ARROW Season 7×14, “Brothers & Sisters” recap

6 Mar

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Just to catch you up on things before our brief hiatus, let’s start with some big developments for Team Arrow itself. Diggle and Lyla have restarted the Suicide, ahem, Ghost Initiative to find the super criminal Dante, and among that “volunteered by explosives in the skull” group is Ricardo Diaz, which can only be problematic. Curtis is leaving for greener pastures and Dinah is getting hospitalized for that throat slashing she took, which is only the tip of crazy developments. William got sent to live with his grandparents in the effort to help him grow up slightly normal, which is an awkwardly timed step for the Queen family, because Felicity learns at the same time that she’s pregnant! This has its own repercussions in the future story playing out, because we learn Blackstar is Mia Smoak, Ollie and Felicity’s daughter! Oh, and Emiko is still looking for her mom’s killer. That’s about it. I think. Let’s just get to it…

Cubes Within Cubes. In the flashforwards, we return to the place we left off, in that standoff in the old Arrow Bunker. While our heroes question if Mia’s claims are true (because they somehow don’t know anything about Felicity having a daughter), we learn one person does know: Connor Hawke, who was asked to protect Mia by her “adopted” dad, John Diggle! Mia came to the Bunker to find where her mom vanished to, because she believes Felicity is not actually dead, and the fact that the only witness and coroner who confirmed her death met with mysterious ends not long afterwards. William offers to help her step-sister, and she’s reluctant to want to join up with our group, until both step-siblings bond over their parents being real messes. Well it works, and Mia figures out another clue hidden inside that Rubik’s Cube William used earlier. Inside there is a micro cassette, not unlike what his grandparents had in their answering machine, and maybe it can help. Speaking of leaving messages…

Evidence that Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak are the WORST parents.

Don’t Lose Your Head. In the present at the police station, Ollie is leaving another message to William to see how he’s doing, and runs into Rene, who informs us Dinah is itching to get out of the hospital. He also informs Ollie about Emiko’s mission, and he feels left out of knowing that from her. Rene suggests offering to help her nonetheless, maybe by finding out the origin of that bullet used to kill her mom. Meanwhile at ARGUS, Diggle and Lyla decide it’s getting around time to tell Ollie and Felicity about Diaz being in that Ghost Initiative.

Considering Felicity is having dreams of Diaz hunting her down and threatening to kill her family (unborn child included), you guess how that news down from Diggle when he tells Felicity and Ollie about Diaz’s new arrangement. Ollie assumes Diggle has an acceptable reason for doing this, while Felicity is none too happy to hear this news. On the other hand, she does hear about the whole “explosive in Diaz’s skull” thing, and decides to contact Evil Laurel. Later on, they meet up and Felicity has put together an idea to detonate that bomb in Diaz’s head the second the Dante Mission is done, and it involves Evil Laurel visiting Diaz and said bomb being set off remotely by her. “Yeah, about that,” Evil Laurel says, “I kinda like being the D.A. and despite wanting Diaz dead, I rather not be the main suspect in his murder thanks to this plan. Also, you’re totally pregnant, aren’t you?”. Well, Felicity confirms that and that she hasn’t told Ollie yet (well, about the pregnancy AND the murder plot).

Ghost Protocol. ARGUS’ squad of Diaz, China White, Cupid, and Grant Wilson are given a mission: to meet Virgil, a contact for Dante, and have Diaz set up a meeting with Dante which ARGUS will capture him at. Sounds easy, right? Well, the meeting at a hangout for criminals starts getting pear shaped almost immediately, because Virgil seems to know Diaz is under ARGUS’ thumb. The team manages to take out Virgil’s goons, but Virgil himself would rather face death than betraying Dante, so he throws himself out a window to fall to his death.

Later at the debriefing at ARGUS, accusations fly over how Dante would know Diaz turned on him, and it becomes clear Diaz would rather have been killed by that bomb than face whatever wrath Dante had in store for that betrayal. Things don’t get better because Lyla’s been asked to come in to her superiors to answer for this fouled up operation, and that may mean she’ll lose her job. But there’s still one more card to play: a meeting they’ve discovered between Dante and a foreign country’s princess, who wants to start a violent revolution with Dante’s services. Unfortunately, they will need Diaz there to ID Dante, but they won’t have any other ARGUS support now. Good thing they don’t need it.

“Emiko, good thing this place isn’t seen by Vigilante Hideout Monthly, because this would be rated HORRIBLE!”

Other People’s Missions. While all that ARGUS stuff is happening, Ollie goes to see Emiko at her lair (thank Rene for telling him where she is), and offers to help his step-sister on her mission, and maybe give out some friendly vigilante tips. The lead Ollie finds is to the man who supplies these rare bullets, and to a meet he’s having in town that night. Emiko is told to hang back while Ollie and Rene plan on taking the arms dealer down legally. She just wants answers, but Ollie wants to protect her from being arrested for being a vigilante. So she storms off, and Ollie feels bad he might have took over her mission over her head.

At the same time, Evil Laurel tried to help out Felicity during her pregnancy and convince her murder like this is maybe not a great idea. When Ollie comes back home, he tells her that both of them are needed to help Diggle at that Dante meeting. He also knows she might want to kill Diaz when the chance arises, but he assures her no matter what she wants to do, he’ll back her play.

Ask For The Devil… Our heroes arrive at the gala where Dante is meeting this princess, and we see that pesky Deputy ARGUS Director who’s been against this operation show up unexpectedly. Surprise, he works for Dante and tipped him off to Diaz. By the way, Diaz goes quiet on his comms, and Diggle heads in to find a defibrillator used, and immediately they think Diaz used it to short out the neck bomb. And Diaz does appear to Dante to let him know it’s a setup! Dante doesn’t waste time in killing the princess and the Deputy Director before taking off. Felicity manages to run into Diaz, and threatens to stop him with a gun. He doesn’t believe she can do it, and she doesn’t have to, because Diggle arrives to knock Diaz out. Friends before objective.

Dante escapes outside to find Ollie waiting, and the two have a pretty good fight. Lyla and Diggle arrive to help out, but Dante escapes the scene. Later at ARGUS, we learn Diaz has been sent back to Slabside to rot in prison permanently, being he’s broken his plea deal. As for Lyla, Diggle decides to take the fall for the whole Ghost Initiative fiasco to keep his wife at her job, which means he’ll probably be thrown out of ARGUS in disgrace. Hey, maybe there’s still an opening in the CCPD.

Somehow a fight in a parking garage makes sense for both combatants here.

…And He Shall Appear. Ollie pays a visit to Emiko to apologize for taking control of her mission like he did, and offers all the info he has on that arms dealer that the police uncovered as a gift. It’s a start, I’m sure he thinks. He goes home to chat with Felicity, where she admits she wanted to kill Diaz for revenge, not to protect her family, and she will protect them and her kids. Yeah, now Ollie knows she’s expecting. Happy ending for now, right?

Well hold up, because we go back to Emiko’s place, and she gets an unexpected visitor: Dante! Except they both seem to know each other, and he’s happy to know she’s gained Ollie’s trust and wants her to “come home”. As if that’s not enough shock for you, we go back to Slabside where Diaz is in his cell, and he gets a visitor he recognizes but we don’t see. The sprinklers go off for a second, and it’s clearly not water that splashes onto him, because that mystery visitor throws a lit cigarette lighter into the cell, setting Diaz on fire!

Well, I don’t want to say RIP to Ricardo Diaz yet, but if he’s still alive after getting cooked like that, he’s not going to be happy. Damn!

–Comic book connections: Dante is a recent addition to the list of Green Arrow baddies to the comics. We’ll talk more about him and his organization as the season moves along.

–So welcome Adrian Paul as Dante, who you might recognize from his starring role in the Highlander TV series. Just saying, Ollie better watch his back.

–Connor says he’s Diggle’s “adopted” son. That’s an interesting wrinkle, since the last time we met Connor in Legends of Tomorrow, he was apparently Diggle’s real son (which caused a massive plot hole that got corrected by temporal meddling that happened in The Flash). Is he the son of Andy Diggle, John’s brother? Lot of questions.

–Speaking of the flashforwards, want to bet that micro cassette is all the messages from Ollie that were sent to him but his grandparents intentionally hid that? Because if it was, those grandparents are dicks.

–Plus, both Mia and William don’t know about each other, and Ollie’s former allies didn’t know about Mia? The more these flashforwards go, the more confusing they are.

–How did Evil Laurel become an expert on pregnant women?

–“High score on Candy Crush?”

–“Who’s your dad?”

–“That is a pregnant woman amount of chocolate you just ate.”

–“There’s two of you now?”

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

—BREAKING NEWS: before this was sent off to be posted, news broke that Arrow is coming to an end next season with a 10 episode run. If you’ve been following these recaps of late, you may realize this almost lines up with when the next crossover starts up as the show’s end. Obviously I’ll be recapping the show here at NerdLush until the last arrow is shot, but here’s hoping the show goes out on a high note.