Welcome back, Arrowheads! With Oliver Queen now a hero deputized to work with the Star City police, he starts looking into the Faux Arrow that’s been running around taking down bad guys while he was in prison. His investigation comes to a shocking conclusion: the new vigilante is his hidden half-sister Emiko! How will Ollie deal with this revelation, especially since last we saw him, he just met Emiko for the first time? And how will Diggle’s plan to reactivate the Ghost Initiative fare, especially since the first “recruit” is none other than Ricardo Diaz? Let’s find out…
Honest Actor. We pick up kind of where we last left off, as Ollie talks to Emiko, who isn’t really interested in chatting about his family and by extension, her family. He offers to help her make things right, half-sister or not, but she says she has no family. With that conversation at a standstill, Ollie goes on a talk show host with Evil Laurel to talk on the subject of vigilantism. Ollie mentions he wants to prove himself a good citizen to the people of Star City again, but you can tell that talk with Emiko is weighing heavily on his mind.
Later on, Evil Laurel and Felicity meet for a girls/former adversaries night out, and while there, Evil Laurel recognizes a drunk guy in the restaurant they are eating at. The drunk says she knows who she is, but as we see her flash back to her past, that seems a little surprising, because as a younger person, she encountered the same guy on Earth-2 and sent him flying with a canary cry. This rattles Evil Laurel enough that she has to leave early to figure out what is happening. Meanwhile, the talk show host that interviewed her and Ollie earlier is about to head home from the TV studio, only to be electroshocked and kidnapped by some unknown assailant.
“Oh no! It looks like Evil Laurel haters on Twitter have learned how to leave threats in paper form now!”
The Past Haunts. The next day at CCPD headquarters, Ollie and Dinah hear about the talk show host vanishing, and are caught off guard by a video delivered to the press. The host has been hurt, but reads a prepared message: Ollie must quit the CCPD, or people will pay for it! Thanks to some detective work, the police and Ollie figure out where the talk show host is being held, but lose the kidnapper while saving the hostage. In the confrontation, something the kidnapper says rings a bell for Ollie, so he asks Felicity to look at the transcripts of his sessions with that crooked doctor at Slabside from earlier in the season.
That phrase that catches Ollie’s attention is in there regarding that bodyguard, Hackett, who was killed by Robert Queen after the Queen’s Gambit went down over a decade ago. But that info was redacted by Felicity before it went to the press, so someone had to have seen it unchanged files that went to the DA’s office. Ollie goes on the theory that Hackett’s son, Sam, a troubled man with a criminal record, might be a potential suspect, so he asks Dinah to help him investigate. They go to Sam’s apartment and discover he’s been obsessed with finding his missing dad since the Queen’s Gambit went down, and the transcripts he hacked from the DA’s office confirmed his dad’s death at the hands of Ollie’s dad. Sam has been searching for his dad for the last twelve years as if he was still alive, and learning what happened from those transcripts he stole sent him over the edge. And, Sam has also been making something weaponized involving electricity, so…not good.
Meantime, Evil Laurel receives a threatening note at her office warning her she can be found anywhere. She thinks this has something to do with that drunk she ran into, and offers the man’s name to Felicity to find out where he is. Felicity is curious why Evil Laurel knows exactly who this drunk is, and we learn why later as she confronts the guy outside a local dive. Evil Laurel’s dad was killed by a drunk driver, who was the same guy she thinks is threatening her, but even she doesn’t understand how that can be, because she’s believed that guy was killed (or left near dead) by her Earth-2 years ago! She still has guilt over that because of how that night with her dad ended before he was killed, but Felicity offers to help her learn the truth behind this mystery.
Ghosting. Let’s take a detour to discuss what’s happening at ARGUS, as Diggle is putting that Ghost Initiative together, with Diaz, China White, Cupid, And Slade Wilson’s son, Kane. Curtis is not cool with this, but Diggle doesn’t see much alternative to this plan to smoke out this mystery bad guy Dante that they are looking for. So Curtis starts testing those explosives in our “recruits” heads by shutting them off, which turns out to be a fatal mistake. Diaz escapes and frees his fellow bad guys, taking Curtis as a hostage, getting out of ARGUS HQ after breaking Curtis’ neck!
Well, hold the phone before you start rioting, because after Diaz starts revealing stuff about Dante as he’s fleeing ARGUS, we discover…it was all a virtual simulation! Curtis is very much alive, and used a VR program to get Diaz to reveal what he knows, and probably doom him if this baddie ever contacts Dante again. Sick burn, Curtis! Of course, this doesn’t change Diggle’s plan to use the Ghost Initiative as cannon fodder in the hunt for Dante, but Curtis is not going to stay quiet about his objections to this whole operation anymore either.
“I totally Inception-ed your ass! Bwanggggg!”
Father’s Son. At the CCPD, Ollie is feeling the pressure of remaining a deputy there while Sam is out there looking to hurt people. But they are still looking for Sam, and find he is working at an electric company, so they trace his work van, which is…literally in the CCPD parking lot! Sam activates his little electro weapon and contains everyone inside the headquarters so they cannot escape, and walks in with an explosive vest, threatening to kill all of them if Ollie doesn’t show himself. He does, meaning to distract Sam as Dinah tries to get out so she can disable Sam’s weapon in the van. Sam’s not interesting in apologies from Ollie, so he offers the police a chance to save themselves: kill Ollie or Sam blows everyone up!
Dinah manages to get outside and disable the weapon just in time before the cops really take Sam up on his offer. Sam is distracted by that weapon being shut off long enough that Ollie can contain and arrest him. So that’s this week’s problem solved, right?
Transparency. The next day, Ollie has another interview with that talk show host and decides to be honest about what his father did to Sam’s dad, knowing it will sully his father’s public perception. He also vows to not hide the truth like that again, which gets the attention of Emiko. She sees him later and says she admires what he has done, and maybe will trust him sooner than later. I guess that’s a win for today.
“Don’t worry, I’ve gotten plenty of bruising in the face before, so relax. After a week it’ll be fine, but maybe do some salmon ladder exercises and hit a giant tire with a sledgehammer to speed up the healing process, you know?”
Speaking of wins, Evil Laurel learns from Dinah that the drunk guy was just that Earth’s version, and he’s in holding now for some unrelated crimes.Also, it’s not the Earth-2 version because Felicity asked her dimension hopping tech buddy, Cisco, to find out what happened and it turned out that guy didn’t die from Evil Laurel’s attack, but years later from natural causes. So, problem is solved. But if that’s the case, why does Dinah get a similar threatening note that Evil Laurel got after the case has been solved? We got a stalker on our hands!
–Comic book connections: Obviously this whole Ghost Initiative thing is a renamed version of that certain group in the DCU and this show that had a movie recently and may have another one, so clearly no way can we confuse people with two Suicide– well, you know.
–Big shout out to Diggle himself, David Ramsey, who made his directorial debut on this episode, and a good job on it, I might add!
–I kind of wished we had more of this character building for Evil Laurel last season when it would’ve helped her connection to our Quentin Lance (you are still missed). But, better late than never, I guess.
–No need for warrants to break into people’s apartments, I guess. The CCPD isn’t messing around.
–Cupid likes Curtis. If she thought Ollie rejecting her was bad, wait until she finds out she has way less of a chance with Mr. Terrific there.
–Diggle’s correct assessment of Kane to Lyla: “Daddy issues.”
–“Is this the Ghosts Of Villains Past?”
–“I only stalk the people I like!”
–“Well, the love of my life left me…for a blonde.”
–“ARGUS thanks you for your cooperation.”
That’s it for now, but come back next week for the recap of “Emerald Archer”…
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