ARROW Season 7×04, “Level Two” recap

8 Nov

Welcome back, Arrowheads! When last we left our heroes, Oliver Queen was still in prison, but interested in the meeting Diaz’s connection inside, the mysterious “The Demon”. But “The Demon” is in a far more secure level for violent inmates, so Ollie arranges a trip there by wounding a few crooked guards. Meantime, as we still have that mystery Green Arrow running around, Felicity has a lead on Diaz shackled up, in one of his hired help, The Silencer. And in our flashforwards, Older Roy and Older William discover that they have to solve the mystery Felicity has left for them by going back home to Star City!

Evaluation. We come in on Ollie in a cell, being bombarded with droning sounds and flashing lights, which turn off as we meet a Dr. Parker, who is there to evaluate Ollie before he’s thrown in with the rest of the populace in Level Two. Ollie says he has no problems to diagnose, but Dr. Parker disagrees, making clear that his behavior has a root that needs to be addressed. With Ollie being resilient to this talk, especially after the doctor brings up what Ollie’s incarceration is doing to his family, he gets put back in that weird flashing lights and droning sounds routine again. What kind of prison is this, anyway?

Back in Star City, Felicity is chatting with Rene about how to get the Silencer to tell them about where Diaz is. Rene is not good with where this is going when Felicity suggests torturing their chained up guest to get that information. So when Rene warns her away from something like that, she goes to someone she thinks will have less problems with all that morality about torturing people: Evil Laurel. While Evil Laurel is liking the more assertive Felicity, you can tell something about this is not going to go the way they think.

“Good evening, Clarice. Sorry, couldn’t resist that.”

Firestarter. At a community meeting in The Glades, Rene shows up with Dinah to reassure the public that the police can handle things, despite the Faux Green Arrow’s appearance. It just so happens someone sets a firebomb off at that community center where the meeting is, trapping Zoe inside. But our Faux Green Arrow rescues her and returns her to her daddy alive, which only endears our mystery hero to Rene even more. Dinah has been tasked to bring down this new vigilante in old clothes, and that becomes a big sticking point between her and her former teammate Rene.

It gets worse when another arson committed in The Glades brings Rene to find the Faux Green Arrow, who offers up the name of “John Cortez” as the person behind the fire bombings. When Dinah arrives to arrest Faux Arrow, Rene stops her, allowing Faux Arrow to escape. This leads to Dinah actually arresting Rene for it! Later on, Diggle arrives at the police station, seeing as how Rene contacted him with his only phone call. While he understands the pressure on Dinah to bring in the Faux Arrow, Diggle reveals Rene got a positive lead from this mystery person.

This “John Cortez” is a hired hand by some developer who wants to buy out property in The Glades, and those he can’t buy because no one will sell are the buildings being targeted. Dinah is convinced to ask Rene for help in finding Cortez before he hits another building. Yay, teamwork.

The Sound Of Silencer. Felicity and Evil Laurel return to their imprisoned bad guy, and after Evil Laurel puts her through some sonic torture, it’s obvious to her torture won’t make her talk. Felicity is convinced otherwise, but Evil Laurel knows that is the wrong move to make, not only for Felicity’s moral integrity, but because it won’t work. So later on, Felicity confronts Silencer with a screwdriver she’s planning on using Silencer like a pin cushion, but Evil Laurel calls her away to chide her for this. Before Felicity leaves for that chat, she drops the screwdriver near Silencer, who uses it to escape, along with grabbing her sound dampening belt.

Ah-ha, though! This was all a ruse by Felicity and Evil Laurel to trick Silencer into thinking she escaped, and with the tracking device in Silencer’s belt, the ladies can track her to Diaz. Evil Laurel tells Felicity that she’s going after Diaz to kill him, not bring him in, and if you have doubts to doing that, don’t follow her. So torturing bad guy bad, cold bloodedly murdering bad guy good. Okay.

Beebo la-la-loves all!

Therapy And A Movie. Back in Level Two, Ollie is getting another therapy session with Dr. Parker, who is trying to get Ollie to root of his issues, and his conclusion is that it involves Ollie’s father asking to redeem him of his sins before he kills himself in front of Ollie after the Queen’s Gambit sank. He thinks that was unfair to be holstered this onto Ollie, and that Ollie’s vigilante behavior might lead to the same kind of burden for his son. Ollie doesn’t like that conclusion, so the doctor suggest they’ll have to go to more invasive measures.

In Star City, Dinah and Rene discover the next target of these fire bombings is a local movie theatre in The Glades. They arrive to barely contain the fire as it has a crowd settling in for a movie, and they get help from the Faux Arrow. While the Faux Arrow sets off the sprinklers, our mystery hero gets injured enough that Rene has to get Faux Arrow out of there, with Dinah’s blessing. Interestingly enough, we don’t know what happens immediately after Rene gets Faux Arrow away, but we do see Dinah give Zoe a little canary pin, which is at least important for something later in this recap…

Analysis. Back in Slabside, Ollie is giving a cleaner version of electroshock therapy, where he’s forced to relive watching his dad’s suicide. But in relieving it, Dr. Parker forces Ollie to confront if he can do something that horrible to William. This whole thing has rattled Ollie obviously, because later on after that therapy, Ollie seems to be way more obedient to Dr. Parker. I don’t know, but I really don’t trust this doctor…

Where The Compass Points. In the flashforwards, Roy and William arrive in Star City, which looks the worse for wear. The GPS on that arrowhead leads them to the former offices of Smoak Technologies, now run down, but holding a clue hidden inside that William would know about. It’s here we get an introduction to an old familiar face…Dinah! She’s running an underground hero resistance group in the city, because something really bad has happened in The Glades that has isolated itself from the rest of the city.

Dinah takes our duo back to her hideout, where we meet an older Zoe (we know that because she still has that canary pin from Dinah), who’s part of the resistance. As for William, he discovers a Rubix Cube that has a holographic map of The Glades. He figures that may be where he has to go to find his mom. But Dinah, upon hearing this, says, “um, yeah, your mom is dead”!

But is she?

“Hey, William, does this thing get HBO?”

–Comic book connections: No major ones this week, but I will mention I was curious what Silencer would think about Felicity’s outburst at her family being endangered is all I’ll say. Also, that canary pin looks like the Black Canary logo in the DCU.

–So future Dinah has a massive throat scar, which I guess means in the future she has no canary cry. I wonder if this will play in the present timeline, as it’s hinted at almost happening here.

–Speaking of future Star City, there’s an ominous graffiti tag of Deathstroke’s mask around. I need to double check how closely this lines up with the future Star City we saw in the first season of Legends of Tomorrow.

–Nice to see a lantern hung on the whole “Evil Laurel becomes the D.A.” development by her addressing why people who really know her are asking that.

–“I’ve been saying this for weeks!”

–“Don’t hate on Beebo!”

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