ARROW Season 7×02, “The Longbow Hunters” Recap

23 Oct

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Last time we left Prisoner 4587: Oliver Queen, he had been trying to keep low and do his time in Slabside Prison. But leave it to an attack on him and Felicity by Ricardo Diaz to put him back into a more proactive position. As for the rest of Team Arrow, they are adjusting to life not crimefighting in masks, and discovering that there’s someone else wearing the hood of the Green Arrow in town! Well, I’ll save you some time and tell you we don’t get an answer to who it is this episode, but as to how our heroes will deal with the returning Diaz? Read on, then…

Out Of The Hole. Ollie spends a few days in solitary after beating up that goon Diaz hired, and finds himself unable to properly interrogate the guy, as he’s been moved to a different level of the prison. But Ollie figures correctly Diaz had a go-between the goon, and that would be Brick. He asks for what he knows about Diaz, but Brick is not accommodating. Or maybe he would be more so if, say, Ollie takes a particular guard (mainly the one giving Ollie grief) out of the prison. Note Brick hasn’t said how Ollie should do that…yet.

Back in Star City, Felicity and the former members of Team Arrow chat about finding Diaz, and she thinks tracing the technology he’s been using might be the key. Not necessarily unrelated, a trio of bad guys (one who uses darts, one who has a shield, and another who has a sound dampening field) steal something from a remote ARGUS facility. What they steal is a advanced battery, which we learn later can be used to power a deadly power beam. Who stole it was the Longbow Hunters. Remember Diaz mentioned them last season? Yeah.

“Oh crap.”

Going To The Same Place. Dinah has to visit Evil Laurel (who yes, STILL is the D.A.), and admonish her about ditching her protective security now that Diaz has popped up again. Of course, Dinah is more concerned about having another District Attorney murdered than say the person who murdered her boyfriend get killed, so she gets to hang around Evil Laurel for now. Swell. At ARGUS, Felicity really wants to help out Diggle on tracing that battery, but he suspects (rather wisely) that Felicity might use that as an excuse to get Diaz more than what he has been tasked to do. So of course she goes over his back and enlists Curtis and Rene to help her check out a warehouse where the Longbow Hunters might be. Turns out they are not there, and even worse, Diggle and ARGUS guys show up minutes later.

Late on at ARGUS headquarters, Felicity and Diggle are both upset at each other, the former for seemingly not being more proactive in capturing Diaz and the latter because she lost a lead on where that battery is (and that’s when we learn it can power a destructive weapon). She sorta resents Diggle for not taking on the Green Arrow mantle, but as he says, he saw what that did to Ollie’s immediate family, and that makes perfect sense. But he’s willing to let her help behind the keyboard after Curtis gets a lead where that weapon is: being transported on an ARGUS train. Time to go train-hopping!

WWGAD? Ollie manages to sneak in some computer time with his new buddy Stanley (or “cause a mini-riot to sneak away and hack the employee records of the prison”, whichever), and tries to find something to use against that guard, Yorke. He’s relatively clean, so Ollie has to politely mention later to Yorke that he needs to transfer out now, which goes nowhere. Brick is not satisfied with the progress so far, so he has Bronze Tiger (welcome back from solitary!) give Ollie a shiv and says to use this to get it done or else.

So how can Ollie get around possibly murdering a guard, even if it’s a jerk like Yorke? Well, he confronts Yorke in front of the prison valley as the prisoners are eating, and starts intimidating the guy. He doesn’t need to push that many buttons, but during this, Ollie gets that shiv near Yorke’s arm…and then makes it look like Yorke has shivved Ollie in the gut! That immediately gets Yorke taken out of rotation on the block, and Ollie is going to probably have to rest for a while after that little stunt. Still, it works.

When the best part of your day involves stabbing yourself in the gut.

The Right Way. Dinah follows Evil Laurel as she ditches her security detail again, and finds out Evil Laurel is scouting out an old Diaz hideout she knew about. But Evil Laurel is doing all this because she wants to kill Diaz for what she did to Quentin (yes, he’s still dead), and would rather not involve anyone else in it. Dinah tags along anyway, and while they don’t find Diaz, they do find one of the Longbow Hunters, Silencer (the one with the cool noise dampening field), and end up fighting her. That field protects Silencer from any canary cry, but when both Dinah and Evil Laurel use their canary cries together, it proves to be effective enough to send Silencer running.

On that ARGUS train, Diggle and his team discover the other two Longbow Hunters on board, and then realize that Diaz is also on board getting the weapon. Diggle gets into a fistfight with Diaz, and manages to retrieve that battery. He then orders Felicity to cut off the back train cars so Diaz and the Longbow Hunters can’t follow him, but she pauses, wanting Diggle to finish off Diaz instead. Curtis breaks in and does what Diggle asks, and he escapes with the battery. Afterwards, Felicity tells Diggle that he made the right call and she couldn’t follow it, which convinced her she can’t stay and ask ARGUS for help in taking down Diaz. Well then who can she ask?

Getting Help. The next day, Laurel goes to Dinah’s office to apologize for breaking her detail and that she won’t do it again. Also, she apologizes for killing Vince, for what that’s worth. Felicity is also meeting someone as well to ask them for help: FBI agent Samanda Watson! I’m sure that team-up will go swimmingly.

Where The Arrow Points. In our flashforward, William is chatting with Roy, mentioning how Ollie and Felicity have vanished, and why he’s on Lian Yu. That arrowhead Felicity gave William has a GPS transmitter inside that went off weeks ago, and the location it pointed to was the island. Roy’s not interested in getting involved in Green Arrow-related stuff, but the next day, helps William find the exact location of that signal. It happens to be a fresh grave beside the one for Robert Queen, but instead of digging up a skeleton, they find a casket full of Ollie’s things, like his bow and quiver. Roy looks at the bow and finds a small letter attached, but before we or William can see what it says, Roy burns it. Roy then tells William that they both need to go back…to Star City!

“So, um, Uncle Roy, what do you eat around here?”

–Comic book connections: The Longbow Hunters are based on characters made for a classic Green Arrow arc in the 1980’s, although that group doesn’t have Silencer in it (we’ll talk about her here much later).

–That noise dampening field effect Silencer has is pretty awesome, although I know that some people watching the episode were thrown off at first, as it’s reveal is a surprise.

–We find out William had a boyfriend sometime between now and the flashforward, and that he has quite a bit of cash to throw around. Whether it’s inherited or made is another question.

–No mention of Thea by older Roy, which is odd only since the last time we saw him they both were leaving for adventures together. I’m just gonna assume things didn’t go so hot.

–No sign of the Faux Green Arrow this episode, but Rene does mention him as a possible ally. Maybe not offer up that membership card yet, man.

–Taken out of context quote: “Grab your balls, Curtis.”

–“Don’t judge me. ARGUS is my designated driver tonight.”

That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Crossing Lines”…