ARROW Season 1 rewatch, Ep. 20, “Home Invasion” / Ep. 21, “The Undertaking”

17 Sep

Welcome back to the rewatch, Arrowheads! When last we left everyone, Ollie lost his business partner, best friend Tommy, to him working with his dad and Ollie’s unknown nemesis, Malcolm Merlyn! And now Ollie has agreed to help Diggle take out his arch nemesis, Deadshot, which can only work out great as long as there’s no external conflict that comes between it, and that doesn’t happen on Arrow, right? And of course, our Team Arrow is still trying to figure out the whole Undertaking scheme, but know now it’s going to happen in Star City. So, let’s just jump in…

The audition to be another doomed girlfriend of Oliver Queen seems to be going well.

“Home Invasion”

Our flashbacks take us back to the island as Shado starts training Ollie to use the bow, and it goes, kind of okay for a first day for archery. Also, things get a little steamy between teacher and pupil, but they head back to the wrecked plane camp. After meeting up with Slade, Yao Fei shows up, and he brought friends…mainly Fyers and his mercenaries! Looks like our heroes won’t need to go to face Fyers after all, because he just came to them!

Our present day story takes us to Laurel prepping a married couple to testify against a crooked investor, Edward Rasmus. Before they can, a hitman arrives and kills the two at their home, but unbeknownst to said killer, doesn’t realize they had a son, Taylor, who was a witness to the death of his parents. Laurel agrees to watch after Taylor, which likely puts her in the line of fire once Rasmus realizes someone connects him to the murder of Taylor’s parents. Ollie is ready to help Laurel protect the orphaned boy and Laurel from any more murder attempts by Rasmus.

The problem is the timing of all this Rasmus stuff is pretty bad, since Diggle has discovered Deadshot is in town for a hit, and is calling in Ollie’s promise to help take down Deadshot. After one attack on Laurel and Taylor is thwarted by The Hood, Ollie is put into a bad situation: help Diggle’s sting operation to catch Deadshot or stop the fleeing from the country Rasmus. He chooses the latter, and the former sting operation goes bad, with several ARGUS agents dead and Diggle being spared by the assassin who killed Diggle’s brother. Later, Diggle accuses Ollie of having blinders on whenever Laurel needs help, and maybe he does. On the other hand, he did catch the guy who hired that hitman to kill Taylor.

Funny thing, though: the hitman who killed Taylor’s parents visits his employer in police holding, assuring him the boy will be dead, just before quietly killing Rasmus. Ollie has put up Laurel, Taylor, and Tommy up at his mansion where he thinks it’ll be safe. Well he’s wrong again, as the hitman gets inside the mansion, looking for the boy. Ollie fights the hitman and manages to kill him, and conveniently pinning the killing on the last efforts of one of the dead security men in the mansion. The kid is safe, but things don’t work out so well for Laurel, who after realizing Ollie might still have feelings for her, decides to stop living with her. Add to that, Diggle is so upset about Ollie’s decision, he decides to quit the team! I’m sure it won’t be permanent.

“Mr. Queen, I’m here to follow up on your SHIELD application…”

–Comic book connections: Our hitman is played by J. August Richards, who has a connection to a completely different comic book universe, playing Deathlok in a number of episodes of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.

–Another plotline is Roy’s attempt to track down The Hood getting him a Scared Straight routine from Quentin. All it does is get Roy a new partner in this quest in Thea. That happened.

–In retrospect, Deadshot’s claim that he murdered Andy Diggle seems odd considering the retcon that happens in the fourth season.

–At least this time some killer barged into Laurel’s apartment, she bothered to have a shotgun for such an occasion.

–Felicity dyes her hair blonde. That’s a piece of info we get more on as the series progresses.

–“I keep your secret!”

–“I spend most of my nights at your daughter’s, anyway. There was probably a better time to tell you that.” “Probably not.”

“Seriously, people, he flies around time in a phone booth! Its crazy!”

“The Undertaking”

Our flashbacks this time take us not to Lian Yu, but back to Starling City five years ago, as Malcolm Merlyn pitches to his friends, including Robert Queen, a rather crazy idea: “Instead of rebuilding The Glades, how about we just destroy it, and hey, we got a project that’s a few years from being finished that can do just that, so how’s that sound?” Robert is not okay with wholesale murder that’s implied in Malcolm’s plan, and lets Moira in on what is happening. He even attempts to subterfuge the plan by buying out enough Glades property to make the plan worthless. Of course, Malcolm figures that out, and obviously arranges the sabotage of the Queen’s Gambit when Robert takes it out to sea with Ollie and Sara Lance.

Back to the present, Ollie is bringing back a laptop from a criminal to his lair for Felicity to hack into, and she can’t help but ask about why he hasn’t tried patching things up with Diggle. Ollie sees no reason to right now, and Felicity later tries to reach out to Diggle, with little success. But the laptop reveals something big: a payment made to kidnap Walter Steele! Our heroes think if they find the paid off kidnapper, they can find out what happened to Walter. So Ollie and Felicity try to sneak into the underground casino owned by the kidnapper to find out, but quiet turns to loud as Ollie has to “Hood up” to get answers. The kidnapper claims Walter is dead, but is he?

Ollie goes to his mom and tells her he learned from an old Army buddy of Diggle’s that Walter’s dead body was found. This rattles Moira enough that she goes to confront Malcolm about this, since she was assured Walter was only imprisoned, not dead. Malcolm proves Walter is very much alive via a video feed to Walter’s holding cell. The funny thing is that Ollie hasn’t talked to Diggle at all. He lied, and eavesdropped on that whole conversation to discover not only that Diggle was right about Moira, but were able to track where Walter is being held. Ollie breaks into the compound where Walter is held, and breaks him out. Walter recovers at the hospital, and doesn’t mention what he knows when the Queen clan visits him. Oh, and Laurel learns when she comes by to pay her respects to the Queen family that Ollie does still love her. Well that’s just awkward for Tommy.

All these twists and turns finally brings Ollie to Diggle’s door to apologize for doubting him about Moira (not so much about the Deadshot thing, because, hey he had othe criminals to handle at the time). And he also needs Diggle’s help, because Malcolm’s Undertaking is apparently in its final stages from being unleashed. And if that ominous truck coming into Starling City isn’t enough of a hint, I don’t know what is.

Did someone tell him about season three here?

–Comic book connections: Ted Kord is also known in the DCU as one of the men who were the Blue Beetle.

–I don’t think it’s ever really explained how Ollie parachutes into that compound. I can guess it’s because of a certain someone he knows at ARGUS we haven’t seen yet in this show, but nope, no clue.

–Am I the only one thinking Tommy’s pull out of this Laurel relationship is really abrupt? I know where this goes, but still seems like too many steps too fast to get there.

–Good thing we explain away why Sara isn’t there for that scene before the Queen’s Gambit casts off, even though she will be there later when it crashes, and she…well, I won’t say any more than that.

–“I’ve always known where you live.”

–“It feels really good having you inside me…and by ‘you’, I mean your voice. And by ‘me’, I mean my ear. I’m going to stop talking. Right now.”

That’s it for now, but come back for the end of this Arrow season one rewatch with “Darkness On The Edge Of Town” and “Sacrifice”…