ARROW Season 6×16, “The Thanatos Guild” recap

2 Apr

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Last time, our heroes finally pieced together that Ricardo Diaz is the Big Bad of the season, and that he has his hands in a lot of agencies in Star City, including the police. While that corruption is being investigated quietly, the Team had to save their old friend, Roy Harper, who was being tortured to be a witness in the federal case against Ollie. This was especially important for Thea, who had been feeling a bit reflective about her life so far. And even with Roy saved, there’s still the unknown threat of a resurrected League of Assassins out there, spying on Thea!

The Heiress. After a brief flashback to the end of season two where Thea took off with Malcolm Merlyn (you know, where her life really started to go bad), we go to some mountain lair where it looks like some remnants of the League of Assassins from Malcolm’s reign as leader are hanging out discussing some big thing regarding Thea. The leader of this bunch, Athena, notices someone familiar in the crowd of this meeting, and that person is Nyssa! It looks like Nyssa was not invited to this meeting of Malcolm’s disciples at all. She decides to end her little party crashing by escaping under the cover of setting off plastic explosives.

Later in Star City, the Arrow HQ is having a goodbye party for Thea (minus Curtis and Dinah, because screw them), as she’s about to leave town with Roy. There’s the usual goodbye and good luck stuff, along with Diggle asking Ollie about when he’s going to give up the hood again (and somehow the “you need my help on this Diaz matter” excuse seems to be thin at best). Afterwards, Roy and Thea are driving to the city limits when two of those creepy Assassin thugs take their car off the road. Nyssa arrives to kill them, and informs Thea they need to talk, because she’s wanted for some purpose related to Malcolm. Thea complains a bit about washing her hands of this League stuff, but apparently Athena and her buddies didn’t care about that memo.

About time they get some happiness together. Especially after season three. Shudder.

Map Quest. Nyssa, Thea, and Roy arrive back at the HQ, where Nyssa explains what is going on. The loyalists to Malcolm in the League formed a group called The Thanatos Guild, and they want two things: Thea and some kind of map Malcolm has stashed somewhere. Thea has no clue about what this map is, but Nyssa knows someone who does: another former League member, Tigressa. They meet her and she’s willing to give up the location of the map to Thea.

Thea and Roy suit up and join the Team and Nyssa as they go to an old safehouse Malcolm had, and find they are on the right track based on the multiple booby traps just lying around. Nyssa discovers a compartment in the floor, which contains a large cube safe of some sort. It doesn’t seem like those Thanatos clowns are in the vicinity, until you remember these are ninjas, and they just happen to show up, along with Tigressa’s freshly dead body.

Cube. Athena is there with her crew, demanding that Thea and the cube come with her, or the rest of the Team dies and yadda yadda yadda they all fight. Thea springs one of the traps, which happen to be a wall of spring loaded arrows to injure Athena and her cronies, and the Team escapes. When they get back to the HQ, they find there’s some numerical combination they need to enter to open this box. While Felicity figures that out (and deals with the other woman married to Oliver Queen), Nyssa suggests Thea can go while she handles what to do with the map and the Guild. But Thea doesn’t want to do that just yet, which I’m sure concerns Roy.

Meantime, Curtis and Dinah are trying to figure out which cops are on Diaz’s payroll. That leads them to investigate a dead drug dealer who was pushing Vertigo, and the peculiar behavior Dinah’s captain, Hill, during this investigation. It seems like Dinah has figured out Hill is dirty. Also, Curtis may have a date with a patrolman named Nick who may or may not be corrupt too, so that also happened this episode.

Just a woman hanging out with the other woman married your man. Perfectly normal thing on Arrow.

The Best Version. Thanks to some handy dandy knowledge of math, Felicity cracks the cube code and opens it to reveal…a blank sheet of paper? Clearly there’s some invisible ink or something on this thing, but how to reveal it is the question. Meantime, Thea and Roy talk about how torn she is about wanting to leave with him but still deal with this last piece of Malcolm’s legacy. This sound familiar to anyone, Ollie?

But the Guild decides to call out Thea by laying siege to the local gas plant, which I’m sure they’ll blow up if she doesn’t show up. Well, she’s going, and so is the rest of Team Arrow.

Spill Some Blood. The Team arrives at the gas plant, and split their resources up, with Roy going to disable a bomb by the main gas lines that was just armed. The Team fights the Guild, while Athena fights Thea, where Athena let’s Thea know she doesn’t really want Thea, just her blood. Thea’s not a match for Athena, so she pulls out the blank map and threatens to burn it to a crisp. This little trick gets Athena up close for Thea to stab her in the guts (remember, she’s still recovering from an arrow around that area just recently!). Athena vanishes and the Guild’s plan to blow the plant up fail with it, but Thea realizes she knows the solution to the blank map. She wipes some of her blood on it, and it reveals a map. But to what, exactly?

Well later at the HQ, we learn what this map is all about. Nyssa believes they are possible locations for Lazarus Pits, at least three of them that can be discerned. That can’t be a good thing for anyone. So at Thea’s place, Thea starts packing as Roy realizes she’s not leaving with him, but with Nyssa to destroy these Lazarus Pits. She thinks this may give her the sense of closure she needs to move on, and Roy agrees, which is why he wants to go with her. Awww.

Goodbye, Speedy. At the city limits, Ollie is there to wish Thea, Nyssa, and Roy off on their globetrotting adventure. Nyssa pretty much gives a dagger to Ollie that annuls their marriage or whatever. As for Thea, she offers one piece of advice: don’t leave Diggle hanging with him being the Green Arrow again. And after a nice callback to their talk in the first episode about “even when I was gone, you were always there in my thoughts”, the trio take off to be adventurers or whatever they do in the time they aren’t regularly on the show anymore.

See you around, Speedy.

“Ah, there goes my sister, off to fight a cadre of assassins with her boyfriend and my ex-wife. I’m so proud of her.”

–Comic book connections: Roy’s look in this is not too dissimilar from his recent appearance in the DCU where he’s still Arsenal.

–Curtis is basically surrogate dad to Rene’s daughter, which is weird when you think on it. I mean, Rene is only in the hospital, it’s not like he’s dead.

–Apparently Evil Laurel can cook very well.

–You can’t really get over someone calling you “sister-wife”, can you?

–“Sometimes I forget you’re not Felicity.”

–“I’m a little short on electricity arrows right now.”

–“Felicity, I know you were wondering. It’s from ‘Raiders’.”

–“I have to say, your new uniforms do not impress me.”

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