ARROW Season 1 rewatch, Ep. 14, “The Odyssey” / Ep. 15, “Dodger”

1 Aug

Welcome back to the rewatch, Arrowheads! Last time: Thanks to Felicity revealing to Ollie what she knows about Walter’s investigation prior to his vanishing, we now have a new suspect in that vanishing for the Arrow Duo: Ollie’s mom, Moira! Ollie seems reluctant to believe all this, even after her suspicious behavior is apparent to him and to Diggle, so Ollie pays a visit to her mom as The Hood! Has Moira failed this city?

“Oliver, I seem to have left my sword somewhere. Help me look for it.”

“The Odyssey”

In our flashback this time, we get quite an extended one with Ollie on Lian Yu. With little time to capture Fyers’ airfield and hitch a ride home on the supply plane that arrives every few months, new buddy Slade Wilson has to whip Ollie into fighting shape quick to help in this two man operation. Ollie’s task during this operation is to take out the hangar tower control person, and by take out, meaning kill him up close and personal. They spend the day before hiking to the airfield, and bond as well as a violent assassin and a rich boy tend to. When they reach the airfield, Ollie makes his way to the control tower and finds killing the man on the tower a lot more difficult than planned. While Slade handles the guards around the airfield, Ollie tries to make a call to Laurel back home, but even he can’t finish it

With confirmation that the supply plane is arriving in a few hours (through a code based on “The Odyssey”), Slade tells Ollie that he’ll order an air strike on Fyers’ base after they grab the plane. But Ollie decides he can’t leave Yao Fei to die in the bombing, so he decides to grab Fei from Fyers’ camp before the supply plane arrives. Slade won’t be accompanying him, though, so Ollie arrives on his own to the camp to find Yao Fei unwilling to leave, because of someone that Fyers has. Well, Ollie gets caught and gets lead out for a execution in front of the whole camp. Well surprise, Slade shows up to disrupt everything and get some revenge on his buddy Billy. And boy, does Slade ever by murdering his former partner in mask wearing murder.

So Slade saved Ollie, but the bad news is they missed the supply plane, so they are stuck on the island for now. Also, Slade has taken a bullet, so that may be an issue with few medical supplies around. We learn at the end that Fyers is there on Lian Yu for some reason yet to be revealed. And we finally learn why Yao Fei was so hesitant to leave the island: because Fyers had Yao’s daughter, Shado, as a prisoner!

In the present, we are back where we ended last episode, as Ollie as the Hood confronts Moira. Unfortunately for Ollie, he drops his guard around his mom just long enough for her to shoot him! He escapes, only to end up in the back of Felicity’s car, wounded by a gunshot. So after adjusting to the shock of seeing Ollie in his Hood guise, she follows his insistence on heading back to his lair, and Diggle immediately starts treating him. After a few scares stabilizing him, he comes to and finds Felicity willing to help out our vigilante duo, if only just to help find Walter. And Ollie declares his mom off-limits until they can figure out what is going on with this Undertaking stuff.

“So, I guess you want to know if we have a health insurance plan for this operation. Short answer: NO.”

–Comic book connections: Billy Wintergreen was Slade Wilson’s partner at one point in the DCU, but never betrayed his friend. That didn’t stop Slade from killing him, though.

–This is the first time we learn there are mines on Lian Yu. Not the last time someone discovers an explosive under their foot on this island.

–We get some info on Slade’s son, Joe, who would be the basis of a plotline with Ollie and Slade in season six. If only Slade knew then how bad that was gonna go.

–How nice of Felicity to wipe out the blood sample that Ollie left behind. Of course, now Quentin seems a little suspicious of Ollie since he vanished for most of the night.

–“I’m stuck on a island, and my best friend is someone named Wilson.”

–“I may be blond, but I’m not that blond.”

–“I know Girl Scouts with more fight in them.”

–“Something tells me blood stains are not covered on my lease.”

“I left my Hood at the cleaners. Blood, you know.”

“Dodger”

In this episode’s flashbacks, Ollie has to help Slade dig that bullet out of his arm he took at Fyers’ camp last episode. Also, Slade’s wound is getting infected, so Ollie decides to head back to Yao Fei’s cave to find some of those healing herbs. When he arrives, he finds someone tied up and beaten, claiming he was a survivor of a boat wreck several days ago who escaped Fyers’ camp. As much as Ollie would like to help, he doesn’t trust this mystery person enough to cut them loose, so he leaves the man there. Later on, Slade is recovering thanks to those herbs, and Ollie mentions nothing of his random encounter.

In the present, Felicity is having some ambivalence to Ollie’s whole “killing people on the list” thing, so Ollie offers up a job not on the list. A jewel thief known as The Dodger is in town, and his M.O. is making others steal jewels by strapping an explosive collar to them. So Ollie has to get close to his old party buddy, the primary on the Dodger investigation, McKenna Hall. He manages to get even a dinner date with her, where he has a hard time talking about those five years he was missing. At least it fares better than Diggle’s date with Carly, where they can’t help but have his brother and her ex-husband be a stickler in their chat. But, the night does offer up a chance to nab Dodger when both The Hood and McKenna find out our baddie is about to fence his recent stolen property.

That meeting between Dodger and a fence for stolen goods ends with the jewelry recovered and Dodger escaping. But good thing Ollie is a rich boy, because he happens to have some jewelry in the family that could catch Dodger’s eye and lure him out. So there’s a nice dinner gala Ollie, Diggle, and Felicity go to in their Sunday best, and their trap gets railroaded when Dodger spots the out of her depth Felicity, figures out it’s a trap, and puts one of those collar bombs on her neck. While Diggle tries to deactivate the bomb, Ollie pursues Dodger, and takes down the deadly jewel thief while saving Felicity from a gruesome demise. After that, it seems like both Ollie and Diggle’s romantic interests improve, so it’s a win all around.

Meantime in other Queen family news, Thea has a run-in with some purse snatcher in The Glades (the poor side of Starling City) by the name of Roy Harper, and I’m sure that will not amount to much going further. As for Moira, she arranges for a secret meeting with none other than China White, and wants a job performed for her by China and the Triad: kill Malcolm Merlyn!

“S’up.”

–Comic book connections: Roy Harper is introduced here, and he would become a partner for the Green Arrow and a hero in his own right.

–It’s just odd to see Gaius Baltar and Tori from Battlestar Galactica having a relatively normal chat, especially after the last season of that show. “Awkward” is the word.

–Thea shows actual skill tracking down Roy. Maybe she has a future beyond being a party girl.

–This is the first time Felicity gets to watch shirtless Ollie exercise. In case you wanted to know that.

–Ollie’s answer to how he gets results: “I find the person. Then I put the fear of God into them until they talk. But we can try it your way.”

–“You really don’t know how rich his family is, do you?”

–“I’m not Robin Hood.”

That’s it for now, but come back next time as we continue the rewatch with “Dead to Rights” and “The Huntress Returns”…