ARROW Season 5×10, “Who Are You?” recap

26 Jan

Welcome back from Winter hiatus, Arrowheads! When we left Team Arrow last year, things were not so rosy for them. Quentin went into rehab, Curtis is estranged from his hubby, Evelyn turned on them to side with Prometheus, Diggle got busted by the military, and Prometheus tricked Ollie into killing Felicity’s cop boyfriend! As if things couldn’t get worse, a familiar face appears in the Arrow HQ: Laurel Lance! The DEAD Laurel Lance! What is going on there? Let’s hold on that for a second and focus on another big reveal that happens this episode…

Shifting Allegiances. In the Russia flashback, Ollie’s finds himself held by the Bratva leader who has secured an alliance with Konstantin Kovar. Ollie’s just sees this as betraying the Bratva soldiers who died at Kovar’s hand, but our crooked Bratva leader sees this as an opportunity to get close enough to kill Kovar. We get another reminder of Ollie’s unwillingness to go home to his family and Laurel (who he conveniently has a photo of on him), and a threat to fall in line with the Bratva leader, or else. Before Ollie can answer that, some noise outside throws everyone on alert. The Bratva leader takes Ollie as a human shield, but gets incapacitated…by an arrow! In walks a woman in League of Assassins garb, looking for Ollie, and introduces herself as…Talia al Ghul! The other daughter of the Demon’s Head is here!

Talia, does your “Beloved” know you are moonlighting here?

Welcome Home Party. Now, we get back to Ollie looking gobsmacked that dead Laurel is…well, not dead. This is confusing, I know, but wait, Laurel has an explanation: Sara and her time traveling buddies grabbed her from the past and fixed her fatal injuries, dumping her back in Star City now nine months later. Okay, that kind of makes sense, and Felicity drops by to see this too. As surprised as Felicity is, she things this is cause for a celebratory get together at her loft tomorrow night. Meantime, Ollie hears about Diggle’s arrest and talks to him in the prison lockup. Instead of planning another prison escape, Diggle wants to stay…to fight the charges against him! So the next night, the Team minus Thea (hey, someone has to run the city) have some wine and lament this turn of events.

Later, Felicity goes back to the Arrow HQ, as Rory is just hanging around dealing with sleeplessness. She admits that little “Welcome Back Laurel” party was to get DNA samples from Laurel, and as her and Rory discover that Laurel is…not their Laurel. It’s Black Siren, the evil Laurel Lance from Earth-2 that is supposed to be locked up in this world! Well, Evil Laurel shows up right there, and flings Felicity and Rory around with her sonic scream. Ollie shows up to save his friends, but Evil Laurel flees the Arrow HQ. So how is she here, free and loose? And why?

Black Lance. After explaining to the rest of the Team what parallel Earths are, we discover Evil Laurel was broken out of STAR Labs’ holding cells days ago…by Prometheus! While questions about the crap security in STAR Labs is best left for The Flash to contend with, we run into Evil Laurel as Prometheus reminds her that she owes her freedom and life to her, so she better follow through on trashing Team Arrow. Ollie arrives at Adrian Chase’s office to hear Billy’s body (dressed up as Prometheus with arrows in his chest and all) has been found, and puts together that the Green Arrow was tricked into killing Billy (I wonder how he pieced that together?). Adrian has kept the details of this murder quiet, knowing it might cause the ACU to go off the rails, which brings us to why Ollie is seeing him. Ollie wants Adrian to represent Diggle in his hearing, which he accepts.

After that meeting, Ollie gets a ring from Evil Laurel, who wants to explain herself to him. They agree to meet where the Black Canary statue is, but the Team is set up to stakeout the place in case its a trap. Felicity seems to think Ollie may not be thinking clearly on Laurel, Evil or not, so when Evil Laurel shows up to supposedly give him info on Prometheus, Felicity orders the Team in. The statue gets laid to waste, and then Evil Laurel is knocked out. Ollie’s a little irritated that Felicity went over his head like that, but you know what, let’s shelve that for later.

This episode of ARROW is brought to you by Altoids: because when you sonic scream regularly, at least have fresh breath doing it.

Siren Song. Meantime, we should mention Curtis is feeling down in the dumps about, well, everything involving getting his ass kicked in the last few episodes. Rene tries to get him out of his funk, but that doesn’t go well. Diggle gets visited by Adrian, just in time for that corrupt general to drop by to personally escort Diggle to a military lock-up. Diggle thinks this trip doesn’t end with him going to a lock-up but to a grave, so Adrian stalls for time, which is not too much to work with.

Ollie talks to Evil Laurel, and learns that the Ollie of Earth-2 got killed on the capsizing of the Queen’s Gambit 10 years ago, which may have lead to her life of crime. So he thinks he can rehabilitate her, which Felicity thinks is a stupid plan. Felicity then meets with Evil Laurel and tells her what is really going on with Ollie: he feels he failed their Laurel and fixing Evil Laurel could redeem that failure. Interesting theory, but before we can see more on that, a power surge gives Evil Laurel the opportunity to escape her cell and Arrow HQ. But her random fluke of an escape want random as the Team discovers…because Felicity staged her escape so Evil Laurel could lead them to Prometheus!

Out Of A Cage. Ollie hears about this and gets the “I learned it by watching you!” response from Felicity when bringing he did the same thing with Anarky last season (and of course, she remembers how well that worked out…). Ollie admits she’s not wrong in him wanting to fix Evil Laurel, but it also comes from the guilt of what he did to Billy, accident or not. While mom and dad have their awkward talk, Rene lets Curtis know that he needs to focus on those cool tech skills he doesn’t suck at. So Curtis puts together one of those sonic dampeners the Flash used to take Evil Laurel down. He’ll have to put that together on the move, because the tracker Felicity put on Evil Laurel has stopped moving. They can’t tell if Prometheus is there too, but no matter.

Muffled. The Team arrives at the location (which is an empty warehouse, natch) and find both Evil Laurel and Prometheus. While Ollie fights Prometheus, the rest of the Team flounders fighting Evil Laurel. When she corners Felicity, Ollie’s distracted from fighting Prometheus to try to convince Evil Laurel she’s not…evil. That doesn’t seem to work, but Curtis’ sonic dampener does, leaving her open to get punched out by Felicity? Well, good on her!

As for Diggle, Adrian goes back to talk to him, and both know this sketchy prisoner transfer can’t go down. So Adrian quietly whispers for Diggle to punch him, and does exactly that. Well now Diggle can’t be transferred out of prison because he has an assault charge on him, and I guess we’ll see how that little gambit on Adrian’s part plays out.

Good for you, Felicity. Soon you’ll be doing insane exercises with salmon ladders and sledgehammering giant tires in no time!

More Than One Canary. As Felicity heals her hand up from that memorable punch, we learn Evil Laurel has been moved to a secure ARGUS lockup, where Ollie can keep track of her, and maybe convince her to changer her evil ways. Since when did he become the optimist in this Team? Anyway, Ollie and Felicity chat about the destroyed Black Canary statue, and Ollie suggests a better way to memorialize her that he’s been putting on the backburner: finding a new Black Canary. Before I can scream “OH HELL NO NOT FELICITY” and destroy my TV, we cut to nearby Hub City, where some thugs are hassling a waitress at a bar. Before you know it, a lady at the bar shows these tough guys what’s what…by using a sonic scream on them! I think we have a finalist here for Black Canary 3.0!

–Comic book connections: Hub City is the home of DC hero The Question.

–What are we supposed to take from Prometheus’ tolerance to that diazepam dart Ollie hits him with?

–Maybe for the best Quentin is not informed about Evil Laurel. Not like he needs another reason to extend his stay in rehab.

–Good thing Felicity got told to keep her wrist straight when punching beforehand. That could have been really painful and detrimental to her hacking skills.

–“Do you have a sister, because I hear he loves sisters.”

–“You’re acting like this has happened before. (Pause) This has happened before?”

–“You need to shut your damn mouth!”

–Curtis’ thought on hearing their may be an alternate reality version of him: “Oh God, what if I’m straight?”

So what did you think? Comment below and come back next week for the recap of “Second Chances”…