ARROW Season 7×10, “My Name Is Emiko Queen” recap

23 Jan

Welcome back from the winter break, Arrowheads! So we we’re gone from these separate recaps a bit longer than usual thanks to Elseworlds, but here’s where we left off: Ollie has another half-sister, and she’s our Faux Green Arrow! While we wait for those two to meet, Ollie has been deputized by the CCPD so he can bring his vigilante skills to proper law enforcement. His old nemesis Ricardo Diaz is locked up, but seems to be getting a second chance offered to him by…Diggle? And we haven’t even mentioned in the future flashforwards that our heroes need to get in touch with the now mayor of The Glades…Rene! Well, let’s start there with this recap…

Old Dog. Zoe goes to visit Rene, who seems to be thriving along with The Glades itself as Mayor, and she seems to be a big figure in his administration. She asks him for help finding whoever killed Felicity and is planning to blow up Star City, basically by using the Glades’ surveillance system, the Archer program. He says no, which seems weird to his daughter, but a later less polite encounter with Dinah forces him to give up access to Archer to our heroes. Then we learn not only is Rene aware of the plan to destroy Star City, he might be a willing or unwilling participant in that and killing Felicity! How far you’ve fallen, hoss.

Rene Ramirez for Mayor: I’m YOUR “hoss”, Glades.

A New Queen. In the present, our mystery Queen, who is named Emiko, is busy kicking ass and scratching names off her list (she has a list like Ollie used to!). During a break-in into a corporation’s offices to get info on her latest target, she takes a bullet to the shoulder before escaping out a window. She’s in such a rough shape that she has to go to the only person who has helped her before: Rene. He patches her up, and the morning after offers his help, but she’d rather work alone. Sounding familiar?

During that morning, Ollie is taken to that crime scene by Dinah, and notices some blood on the broken window glass. There’s some mild tension from other officers regarding Ollie’s deputy status, but hopefully that will pass. He offers to speed up finding out whose blood it is by getting Felicity to do the blood work, which, is pretty helpful. And once Felicity examines the blood sample, she determines the blood is from a woman, and…connected to Robert Queen! Hoo boy, do you got some questions now, Ollie.

New Partners. Emiko is stalking her newest target, mercenary William Glenmorgan, when she almost gets the drop on her by a sniper. But she is saved thanks to a trailing Rene, as Glenmorgan takes off. She once again fumes that she doesn’t need help, and tries to stake out Glenmorgan’s house the next day. But there’s too much security there for just her to handle, which means…someone is gonna need help.

At ARGUS, Lyla tries to get Diaz to give up what she knows about this mystery cabal led by some guy named Dante. He claims he doesn’t know who that is, even though Lyla knows this Dante was responsible for retaining the Longbow Hunters for Diaz. At Ollie’s flat, he’s still trying to deal with the fact his father had a hidden daughter, when Felicity’s investigation reveals another shocker fact. The secret payments that were made for this daughter, Emiko, were done by Moira Queen!

“So what, Lyla, is this some kind of SUICIDE SQUAD?!”

Recruitment. The next day, Emiko sends a message to Rene to meet her at a secret location: her lair. There, he (and we) learn about Emiko: that she lived with her mom in The Glades, until she was killed and left in a fire in their apartment building to cover the crime. But, Emiko learned the bullet was a specific kind, only used by Glenmorgan, so her main objective is revenge against her mom’s killer. Easier said than done, since Glenmorgan’s house is covered by lots of security. So she really will need some help, and for that, Rene calls Curtis up to offer some tech support. Do we got another version of Team Arrow forming here?

As for Ollie, him and Felicity are going through the old archives of Queen Manor and find within it a note from Robert to Walter Steele, telling about his affair with Emiko’s mom, and to take care of the child he had with her. Ollie has that kind of reaction you have when you realize you still have to be fixing your parents’ mistakes even after they’re dead. Felicity offers up the sage advice that Emiko is probably hurting in that way he does, and maybe it’s best to find her and offer support. Well, she kinda has a team now, so why not?

Unforgiving. At ARGUS, Lyla and that kinda shady Deputy Director from a while back observes as Diggle has another talk with Diaz. Diggle seems to go off-script and give Diaz an unexpected proposal: work for us in the “Ghost Initative“, which will start buying you your freedom, but only if Diaz gives up what he knows about Dante. Lyla plays along to placate the Deputy Director, but she is not happy with her hubby for calling this audible. The “Ghost Initative” was shuttered by her after Amanda Waller got killed, and the idea of re-creating a squad of criminals (a “suicide squad”, if you will) to do ARGUS’ dirty work is not appealing at all. Well, I guess Diggle will be sleeping in the dog house for now and Diaz has a date with an explosive charge implanted in his skull!

At Glenmorgan’s house, Emiko and Rene sneak in to take out the security force, thanks to a little distraction whipped up by Curtis. After that, Emiko confronts Glenmorgan and vows to get revenge for her mom’s murder, but he reveals he hasn’t been in town for nearly two years, meaning he was never the killer of her mom! The thing is, Emiko believes him and now doesn’t know what to think.We got ourselves another mystery here…

Reaching Out. Later at Rene’s place, he has a chat with Emiko about what she learned, and now she sees she’s back at square one. Rene is still willing to help her find out the truth, because he sees something of Oliver Queen in her (oh, if he only knew…).So she vows to find out who wanted her mom killed and why there was such an elaborate conspiracy to cover up who’s responsible. Later, she visits that gravesite of Robert to vow exactly that…and then Ollie appears behind her! We got ourselves a sibling talk coming up next time!

She’s thinking, “oh dude, how long has he been behind me? Did he hear all that talk to the gravestone?”

–Comic book connections: So instead of Kazumi Adachi being Robert’s lover and baby momma of Emiko Queen, in the comics, Emiko’s Mom was…Shado! It’s less creepy in the book than it would be in the TV medium to be sure.

–Nice touch to have Robert’s voiceover during that dramatic letter reading. But man, Ollie has to deal with Thea and now Emiko. The man is drowning in half-sisters!

–Diggle’s reasoning to bring back the Ghost Initiative as a cover for their investigation into that big arching conspiracy this season is clever, but man, maybe tell your wife/boss before you tell everyone else.

–We get to see the Wild Dog getup again, which, we could have lived without just as well.

–So who is the creepy guy in the future flashforwards talking about the deadly plan to Rene? I can’t help but think there’s some significance we haven’t seen yet.

–Oh hey, I can see in the main credits someone got married. Congrats!

–“Before you ask, no, it’s not Thea.”

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