ARROW Season 1 rewatch, Ep. 4, “An Innocent Man” / Ep. 5, “Damaged”

15 Jun

Welcome back to the rewatch, Arrowheads! When we last left Oliver Queen, he was stopping another bad guy in assassin Deadshot, and in the middle of this, Diggle got injured. So Ollie took him back to heal him at his lair, and was there waiting for him as he woke up to see his client is not quite the damaged rich boy he thought he was. So now what is he going to do?

“An Innocent Man”

Oh hey, it’s that Felicity Smoak person again. She keeps this up she might be a regular here.

For the island flashback here, our mystery archer brings Ollie a live bird in a wooden trap. Ollie has no clue what the man means when he says “Shengcun” to him, and after a while, he starts understanding what he meant: Ollie’s been given food, and he needs to kill it. He doesn’t want to, but in need of something to eat, he breaks the bird’s neck. Then our mystery archer reveals he can speak English, and than “Shengcun” means “survive”. He tells Ollie to survive this island, he better be ready to kill more than birds.

Right now, we come back to the end of the last episode, as Diggle wakes to see Oliver in his Hood getup. As you can imagine, he’s a little pissed off, but Ollie explains he brought Diggle to his lair because he wants to explain his crusade and offer him a chance to join up to help. Diggle would rather just walk out and leave, which leaves Ollie to head home, where he finds a concerned Laurel waiting for him. She was worried about Ollie after that auction shooting, and has to bluntly remind him, everyone else was worried too after he vanished from the scene. After Ollie has one of those nightmares of the past, he goes downstairs to see Thea, and he hears about a story playing on the local news: a man named Peter Declan, who’s on death row for the murder of his wife, but is claiming he’s innocent. And maybe he is.

The next day, Ollie gets up to find Diggle has quit and now he’s got a new bodyguard, who turns out, is far easier for Ollie to ditch than John ever was. At his lair, Ollie looks into Declan’s case, and finds a connection to his list in Jason Brodeur, the employer of Declan’s murdered wife. He realizes Declan needs a good attorney, so dressed up as the Hood, he drops by unannounced to Laurel’s apartment. After an impassioned speech to her about how she wants to help innocent people, she visits Declan in prison. She learns Declan’s wife was about to blow the whistle on illegal toxic waste dumping by Brodeur into the Glades before she was killed, which as we learn, is true. Laurel visits her dad, who is convinced he handled the Declan case right, and is also suspicious as to why she’s now interested in it.

Ollie goes to see Diggle at the local Big Belly Burger, and based on the fact he didn’t get turned in, suggests Diggle is on the fence about this job offer. So Ollie tells him about taking down Deadshot and his M.O. of poisoned bullets matching what happened to Diggle’s dead brother. While Diggle mulls on that, Ollie goes to see Laurel as the Hood, and hears the supervisor of Declan’s wife never backed up her claim of fraud. He visits the supervisor and after a talk on a railroad track, gets a file on Brodeur and delivers it to Laurel. Of course, that evidence doesn’t convince a judge to issue stay of execution for Declan, and Brodeur considers taking steps to deal with both Laurel and Declan for good.

After hearing the news, Ollie decides he needs to get Brodeur to confess, and after an arrow through the arm, agrees. Then Brodeur gets a call to confirm a hit on Laurel and Declan in the prison, which sends Ollie rushing over there. At the prison, it seems a lockdown has started, and some prisoners have “escaped”. Sneaking into the prison in a police uniform and ski mask, Ollie gets the two to safety, before vanishing himself. Quentin arrives after the prison riot has been quelled, and when hearing of the Hood appearing in different clothes, gets an idea. He starts looking through security camera footage from the incident in the last episode and finds footage of Ollie with a bag containing that green hood! Oops!

Oh hey, it’s everyone’s favorite dysfunctional murder dad on ARROW!

Meantime in another plot, Walter talks to Moira about a bizarre bookkeeping error: almost 3 million dollars unaccounted for. Later on Moira tells Walter she remembered it was money used for a friend’s start-up, but he’s not sure. So he calls tech girl Felicity Smoak up to his office to find out discreetly what is up with the missing money. She discovers it was funneled into a company called Tempest, who own a warehouse outside of town. Walter visits that warehouse alone and makes a rather creepy discovery: the remains of the Queen’s Gambit! Also, Moira meets with a man in a limo (who we’ll get to know soon enough) who notes a pattern in the Hood’s activities. He’s going after people on “the list”!

With Declan freed to be back with his daughter and Brodeur arrested, Ollie heads home to find Diggle there, accepting the bodyguard job (the new guy didn’t work out) and to help Ollie in his crusade. That seems premature as Quentin and the cops burst in to arrest Ollie for being the vigilante!

–Comic book connections: this is the first physical introduction to Malcolm Merlyn, who is a significant baddie to Green Arrow in the DCU.

–Speaking of Mr. Merlyn, smart casting to get John Barrowman in for this role. He’s turned out to be one of the more interesting players in the Arrowverse.

–We get some more stuff with Diggle and his brother’s widow, which, what happened to that arc anyway? After season two, it just vanished.

–Somehow the prison guard with a ski mask and a quiver just walks out of a building filled with cops? Okay, sure.

–“I couldn’t help but notice the lack of police cars when I got home.”

–“Oh, that boy’s long gone, man.”

–“I’m your girl. I mean, I’m not your girl. I wasn’t making a pass at you.”

“Damaged”

I think that’s Deathstroke, but I don’t know…or I do, but rather not spoil it.

The island flashback starts with Ollie getting some archery lessons from the mystery archer, and as he goes to grab some newly killed grub, is snatched up by some masked commandos. He is taken to a camp where he meets the man in charge, Edward Fyers, who asks Ollie about who he is and if he’s seen a particular man in a photograph he has. That man looks like a cleaned up version of the mystery archer to Ollie, so he claims he hasn’t seen the man. Dyers doesn’t believe him, so he brings in a friend to torture him: a friend with a half black, half yellow mask. That “friend” starts carving into Ollie, and somehow, Ollie holds out confessing anything. Then, the mystery archer shows up and frees Ollie, and takes him back to the cave. He offers to lead Fyers’ men away while Ollie hides and recovers. As the mystery archer leaves, the cave entrance collapses. Ollie’s got some time to himself now.

We go back to where we literally left out last episode as Ollie is being processed into police custody, and Quentin revealing he knows he’s he vigilante based on that security camera footage. Ollie feins innocence, that it’s circumstantial evidence, and that he’s not the vigilante. When Moira and Walter come to see him, he suggests an attorney for his defense: Laurel. Laurel is not really not envious of being asked to defend Ollie from her dad, but at the preliminary hearing, shows up anyway to be his attorney. Ollie is ordered into house arrest with an GPS ankle bracelet while he’s out on bail, so at least that’s good, because he wants to host a house party in the meantime. Well, you got the time, buddy. Also, Quentin is not okay with Laurel being Ollie’s attorney, because he blames him for killing his other daughter Sara.

At the Queen house, Ollie reveals to Diggle that he knew someone would find that camera footage, because he set it up that way. He knew his return to the city and the appearance of the Hood would seem suspicious, so he had a plan to destroy that suspicion that is still not finished yet. Meantime, Ollie wants Diggle to trail arms dealer Leo Mueller, who is planning to make a massive arms deal to gangs in the Glades. At a talk with the DA, who throws out a offer for Ollie to plead insanity that is promptly declined, Ollie offers himself to have a polygraph test done. Meantime, Moira has to deal with that well dressed mystery guy raising concerns that Ollie may be the vigilante destroying their associates.

Ollie takes the polygraph test, and surprisingly passes it with flying colors. Quentin is still not convinced Ollie’s innocent, but shows up at Ollie’s little prison themed house party anyway. At the party, Ollie reveals to Diggle that this party is all a setup to have witnesses to Ollie being there…while the Hood stops that arms deal! How does that work? Well, Diggle gets to wear the Hood, which, he tells Ollie to not play him like that next time. So while Diggle wears that snug green hood as he stops Mueller’s arms deal, Laurel visits Ollie, and they have a little heart to heart about their issues regarding his vanishing. They almost make out right there before she decides to leave. And just as Diggle calls in to say the arms deal is stopped, a hitman in a waiter’s disguise comes in to kill Ollie! Quentin arrives to gun down the assassin in time, tipped off by damage to Ollie’s ankle GPS.

“Y’ALL READY TO HELP ME CREATE AN AIRTIGHT ALIBI? AND PARTY?”

Quentin removes the GPS, and confirms the Hood was seen elsewhere, which clears Ollie of all charges against him. The next day, Laurel goes to see Ollie, and mentions something that has bothered her about the polygraph test. It’s that he lied about being in Iron Heights prison, because he was there once on a school field trip with her. She is unsure about what happened to Ollie, so he lies by telling part of the truth. He is bothered by what happened on the island, and that makes any relationship between them dicey at best. And as for that assassin? Moira finds out that Malcolm sent him because he was uncertain about Ollie’s innocence, and he goes, “my bad” to the whole thing. I’m sure Moira appreciates that.

For Walter this episode, he brings in his head of security, Josiah, to quietly investigate that warehouse with the Queen’s Gambit inside. But Josiah meets with a unfortunate car “accident”, and then he calls Moira to his office to tell her what he knows. She doesn’t tell him why she is hiding this from him, but warns him the people involved would hurt him if they find out what he’s up to. So much later, Walter leaves the Queen house to visit holdings out in Australia, indefinitely, if you get my drift.

Later, Diggle admits Ollie may not have prepared for all those people who care for him to be raising their concerns. But hey, Ollie has other things to do, like deal with Mueller, who is raging another deal. He was given a chance to get out of town, so Ollie decides to punch Mueller’s ticket out of life…with an arrow.

–Comic book connections: Obviously, the guy torturing Ollie is wearing Deathstroke’s mask, but as we’ll see later on in the season, it’s not Deathstroke doing the torturing.

–Ollie’s really cool with his ex-girlfriend touching his scarred up chest. I mean, she did ask, but he didn’t have to let her do that.

–We get to see Quentin has an alcohol problem, which turns out to be a big deal in the Lance family as the series goes on.

–“There can’t be anything between us.” You say that now, Laurel, but just wait.

–“I didn’t buy the shot glass with the panda because I was afraid you’d think I was ‘panda man’.”

–“Whoa, hold on, I’m not crazy.” “That we both agree on.”

That’s all for now, but come back next time as we rewatch “Legacies” and “Muse of Fire”…