ARROW Season 6×11, “We Fall” recap

27 Jan

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Team Arrow is technically branching out, although not by choice. Curtis, Dinah, and Rene decide to strike out on their own from the original flavor Team Arrow, and maybe not at the best time. We learn our big baddie Cayden James has an all-star line-up of baddies behind him on his plan to destroy Oliver for the death of his son (and who is that, exactly?). Now with Diggle able to go back to work with that chip in his arm, maybe Team Arrow has good odds to stop all of this before it gets worse?Mass Malfunction. It’s morning in Star City, and things are seemingly okay, up until the second it turns to 7 o’clock. Some random computer glitches start affecting random people fatally: a councilman in his car, the life support on the wing of the hospital, and an elevator full of people. At this point, Ollie is at home with Felicity and William having a nice breakfast, wishing William off as he’s going on a field trip out of the city. Ollie and Felicity get alerts about the deadly power outages, and with it some tragic news. One of the men in the elevator was their police chief, Frank Pike. Yep, poor guy survived a near death experience with Prometheus last season only to end up electrocuted to death. Rough break.

On Felicity’s advice, the Team decides to share the news with their former teammates, who have their own mystery to solve, like why Curtis’ T-spheres are transmitting a location on Vincent. Obviously Cayden James is behind this, but why? Well, he comes into the mayor’s office under an assumed name to answer all those questions for Ollie himself. This is the anniversary of his son’s death, and he wants to hurt Ollie where it stings…through the city, and with 10 million dollars Ollie must deposit to a secret account every day to stop all this madness. But who is James’ son, anyway?

RIP Frank Pike. You died as you lived, being a supporting player who had no major arc. You will be missed?

Well, we get a few answers to that thanks to Felicity and some sleuthing: James’ son was killed by an arrow…right around the time Ollie was somewhere else, recruiting Dinah in Hub City. So who framed Ollie for this murder? Lots of questions…

Traffic Delays. New Team Arrow head to where Vincent is located, and find him there waiting to talk with Curtis, but not to attack him. He tells him he’s been working undercover to take down James’ organization from the inside, and offers intel that James’ next electronic attack with be on the subway. Curtis doesn’t quite believe this, so he secretly asks Felicity to check it out, and it turns out Vincent is correct. The newbies head down to the subway and manage to stop the train set to malfunction by James.

On Ollie’s end, he finds himself having to set up safe zones with no digital systems for people to stay in while this crisis is happening. Then comes news where the next cyber attack is: the freeway tunnel where William’s school bus is passing through! Ollie and Diggle (with a slightly new leather suit) arrive and help get commuters out of the tunnel, and during this, Ollie saves William who is smart enough to realize his dad is still the Green Arrow. Ruh-roh.

Is the subway covered for canary cry damage?

Workplace Issues. William gets taken back to Arrow HQ to stay safe for now, but it’s clear Ollie is really going to have to mend a fence or two after this mess simmers down. Things aren’t better for New Team Arrow, as Curtis reveals to his teammates where he got this info on the subway from. Dinah is pissed, probably because Vince never bothered in all this time to tell her what he was doing, more than the possibility this might be a ruse on Vince’s part. Awkward times all around.

Ollie finally decides to publicly out Cayden James as the architect of this whole attack, and tells citizens where they can go for “safe zones”. Of course, our villain seems to be expecting this, and orders a go-ahead to proceed to the next phase.

A Sit Down Or Two. New Team Arrow finally chat about what to do about Vince, whether to trust him or not. Turns out Vince uses the T-Sphere that Curtis has to tell him about a planned attack on one of the safe zones. At this point, Ollie is trying to figure out how to talk to William about lying to him about giving up being the Green Arrow, when his former teammates call him up that they know where James is going to strike next. Are we getting a team-up of teams?

No Safe Zone. At the safe zone, Vince is there with that random henchman James has around (he’s listed as “Boots” on IMDb, so okay, I guess that’s his name) and a lot of armed goons. But both Team Arrows arrive to take down all these bad guys, and while this happens, Felicity tells William about her experiences with Ollie. It’s kind of sweet. Oh, and Vince murders this Boots guy, so I guess Dinah has forgiven and forgotten, or whatever.

Oliver Queen, you have failed at foam arrows!

City Ransom. While it looks like Dinah will entertain seeing Vince again (probably a big mistake), Ollie has a family meeting with Felicity and William to talk about his being the Green Arrow again. But William seems to be now okay with his dad going back into the green hood again, so that’s handled. But what about that pesky ransom? Well, no progress is made of finding who is responsible for framing Ollie as the killer of James’ son, so he’s left with no choice but to pay the 10 million a day ransom! How many more days will Ollie have to do this? And where the hell is the FBI in all of this? I mean, a major U.S. city has been taken hostage at least warrants military action, I would think.

–Comic book connections: The Outsiders is a reference in this case not to the classic S.E. Hinton novel as Dinah suggests, but to the superteam put together by Batman for more urban threats.

–“Ben Gale”? Subtle Lost reference.

–Thea’s still around, and at least being helpful in organizing things at the mayor’s office.

–Dinah using her canary cry to stop that train was kinda unexpected.

–Turns out Ollie is no expert in foam arrows. He needs to work on that.

–Seriously, we need to get a new Team name for the newbies. They aren’t part of Team Arrow, unless they want to franchise. Also, they aren’t revealing their source in James’ camp? Guilty of doing the same thing as original Team Arrow, are we?

–“Yeah. Badass.”

–“You think the ‘T’ on my face stands for ‘gullible’? You know what I mean.”

–“Because your balls never malfunction?”

That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “All For Nothing”…