Welcome back, Arrowheads! So unless you were busy the last two weeks, Team Arrow was involved in helping fight interdimensional Nazis and a mirror universe evil Ollie! Oh, and also, Ollie and Felicity had an impromptu wedding (you can read more on that here)! But let’s get back to pressing matters in Arrowland, like Ollie being indicted for being the Green Arrow, and how would the FBI know that? Just how, I wonder?
Public Reception. Friends and family of Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak are having a wedding dinner to celebrate their recent union (well, they sure couldn’t do that thanks to how impromptu it was!). Felicity’s mom and (still criminal?) dad show up, Curtis has a drunken celebratory speech saved by Rene’s earnest congratulations, and Quentin gives Ollie his dad’s watch, as he’s the closest thing to a son he has (I’m sure Sara would have liked to get that watch, you know). That’s all good and everyone dances, but Quentin gets a call that should be alarming to Ollie. He tells Ollie that he has information on the trial against him, being that the star witness in this case is possibly a current member of Team Arrow!
What, Roy couldn’t be a possibility? Ragman? The evil Evelyn Sharpe?
Bet they didn’t invite Barry and Iris to this reception. What jerks.
Private Deception. Ollie meets with Felicity and Diggle later at the HQ, and Ollie is not cool with this possible betrayal. To be sure, he suggests tracking the rest of the team to find out what they are up to. At that moment, they are off doing different things: Rene is helping a rather drunk and reflective Curtis home, and Dinah is trying to talk to not dead and probably still insane on crime Vincent. And Quentin is walking Thea back to her place…when Black Siren shows up, looking to take Quentin to Cayden James. Thea tries to stop this, but like most people who have just barely recovered from a six-month coma, she doesn’t do all that well. Evil Laurel takes Quentin and leaves a cell phone behind, clearly because it’s a message for later. At the HQ, Felicity has some bad news: thanks to some security footage, Ollie and Diggle know Dinah was meeting with Vigilante tonight. Then Thea arrives with news of what happened, and that cell phone she got rings, and Cayden James answers. He wants a “nano-aluminum amplifier”, which is a very rare device that is stored specifically at ARGUS. If he doesn’t get it by the next day, Quentin is dead.
ARGUS Job. Lyla is probably not going to be cool with taking that device to hand to a former escapes prisoner of theirs, so Ollie decides stealing it from ARGUS is a better idea. So the Team is called in…except for Dinah. This might be a problem later, let alone Diggle ripping off his wife’s organization! Suffice to say, the Team manages to get the device away without causing any alarm.
At the HQ, they realize why James would want this: it would amplify the explosive capability of that bomb he made a few episodes back to city ending strength. Well they can’t let that happen, Sony’s agreed that Curtis should sabotage the amplifier before the exchange is made. Dinah finally arrives, and is rather surprised to hear the Team went off without her, but more surprised that they know about her meeting with Vincent. This gets heated when it’s clear to her and Curtis that they specifically were being spied on, not any other Team members. And then Rene cuts through this growing argument by admitting the truth: he’s the one who’s testifying against Ollie! Oh man, really?
“Guess its time for me to get all paranoid and suspicious for the season. At least its happening early enough this time.”
Compromising Position. As we learn, Agent Watson seemed to have a case on Rene, and he agreed to turn witness against Ollie to stay with his daughter. I get it, but still not cool, man. Ollie tells him to leave (more like quietly growls at him to leave), and that leaves some unresolved stuff that the newer Team members talk about. Yeah, why don’t The OG Team Arrow trust them, beside the last few paragraphs of what I just described? Meantime, Evil Laurel has some alone time with Quentin, and we learn besides Quentin’s regret he had to shoot her on Lian Yu, we discover Evil Laurel’s version of dad died as a child in a car wreck. It’s a rather touching moment, but then again, she’s the one who will have to kill him if the exchange goes bad.
Ollie has a chat with Thea about what is going on regarding Rene, and it’s clear Ollie is reflecting on why Rene did that. He can understand it as a father himself, but still have trouble with the position it’s put him in. But right now, Quentin needs to be rescued, and maybe the whole Team needs to be there for that.
The Whole Team. The Team splits up, with Ollie heading to make the exchange, while Rene and Curtis hang back for backup. That just irritates Rene enough that he decides to go off orders and search for Quentin on his own. At the exchange, James takes the amplifier, and immediately tells Ollie he knows it was sabotaged! Never mind how he knew that yet, because Rene and Curtis find Quentin as Evil Laurel is being ordered by James to kill him. Evil Laurel drags Quentin away from the scene of the fights going on, and as it looks like she’s about to do that nasty sonic scream into his eardrum, she hesitates and tells him to run away. She flees, and everyone else meets up. But hoo boy, we got something to talk about when they all get back.
The Breaks. At the HQ afterwards, Ollie is clearly not cool with Rene going against orders like that, especially after what he just confessed to earlier. To Ollie, that means Rene can pack his bags because he’s gone from the Team. And also feeling a lack of trust going on here, Dinah decides to follow suit. Then things get continue getting more awkward when later, Curtis decides he needs to focus on Helix Dynamics and give up the Team too. That leaves our original Team Arrow left trying to figure out what to do, especially since James somehow knew that amplifier was sabotaged.
Turns out that answer was not (and still not) obvious to them, but should have been: but when Black Siren went into the HQ at the top of the season, she hid a surveillance camera in the place! James is watching the camera feed with Evil Laurel, and then we see they’re joined by Richard “Dragon” Diaz, Vincent, and freaking Anatoly! They have all conspired to fracture Team Arrow, and they plan to do more to them soon!
Guaranteed a group this evil will start trying to kill each other soon enough.
Is this the end of Team Arrow 2.0? Well, probably not, because we still got a lot of season to get through! But until January…
–Comic book connections: Oliver’s lawyer is named Jean Loring, a familiar name in the DCU for her connection to a certain “elongated man” in the DCU and a character on The Flash. If you’ve read Identity Crisis, you know that’s a connection that takes a truly dark turn.
–A fun reference to season three Thea when she declines trying to hook up with the wedding reception DJ. That didn’t work out so good with the last DJ she had a fling with.
–Of course, now what will happen with Dinah getting closer to Evil Vincent and Rene left wondering what to do now that he’s out of Team Arrow.
–Felicity gets to spend her honeymoon time in a trash can for that heist. Kind of serves her right for interrupting Barry and Iris’ wedding like that. That was a big no-no!
–“That was not because I was drunk. It was because I’m very clumsy.”
–“I am a man of my word. If I wasn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a point to vow to destroy this city, would there?”
–“I’m spending my honeymoon in a trash can, I will not wear your puke!”
That’s it for now, but come back in January for the recap of “Divided”…
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