ARROW Season 6×01, “Fallout” recap

14 Oct

AND welcome back, Arrowheads! Last season saw a lot of drama happen, as Oliver Queen became the new mayor of Star City. I mean, there was drama regarding budget plans, gun control, how to revitalize the city, and…what else? Oh yeah, a maniac called Prometheus, hiding in Ollie’s own midst as District Attorney Adrian Chase, was waging a physical and psychological vendetta against Ollie and Team Arrow. This lead to a big showdown between Team Arrow and Prometheus on the island of Lian Yu, and Ollie saving his son. Of course, this doesn’t save the Team, his friends, and his baby momma as Prometheus kills himself, setting off hundreds of bombs on the island’s surface! So who survived this mess? Read on…

Five Months Later. Well, we start five months later after the big blast on Lian Yu, and we’re in Star City as some goons are being taken down by the Green Arrow, Oliver Queen himself! We find out in short order that Diggle is alive, as are Curtis, Felicity, and Rene (sporting some new duds). They are after a thug named Faust, who threatened the city with a deadly missile attack. Faust is taken into custody, and the Team calls it a night, and really don’t talk too much about what happened on Lian Yu.

Ollie goes home to his apartment to find his old family maid there from season one, Raisa, as she says William has been having trouble sleeping. Ollie visits his son and he finds him a bit distant (and for good reason as we find out). At the precinct house, new Lieutenant Dinah is interrogating Faust about who supplied him with his hired hands, and getting nowhere except for a request for a soda. Dinah gets informed Quentin is late for a meeting regarding an upcoming graduation ceremony for new police trainees. She seems to know where he is, and finds him at a local bar, contemplating taking a few drinks. They talk, and it’s obvious something happened on Lian Yu that both of them don’t want to discuss. What might that be?

Bringing Down The Precinct House. At the precinct house, Faust gets his soda, and then slams his face into a table, knocking a tooth loose…that has some kind of explosive that’s triggered by the soda! He uses it to escape, just as everyone’s favorite parallel universe Laurel Lance, Black Siren, strolls in with some mercenaries and lay waste to the place. She leaves with Faust, but not before blowing up the inside of the place. Ollie and Team Arrow hear about the massacre there and discover through video footage they stole away before it could end up in the public domain, it’s Black Siren, who Quentin and Dinah are sure was killed on the island. What did happen on the island?

She’s back, she’s bad, and she’s blowing up long-standing sets!

Now we should start talking about what happened five months earlier. Before the explosion, Slade runs off to safety on his own, while Samantha runs off to find her son, with Thea following her. As the Team finds and heads for shelter, the bombs start going off, with Diggle coming really close to getting killed by the blasts. We’ll come back to him, and this thread.

In Disrepair. The Team gets a bead on Black Siren and her crew, then run off to confront her at a freeway overpass. During the fight, Diggle tries to save Rene from getting shot, fires at the thug threatening his teammate, and seems to miss. Before we can ask about why Diggle’s gun hand is trembling, Rene gets shot and thrown off the overpass, with Ollie pulling off some acrobatics to save him. Well, Rene is alive, but he’s gonna be in the hospital for awhile.

So, in our flashback to that day on the island, it’s nighttime as Ollie leaves William on the shore of Lian Yu to search for survivors. He finds Slade there, who doubled back to look for anyone. He points Ollie to Thea, who seems at best, unconscious, and at worst, dead from getting thrown violently by the bomb blasts. Ollie can’t grieve for long before Slade says he also found Samantha.

The Bad Man. In the present, Diggle and Dinah investigate a garage where Black Siren had seemed to make a temporary meeting place out of. Dinah asks Diggle about what happened earlier that night, but he deflects that by asking what exactly happened on the island where she thought Black Siren was dead. They discover some floor plans for city hall, marked with specific places to attack. Somehow Black Siren found out was that Ollie moved the police academy graduation ceremony to there, and that seems to be the target. Ollie heads home to prepare for the ceremony, when he hears William freak out in his room. He learns William had a nightmare, but it’s a recurring one about “the bad man”. Unfortunately, that “bad man” in his dreams looks like Ollie.

Which brings us to what happened that night on Lian Yu when Ollie found Samantha, not looking too good. He assures her their son is safe, and she asks Ollie to take care of him, just before she dies. This is getting to be a nasty day overall for everyone, except maybe Felicity, because she seems totally okay from this mess.

Well, this is gonna be a long story to explain to his son. Like, at least five months or so.

Family Revenge. Ollie talks to the rest of the Team and Quentin about the possible attack on city hall, and it’s there Quentin finally tells them all why he asked Dinah to lie about Black Siren. On the island, him and Dinah went looking for her in that temple they left her in, and they found her all right. She holds a knife to Dinah’s throat, and Quentin seems to shoot her dead. They both lied because of the mental trauma Quentin had in shooting his daughter, parallel universe version or no. But somehow she survived, and Quentin thinks she has been hitting all these places he would frequent because she wants revenge against him. That of course might be an advantage in Quentin’s mind, because he can be bait for the Team to catch her.

At the graduation ceremony, the Team minus Diggle is at city hall patrolling the inside. Ollie finishes with his big speech for the graduates, and retires to his office with Quentin, who is rattled by all of this faux Laurel stuff. Funny thing though: nothing suspicious is happening to suggest she’s there. Cut to the Arrow HQ, as Diggle gets surprised by Black Siren and her crew! The Team got tricked!

All Through The Bunker. Diggle escapes into the bunker as Black Siren sends her goons after him. That weird tremble in his hand doesn’t do him any favors because he misses his targets, but he’s saved by the Team arriving in the nick of time. They disable some explosives Black Siren has set up in the HQ, as she uses this as a diversion to escape. As she’s leaving, she runs into Quentin holding a gun on her. But he somehow can’t bring himself to shoot her again, and she teases him by suggesting she would have done the same thing he did on Lian Yu as she escapes. This guy can’t catch a break.

Speaking of guys who can’t catch a break, we find out why Diggle has the tremble in his hand: he got hit with some shrapnel from those bombs on the island, and they may have affected his nerves.

Man, the only other time Diggle is that horrified is when his order at Big Belly Burger is wrong.

Balancing Act. Ollie visits Rene at the hospital, and gives him some good news in setting up another custody hearing to get his daughter back, on account the last one got interrupted on account of Prometheus. Then Ollie goes to another room to check up on…Thea, who is not dead after all, but has been in a coma all these months. Another visitor enters- Slade, and he has come to tell Ollie the info on Slade’s son has panned out. He’s going to meet him, but both men talk about the unknowns with having a son, and Slade tells him there is always a conflict there that eventually needs to be reconciled: being who people need them to be, and who their sons need them to be. Also, Curtis has found out Black Siren has taken something from their HQ inventory: an experimental version of one of his T-spheres. But why? It may have something to do with the mystery man who arrived on Lian Yu and recovered Black Siren.

At Ollie’s home, he sits down and talks to his son. He tells him no matter what he may think about his newly discovered father, that Ollie will always love him and never abandon him. What a nice note to end the episode on…until Felicity calls from her loft, telling him to turn on the news. The big story tonight: a photo of Ollie clearly seen in the Green Arrow getup!

Hoo boy. Welcome back, Arrow.

—Comic book connections: Oliver Queen has had a son before, in a slightly older son named Connor Hawke, who for a time, ended up being Green Arrow while dad was…well, dead. Long story how he came back.

—I just love the cattiness with both versions of Black Canary in those fights. I have a feeling that may be something to look forward to regularly throughout the season.

—No signs of any other of the new baddies that are supposed to be in this season, if you don’t count that shadowy character who recovers Black Siren.

—Also, we still have a few people unaccounted for in that island explosion. You got the al Ghul sisters, Team Arrow traitor Evelyn, and possibly Malcolm Merlyn if you hold onto hope he’s still alive from that land mine blast.

—What’s with Rene’s new getup? I mean, it actually helps him survive the fall he takes earlier in the episode, but, what is with it?

—Look, I’m glad that Thea’s not dead (especially since that fake out of her being gone would have been a messed up way to end that character if it was real), but a coma? Well, I guess that’s a solution.

—“God, you are such a bitch.” “Takes one to know one, sweetheart.”

—“Just as you ordered: a triple stack with a side of heart disease.”

—“By ‘killing the canines’, I didn’t mean kill the dogs, but…”

—“When are you gonna stop taking on everyone else’s sins, huh?” “No time soon.”

That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Tribute”…