ARROW Season 1 rewatch, Ep. 2, “Honor Thy Father” / Ep. 3, “Lone Gunmen”

9 Jun

Welcome back to the rewatch, Arrowheads! We started off with introducing Oliver Queen back to the world after being missing & presumed dead for five years. But he came back with a mission: to bring justice on the criminals who have corrupted his hometown of Starling City. And now, he’s got a lot of work to do, and we got some recapping to do too…

“Honor Thy Father”

“You have failed this city! Also, can I interest you in some fine archery equipment?”

In the flashbacks this episode, Ollie arrives on the island on Lian Yu, and gets to burying his father’s body. He also looks at the notebook Robert left him, and there’s nothing on it! Well, almost nothing except a symbol. And just as he’s finishing making his dad’s grave, he gets shot by an arrow…by someone in the same garb he will take on years later!

In the present, Ollie gets to go to court and be declared legally alive again, and while there he runs into Laurel, who is handling a case against corrupt businessman Martin Somers, who has been making drug deals with the Chinese Triad. Ollie puts on his hood later and pays Somers a visit, threatening him to confess to his crimes in open court. Also, he defends Diggle’s problem with losing his client to Moira as just a guy catching up on five years of not being close with a woman. Diggle is still not cool with Ollie’s little habit. But Ollie is also bothered by things, like his distance from his family, and that he might be asked to take up a large role in the company.

On Laurel’s end, Somers talks to his Triad contact, China White, and they decide it might be a good idea to just have Laurel killed. While she’s under police protection assigned by her dad, Ollie drops by to visit (and share some apology ice cream) and talk about how unsure he is about being brought back into the company so soon after his return. It’s also good he’s there when China White and her goons break into Laurel’s apartment, because him and Diggle fight off the intruders. And for thanks, Quentin threatens to make Ollie disappear permanently if he goes near Laurel again. I guess a “thank you” was too much to ask.

Oh, Laurel. When just being attacked by the Chinese Triad was the worst of your problems.

Later that night, Ollie slips out and pays Somers another visit, and this time to get the truth about Laurel’s client and the client’s murdered father. China White pops by too, and the two get into a fight before the police show up. Quentin thinks he’s cornered the “Hood”, but Ollie escapes, leaving Quentin a gift: an audio confession of Somers’ guilt.

Ollie goes to a big Queen Consolidated ground breaking ceremony, and makes a big intended scene about not being up to follow his father’s legacy, which is just to cover his nighttime activities. Also, Moira meets with a mystery man who she assures that Ollie doesn’t know about the Queen’s Gambit being sabotaged. At least Ollie can get that headstone off him of the Queen property now.

–Comic book connections: China White is a DCU villain who has managed to become a recurring villain in the Arrowverse.

–Diggle is clearly seeing after saving him from China with that knife throw that there’s more to Ollie than meets the eye. Well, wait until the next episode…

–Oh yeah, that creepy symbol that shows up in that limo Moira enters and on Robert’s notebook? We’ll get back to that soon enough.

–Ollie still doesn’t know about Laurel and Tommy dating, which, I guess should go along just fine? Well, if you’ve seen the show beyond this, you already know the answer.

–“Police protection? I remember you tried that when I started dating boys. It didn’t work then either.”

–“This happens to you a lot, doesn’t it?”

–“Home is a battlefield.”

“Lone Gunmen”

Strangely he remembers phone numbers by jotting the names down on him, but not the numbers. He’s an odd assassin.

In the flashback here, the arrow wounded Ollie has been dragged to a cave by the hooded man who shot him. The man heals Ollie with some herbs, but while the man is asleep, Ollie manages to get enough strength in him to make a run for it. But he falls into a trap our Chinese speaking mystery man has set up, and is let go by said man. Ollie stumbles away, and some time later, some armed commandos stumble upon the used trap. So what is going on here?

Present day, Ollie’s going on another visit to another corrupt business guy when…someone else kills the guy with a bullet from a sniper rifle! Ollie is unable to track the sniper, but does get grazed by the assassin’s gunfire. He goes back to his lair to patch himself up, when he realizes the bullet that him was tipped in poison. He takes some herbs in his box from the island and passes out. By the time he gets home, he gets news that Thea’s been involved in shoplifting and thanks to some digging, finds out the assassin is Floyd Lawton, a killer known as Deadshot. Guess who has moved up to the top of Ollie’s list of baddies?

Ollie figures out he has a connection to the Bratva, the Russian Mob, and decides to visit a Bratva hangout in town, pretending to be a Captain of the organization. At least we think he’s pretending, because we discover later that he ACTUALLY IS. That’s a subject for another time, because he asks for intel on what Deadshot is doing in town. Then he joins Tommy on a little trip to a local club, which ends with some awkward stuff with the club’s owner (Ollie slept with his fiancé back in the day), and Ollie finding out from a drunk Thea that Tommy and Laurel are together. He plays like he’s cool with it, but really, is he? Also, during this night out, we learn Diggle has a sister-in-law he keeps in touch with, and a brother who’s dead. Put that in your cap for later.

Ollie gets a call from the Bratva as to where Deadshot’s possible haunt is in Starling City. He visits this hotel, and finds Lawton there, who escapes, but leaving behind a laptop. His computer skills aren’t that good, so he goes visit some random tech girl in her family company’s IT department, Felicity Smoak, and asks for some help recovering data from it. It appears that one of the buyers of a clean energy corporation was the man Deadshot killed, and that another potential buyer hired Deadshot to kill the competition, which is the Queen family! He can tell from the plans where Deadshot is going to be, at the auction of this clean energy company, but realizes he can’t cover Deadshot and his family at the same time. Meantime, Quentin is convinced the Hood isn’t the killer in that assassination, and that gets proven when the Hood visits him, and tells him all about the assassination plot.

This Felicity Smoak person seems interesting. Too bad her character doesn’t appear regularly again in this show.

At the auction, Ollie is wandering the scene, Quentin is arresting the guy behind Deadshot’s mission, and Moira convinces Thea to come along to this thing. It’s good Ollie covered his bases, because he’s there to keep Walter from getting shot by Deadshot. After he’s sure his family has found cover, he rushes off to the building Deadshot is at. They get into a fight, and by luck, Ollie puts an arrow through that big eye piece Deadshot is wearing. Before he can dwell on whether Deadshot is dead, he sees one of those bullets that was let off in that fight has hit Diggle! Turns out his bodyguard was a bit more persistent this time in following him!

Ollie grabs Diggle and takes him back to his lair, where he crafts up the same antidote for those Deadshot poison tipped bullets for Diggle. Diggle wakes up and sees Ollie…in his Hood outfit, waiting for him. You got questions to ask, right, Diggle? Well, that’s for next time!

— Comic book connections: Deadshot is a constant among the DCU’s SUICIDE SQUAD.

–I haven’t mentioned it, but there’s quite a bit of Ollie voiceover in these early episodes, which eventually vanishes as the show goes on. At least the voiceover explains why he wants to set up a nightclub above where his lair is.

–You know who’s the bright one in the Tommy/Laurel relationship when she points out to him that Ollie already figured out they were going out.

–Something tells me this isn’t the last we’ll see of Deadshot. Well, watching this show for five years just tells me that.

–“I didn’t study Shakespeare at any of the four schools I dropped out of.”

–“The rehearsal dinner is technically before the wedding.”

–“Hey.”

So that’s it for now, but come next time in our rewatch as we get to “An Innocent Man” and “Damaged”…