ARROW Season 1 rewatch, Ep. 8, “Vendetta” / Ep. 9, “Year’s End”

15 Sep

Welcome back to the rewatch, Arrowheads! When last we left Oliver, he found a kindred spirit in Helena Bertinelli, the daughter of a mob boss. She’s on her own personal mission of revenge against her father for the death of a loved one, and Ollie finds that really attractive in a woman. You can guess what happens next, but probably not, because what happens next is next…

“Vendetta”

Not many third dates for vigilantes end with archery lessons.

After that make out last episode, Ollie awakens to find Helena gone on a trip to try and assassinate the head of the Triad. She wants to throw both them and her father’s organization into conflict, with her weakening her dad’s group so that the Triad ends up on the winning side. Ollie stops her from pulling off the hit, and suggests another way to handle things. She declines, and you think Ollie would take that as a hint. Even after Diggle hears about what happened last night and tells Ollie that helping Helena is gonna go bad, he still wants to try.

How does Ollie want to help Helena? Well, teach her how to use a bow and arrow and let her into his big crusade. He even gives her a crossbow gun and a fancy vigilante outfit, and they bust up a drug deal for Bertinelli. Plus, there are no innocent victims, so things are good, right? Ollie and Helena arrive at the opening of a new restaurant, and finding Laurel and Tommy there waiting for a table, suggest doing a double date. Of course, some of that sexual tension still between Ollie and Laurel becomes horrifyingly clear to both of their prospective dates. While Tommy and Laurel patch that fuss up, Ollie’s relationship with Helena is less so. He can see he can’t stop her desire for revenge, and considering we see her straight up murder that Triad boss under the impression Bertinelli sent her, war is about to start.

That war starts as the Bertinelli house is later attacked by China White and the Triad. Ollie arrives to get Bertinelli to safety, only to have Helena arrive to finish her father off. Helena fights Ollie, and her father uses her crossbow gun on her. Bertinelli gets arrested while Ollie whisks Helena off to his lair to patch her up. She awakens later to find her father is likely going to prison for life, but doesn’t think it’s enough. She leaves, and threatens Ollie that if he goes after her, she may not keep his secret a secret. This seems like a stalemate, but Diggle sees progress in Ollie has opened himself up since the start of his crusade.

Look, Arrow, I get you’re trying to make Felicity Smoak a thing on this show, but…okay, its starting to work. Harumph.

Meantime in other stories, Walter gets some news from that tech girl Felicity Smoak about that Tempest thing being watched by some other unknown source, but he seems to immediately squash any further investigation into the matter. Well, Walter is kind of being coy, as he discovers that Tempest symbol on a box in Moira’s belongings. He calls back Felicity to look into a notebook he found in that box. She comes back later to show Walter what we know about those Tempest stamped books: the list of names in invisible ink.

–Comic book connections: The Huntress has been aligned with the family of heroes around Batman, but her lack of qualms regarding hurting criminals has made her team-ups tenuous and dicey at best.

–Diggle jokes Ollie should try out for the Olympics. Well he did kill it at American Ninja Warrior, so I guess that’ll do.

–Tommy was not all keen on asking Ollie for help by asking for a job at Ollie’s new nightclub. But he came around, eventually.

–“I hate mysteries. They bug me.”

–“It needs to be dark if we’re gonna do this. If I had more time to think on that sentence, it wouldn’t have sounded so dirty.”

“Year’s End”

“Imagine being stuck on this island for years, Mr. Queen. That would really suck.”

Our first flashback in a while takes us back to Ollie still stuck in that cave, but now it appears the mystery archer has managed to get the rockslide that sealed him in moved. Ollie is happy to see his savior, but not so much the mystery archer’s prisoner in tow: Byers! The mystery archer tells Ollie that Byers has a plane that can get them off the island, and they escort Byers to it. On the way, Byers suggest the island is a prison for criminals not desired to be held in the mainland and that Ollie’s new buddy is a major mass murderer. Byers is forced to call in for the plane, and then we see this was a setup by Byers to lure both our heroes in. Ollie is told to flee as our mystery archer gets taken prisoner by Byers and his half yellow mask wearing henchman.

Back in the present, Ollie learns from Diggle that it’s almost Christmas, and thinks back to his old family Christmas parties. He finds out from Thea that those parties stopped when him and his father went missing five years ago. So, Ollie suggests to the family that they should have a family Christmas party this year. Great idea, but The Hood won’t be getting a break, because one of Ollie’s previous victims from the list, Adam Hunt, is found dead with three arrows to the chest! Quentin realizes the black arrows in Hunt mean there’s a copycat archer vigilante on the loose.

Ollie needs help, so he sends a encrypted cell phone to Quentin, and asks him for one of the arrows to examine. Quentin refuses, but once the copycat dark archer kills another one on the list and the commissioner orders this to be pinned on the Hood to avoid citywide panic, he decides to take one of the black arrows to give to Ollie. Later, Ollie goes to Felicity to find out where the arrows come from (sure, Ollie, it’s because you are sooooo interested in archery…) and finds an address where the package of arrows was sent. When Ollie gets there, he finds the place is rigged to explode and just barely gets out in time.

Heeeeeeerrrrreeeeeeee’s Barrowman!

While this is going on, Walter is informed by Felicity that on the list they found that there is one connection to Queen Consolidated’s Applied Sciences division, Doug Miller. Walter asks Doug about how his job is going, and Malcolm gets wind of this, later telling Moira that he is going to intervene in this situation with “his associate”. At the Queen Christmas party, Walter finally tells Moira he can’t just walk away from this conspiracy she’s involved in, so she promises after the party to tell him everything. Tommy and Laurel come by the party too, and Ollie and Laurel talk about both of them having to move on. Ollie then runs into Thea, who is about to make out with her plus one at the party, and she points out how pointless this party is in trying to make things normal for the family again. He can’t dwell on that for very long, because a cryptic hostage video is sent out to the media from the dark archer, wanting the Hood to appear in an hour or else.

Ollie gets there in time and frees the hostages, then starts searching the building for the dark archer. Both archers are pretty skilled, but the dark archer gets the upper hand by putting two arrows into Ollie’s back. Ollie manages to wound the dark archer and escape the building just barely, calling for help from Diggle before he passes out. He comes to in the hospital, minus his costume, and Diggle tells him he was seriously hurt (which is passed off to the family as a motorcycle accident). Somehow, this did something that the party failed to do: bring the Queen family together…

…just in time for them to be broken up, as Walter is nabbed from work at the orders of Malcolm, but at Moira’s behest to be kept alive. And he’ll be kept prisoner until the “undertaking” is done months from now, which said “undertaking” apparently involves thousands of innocent people dead. Meantime, Ollie tells Diggle that the dark archer mentioned the list, which means he knows someone was behind the sinking of the Queen’s Gambit. At least Ollie will have time to think about it while recuperating in a hospital bed until the new year!

Oh, and the dark archer is revealed to be Malcolm Merlyn. Duh-doy.

–Comic book connections: O’Neil and Adams is a reference to writer Denny O’Neill and artist Neal Adams, who beside their connection to some great Batman stories, also worked on the groundbreaking Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic of the 70’s, dealing with topical issues like poverty, racism, and drug addiction.

–Tommy gives Laurel a present in a framed photo of the Lance family, father and both sisters. Sweet.

–Not sure how Ollie escaped a cop surrounded building, let alone how Diggle managed to get him out. I guess once the hostages escaped, the cops went home?

–“I think there should be a national holiday for the guy who invented French fries.”

–“How about ‘Green Arrow’?” “Lame.”

That’s it for now, but come back next time for the recaps of “Burned” and “Trust But Verify”…