ARROW Season 5×07, “Vigilante” recap

17 Nov

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Team Arrow 2.0 has had its share of growing pains this season, but as bad as that has been, new villain Prometheus has really been keeping them off guard. Ollie has been getting a bit more personal with reporter Susan Williams (who is totally investigating Ollie’s “stranded” years), Diggle is still a wanted man, and Quentin is blackout drinking and waking up with some of Prometheus’ throwing stars. So what could make things worse in Star City and for Team Arrow 2.0?

An Unfriendly Little Dinner. This episode’s flashback starts as Ollie takes a break from being beaten up for information by Kovar to have a quiet dinner with the crime lord. Kovar mentions Ollie hasn’t talked during his interrogation, only to mention Taiana, the woman Ollie swore to avenge. Speaking of her, Kovar points out one of the maids bringing in food and drink for them is Taiana’s mother, who still doesn’t know what happened to her children. Kovar paints himself as not the complete bad guy Ollie believes he is, mentioning how the Bratva took the illegal operation of the man Ollie killed in prison weeks ago for themselves. Ollie just wants out of there, so he takes a risk and takes Kovar hostage, but Kovar has a surprise for him: the Bratva has already cut a deal with Kovar, which leaves Ollie’s mission of vengeance facing a serious roadblock.

Vigilante. Right now, some mystery vigilante breaks up some human trafficking meeting, seriously killing the traffickers, even hanging some of the bodies outside the SCPD. At the Arrow cave, they hear about these bodies (with a “V” carved onto their faces), and wonder if they should do anything about it. Well, not Ollie, because there’s enough problems with Prometheus without having to deal with another serial killer, of criminals or not. Ollie even asks Susan to stay quiet about this for now, which she’ll do, and hey, she offers a drink later tonight to ease his troubles (oh no no no no, Ollie). Also on the matter of drinks, Quentin visits Thea and confesses he still hasn’t gone to any AA meetings since he got confronted about it, and…he says he’s quitting as deputy mayor? Way to get Thea’s attention, Daddy Lance!

Across town, a group of criminals start an elaborate heist of a bank, which gets a oddly antsy Diggle rally the Team minus Ollie to take care of it. But by the time they get there, it seems the “Vigilante” has already struck, either killing or severely injuring most of the robbers. The mastermind of the robbery, Dunn, is unaccounted for, and when Ollie gets to talk with the Team, there is an actual conversation about whether they should do anything to stop the Vigilante. But Ollie counters with “hey, you newbies gave me crap for killing people, and this clown gets a free pass? Nuh- huh”. Thea goes to visit Quentin at his apartment, and while trying to find out why he’s avoiding rehab and his job, learns about his blackouts and Prometheus souvenirs he has no clue how they ended up in his place. Her solution? For now, put Quentin into an actual rehab clinic to clean up. Well that solves one problem Quentin has.

“I have made this season’s flashbacks watchable? You are welcome.”

Standards. Our Team splits up into groups to find Dunn and the Vigilante: with Dig, Curtis, and Wild Dog shaking down the guy supplying Vigilante with his weapons; while Rory and Evelyn shake down a former associate of Dunn’s. The former only learns that Dig is really irritated that thanks to his fugitive status that he can’t celebrate his daughter son’s second birthday. The latter group think they got a lead on Dunn’s next target, which turns out to be accurate. The bad news is Vigilante thought the same thing and shows up as well, causing chaos that helps Dunn escape as our killer hero shoots at our Team. Not cool, man. Vigilante’s all “I kill criminals, and if you get in my way, I’ll kill you” before he escapes.

Its not too long before AD Adrian Chase gets to grill one of the few robbers in Dunn’s crew that survived, and gets a lead on the motel where Dunn is ducking out in. Ollie overhears this (and Adrian is very interested too, hint hint) and decides to intercept Dunn at the motel. There we learn Dunn wasn’t just some longtime criminal who just got a break with an early parole: he got railroaded by the system for a crime he didn’t commit and became a criminal in prison. Not that Vigilante cares, because he starts shooting up the motel like its his giant target board. Ollie takes Dunn out and into protective custody, but learns several people unrelated at the motel are dead because of Vigilante’s overkill methods.

Shadows Of Doubt. This whole motel thing has Ollie wondering if he has accomplished anything by playing it safe now, which, REALLY? Dude, you like, saved the world from nuclear armageddon, and that was just last season! He takes a breather from this to go on his drink date with Susan, where he rhetorically lays out his concerns. She just assures him he’s doing right, which is nice, even though it looks like she’s totally gonna screw him over (metaphorically, in this case) soon. Ollie gets rung up by the Team, who have an idea how to lure Vigilante out: stage a bank robbery of their own!

“Guess who’s the traitor to Team Arrow in this picture? Oh come on, why’d you pick her?”

Playtime’s Over. The Team gets dressed up as Dunn’s skull masked crew, while Curtis and Evelyn hang outside the bank the Team is faux-robbing (and somehow don’t see Vigilante sneaking up on them). So Vigilante knocks out Evelyn and drags Curtis inside the bank at gunpoint, wanting to see the Green Arrow and no one else. Ollie pipes up and tells the Team to hang back while he talks things through with Vigilante. It’s clear something really bad happened to the guy before he started wearing ski glasses and killing criminals, but Vigilante just wants Team Arrow to stop interrupting his mad killing spree. No dice, Ollie makes clear as he fights Vigilante and then ties the mad guy up. Ollie tries to take off Vigilante’s mask, only to find it has a shock security thingie on it. Vigilante peels out, but he’ll probably be back.

The Inside (Wo)Men. After Ollie drops off Dunn at the SCPD (alive), he gets to hear from Thea about Quentin’s trip to rehab and that whole Prometheus stuff. So both of them realize that Prometheus knows who the Green Arrow is and that’s not good. But hey, Ollie gets to go on another date with Susan, which…is likely just as bad. But Diggle has some actual good news, when Lila and their baby boy sneak into Dig’s hidey hole to celebrate their son’s birthday.

Oh yeah, and Evelyn has a secret meeting with…Prometheus?! She’s a traitor? Just like a Millennial to team up with an obviously evil guy because, whatevs. So we will find out some more on this…well, probably not next episode, because we got a big alien invasion/TV crossover next time on Arrow!

Diggle: “Wait, don’t I have a daughter, not a son? DAMMIT, BARRY ALLEN!”

–Comic book connections: Vigilante is not even the first iteration of the character in the DCU (the first was a hero in the old West), but this version is based on the character that existed in the 80’s. In fact, the name of Vigilante is…well, maybe that’s a spoiler for this season, so we’ll talk about that another time.

–The way Susan talks to Ollie about having a Twitter war with a Russian journalist, really, no bells rung for trouble, Ollie?

–An expandable bullet shield arrow? The trick arrow gallery is getting better every episode.

–I think we can all guess who Vigilante is, right? I mean, I can, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if this show faked us out on that reveal.

–Kovar gets stabbed in the hand and he STILL beats down Ollie like nothing? That’s why you get Dolph Lundgren for that role to sell that kind of crazy.

–“I can totally see Paul and I’s next Halloween costumes.”

–“How far can you throw him?” “Depends on how many broken bones you want.”

–“God, its hot in that mask!”

That’s it for now, but come back in two weeks for part of the big DC TV crossover event in the recap of “Invasion!”…