Welcome back, Arrowheads! We’ll get to the cake and drinks eventually (SPOILERS: there is no cake), but first, let’s recap things so far. Ollie is now officially working with the Star City Police Department, and while in that precarious position, contending with the discovery of a half-sister, Emiko, who has taken on the Green Arrow look for her little mission of revenge. But where does this leave the rest of the ex-Team Arrow members? And how does all of this play into a future where Star City has gone to crap? Well, let’s jump into this 150th episode and find out…
The Documentary. We start things as we see the opening of a documentary, Emerald Archer: The Hood and the Rise Of Vigilantism (unwieldy title there, documentary crew!), and get some interview footage with some familiar faces: our Team, Quentin Lance (back when he was alive, sniff sniff), Thea Queen, Sara Lance, Sin (you remember her from season two, right?), Rory the Ragman (you remember him from season five, yeah?), and some friend of Oliver’s, Barry Allen. We drop in on Ollie at home, filming an interview for the documentary, which he agreed to as a way to positively spin this whole vigilante snafu the city is in, when William shows up. He’s back from overseas boarding school, and he seems a little hesitant around his dad and Felicity (not to mention the camera crew filming this). Before we get to know about that, we go to the police station to see how a regular day for Ollie as a deputy goes.
This particular day, the police is alerted to some kind of mess going on in a parking lot. They arrive to find Rene in his Wild Dog gear, surviving a few shots to the chest thanks to his Kevlar armor. Apparently he and Emiko went to bust a drug buy when they got attacked by some mystery man. He’s hurt bad, but he’s able to tell Ollie that “the new Green Arrow” was kidnapped by his attacker! Oh nuts.
OH NO, SOMEONE ON THE TEAM GOT SHOT oh it’s just Rene. He’ll be fine. Cancel the ambulance.
Arrownapping. At the police station, Rene is healed up enough to say the assailant was wearing some kind of exo-skeleton, which gave the guy enough of an edge in that attack. The news of this vigilante kidnapping gets the attention of Mayor Pollard, who wants to host a community town hall about vigilantism with Ollie as a speaker, more as a way to destroy Ollie’s reputation. Meantime, William is really upset about Felicity’s security on his tablet, and a little peeved he didn’t get to go home for the holidays, since by then, Ollie was out of prison. But is that everything?
Ollie goes to ARGUS to ask Diggle for help to find Emiko, especially since he has to tell Dig that Emiko is his half-sister, so clearly she needs to be found. After a satellite search, Ollie and Diggle head to an condemned athletic club, and make a grim discovery: a lair full of weapons, and masks…mainly those of the Ragman, the Huntress, and Emiko’s! Someone is collecting trophies, and it’s from vigilantes! That doesn’t look good for Emiko, does it?
Back at the police station, Curtis has new intel on the newly christened baddie Chimera, that he’s going to some kind of secondary lair (one that happens to be the now empty building where Adam Hunt taken down in the series’ first episode). The documentary crew follows along, and is there when Chimera attacks. While Ollie runs off to fight the overpowered Chimera, it’s up to Diggle to save his buddy from certain death. Chimera flees, and they find a seriously hurt Emiko. She is barely able to tell Ollie that Chimera has picked him as his next target. Well, what else is new?
“Please tell me you don’t have footage of me puking beside The Flash.”
Off-Camera Confessions. At Rene’s place, Zoe is visited by William, who we discover has been keeping in touch with her secretly since he got sent to boarding school. He admits he’s not really up to staying at home right now, and it has something to do with what happened at that school that he doesn’t want to talk about. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the gang meets up to talk to Emiko, who is recovering from her injuries, and reveal they don’t know what happened to Rory (Ragman) or Huntress. Too bad that Emiko sneaks out of the hospital before they can talk to her. Rene heard about this and goes to her lair to find her still recovering and still a bit stubborn. It’s here he finds out about who Emiko is and we learn she didn’t tell him because she didn’t want to mess up what “they have”. Hmmm…
Later at the police station, Ollie tells Dinah about the whole Emiko thing, and hears that he’s expected at that town hall by the mayor, and that the whole Chimera thing is a sham to blow it off. She thinks this is a bad idea that will not only endanger him, but civilians in the crossfire. Diggle privately takes him aside, and suggests that maybe showing up would bring Chimera out of hiding, but clearly Ollie can’t take him down alone, even with the cops. BUT Team Arrow can. Ollie is not cool about endangering the freedom of his friends on this, but Diggle admits they’re willing to put themselves on the line because of the sacrifice he made to save them. Awww, we got a Team back!
“Wow, this is so awesome I’M THE FLASH! Wow, where did that come from?”
Team Arrow Forever. That night, Ollie arrives for this town hall, while Diggle, Curtis and Rene arrive in their gear. Chimera shows up, and while evacuating the people inside, Ollie tries to keep Chimera distracted. As that is going badly, our heroic trio arrives to join the fight. During all this chaos, Dinah saves the mayor from being hit by a glass wall with her canary cry, and joins he boys in their big brawl. Learning from Felicity that Chimera’s exoskeleton has a weak spot in the chest, Ollie manages to short the tech out. But despite all that effort to catch Chimera (who we learn afterwards is just an obsessed vigilante fan), the mayor still orders the arrest of Diggle, Rene, and Curtis for violating the anti-vigilante act. While Evil Laurel doesn’t have to file charges, that still violates the FBI agreement protecting them, which is not good.
At Ollie’s loft, Felicity arrives home after doing her Overwatch thing for the Team again, and finds William asking what happened. But she has some questions for him: like why are his school test scores fake, and why is he lying about the boarding school? Short answer: he got expelled. Long answer: we don’t know why yet.
The next day, Dinah arrives to tender her resignation in protest for the arrest of her teammates, and Ollie arrives after to follow suit. The mayor is surprised by this act of loyalty and what Dinah did last night, and has a solution: deputize the rest of the Team! It’s maybe a long rope to hang Team Arrow on later, but at least there’s no jail time.
That’s right! Team Arrow is back, and they are available for bar mitzvahs again!
Building The Future. Later, Ollie takes the documentary crew down to the remains of the old Arrow bunker, and tells them that the Team will rebuild there, and hopefully not make the same mistakes as before. Then we cut to the future, as “Blackstar”, or Mia, is watching the documentary, which we discover was outlawed years after it came out. And she has a friend watching…a grown Diggle Jr., or someone we know in the Arrowverse as Connor Hawke! Mia was watching the documentary to get an idea where the lair was, and takes Connor to see it. We end up there, as the lair looks rebuilt, but covered by dust and weeds from over time. She then mentions that vigilantes were the death of Star City, and that “they got what they deserved”. Well, that sounds like bad news for whatever future Team Arrow has.
And that’s 150 episodes of Arrow! Here’s hoping we get to 200!
–Comic book connections: Chimera is a master of disguise in the DCU, but clearly not a heavily armed psychopath. Also, Mia Dearden is a familiar name to the Green Arrow comics, as she becomes one of the few to have the mantle of…Speedy. In name shout outs, we got a few here, like Kevin Meltzer aka Chimera, being the combination of the names of GA writers Kevin Smith and Brad Metzler.
–The intersection of Nutter and Winter is a shout-out to David Nutter, the director of the first episode and Glen Winter, who directed this episode. Also, the narration for the documentary is Sideshow Bob and Frasier Crane himself, Kelsey Grammer.
–I have a feeling that William’s expulsion has something to do with what we know about him in the future.
–Let’s give a shout-out to the production team for lining up all those cameos and fake material for the documentary footage. That could not have been easy.
–So hopefully we’ll find out what happened to Ragman and Huntress, because I really like…Ragman.
–Faux Green Arrow is referred to as NGA by Rene, which…no.
–“Either way, suit up! (pause) They’re already suited up, though.”
–“That wasn’t so much a suggestion as it was one of those ‘Mom’ things where if you don’t tell me you’ll get grounded.”
–“Obviously that particular comment didn’t age too well.”
–“Well, I’ll be in the other room…cleaning my gun.”
–“Okay, do I look like Cisco?”
–“You’ve met my wife, haven’t you, Curtis?”
–“He’s lived through a lot of darkness, and all he really cares is making sure no one has to go through what he’s gone through.”
That’s it for now, but come back next time for the recap of “Star City Slayer”…
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