. Oops. So Ollie reads Mr. Dog on how he screwed up, and how killing Sampson didn’t even solve the Stardust problem. Everyone else is pretty much giving Dog the “What the hell, man?” look to make him feel bad. But good news though: at the morgue, Sampson comes back to life and seems to be unable to feel pain AT ALL. Oh wait, that’s bad.

Ollie heads down to the morgue to fight Sampson and finds himself really faring badly against this painless guy. He gets back to the training post, and puts Felicity on finding out anything on Sampson. As for the Team, Dog asks for them to go out on recon to find him, and gets from Ollie a “thanks, but no thanks” for an answer.

SHIRTLESS MAN ATTACKING ME! SHIRTLESS MAN ATTACKING ME!

Card Game. So before we go any further, let’s check in on Diggle, who is finally visited by Lyla, and explains what has happened. He gets put back into his cell, with a new cellmate…Floyd Lawton aka Deadshot? Yeah, before you say “isn’t he dead?”, well yes he still is, but Dig has conjured him up to reinforce his guilt in killing Andy last season. And because he feels that guilty, Dig later tells Lyla to let him face whatever punishment he’s about to receive from the military. How do you think that’s gonna go down for Lyla?

And Thea is not doing well blowing out the flames started up by that reporter, Susan Williams. Trying to be the polite person in this, Thea reveals Ollie had no clue about Quentin’s hiring, and guess what happens? Susan there makes it a headline that the mayor is incompetent, which is true for a different reason, but Thea feels this screw up means she should resign from her post. And what’s worse is Sampson is planning to take on Tobias Church by creating more painless guys like him!

Heavy Is The Head… Meantime, Curtis has put the puzzle together that Rory the Ragman doesn’t know about Felicity’s involvement in the destruction of Rory’s hometown. She’d rather not tell Rory about that (you know, LIE about it!), but let’s get back to Ollie’s problems. He starts realizing that all this stuff with Wild Dog and Thea is not really as much their fault as it is his. Well, he gets to make that up once Felicity finds out where Sampson is about to make his army of superbros. Time to get the new Team ready to go!

Monster Maker. Sampson decides to use the Stardust factory for his superbro factory, and Team Arrow 2.0 shows up to disrupt the party, while Ollie faces off against Sampson again. But Ollie has learned that just because he can’t feel pain doesn’t mean he can’t be immobilized, like say cutting Sampson’s tendons! After blowing the factory up and throwing Sampson in jail, Ollie and Felicity decide to introduce the new Team to the Arrow Cave! Awww, they got a graduation gift!

(Singing) WALK AWAY FROM AN EXPLOSION…LIKE A BADASS! BADASS! DUH DUH DE DUH!

Trust Your Own. The next day, Thea’s ready to hand over her resignation, but Ollie decides to publicly support Quentin as deputy mayor. And Thea tells Susan she knows she was played into giving up the info for headlines, and politely tells her, in short, “we Queen ladies are not ones to mess with twice”. Oh, and Felicity tells Rory about Havenrock and, um, he doesn’t kill her, so, fine?

And before we leave, Lyla visits Ollie with news about what happened to Diggle, and wants the Green Arrow to break him out of jail! Oh, that’s a really big “ask” there. Let’s see how this pans out next week.

–Comic book connections: The “Fair Play” jacket is part of Mr. Terrific’s outfit, but Terry Sloane was the first one to hold the title of Mr. Terrific.

–Adrian seems a little, um, suspicious, doesn’t he? Just saying, law of averages say he’s not all what he seems to be.

–So I don’t follow wrestling (okay, anymore), but apparently Stephen Amell and Mr. Sampson, Cory Rhodes, had a little match at the WWE Summer Slam. That explains the fight at the end, I guess.

–Funny that Rory admits the weird whispers from those rags he wears into combat are really weird to him too.

–Finally someone questions Curtis about that whole “being an Olympian” thing. Also, how’s his marriage doing?

–“I had the flu. I had the flu, y’all!”

–“‘Heavy is the head that wears the crown’. Shakespeare. Or Tupac.”

–“I never thought I’d meet someone more stubborn than Oliver. I would have lost that bet.”

–“Wait. He hits you guys?”

That’s it for now, but comment below and join us next week for the recap of “Penance”…