ARROW Season 7×21, “Living Proof” recap

9 May

Welcome back, Arrowheads! Last time, Team Arrow put themselves in a rather sticky position when they helped their friend, Roy Harper, cover up an unintentional murder or two while he was under the influence of some Lazarus Pit related bloodlust. This was a massive mistake because Emiko took surveillance camera video and delivered it to the police, possibly destroying the progress they have made over the past year to clean up their image. Then, she decides to let Ollie know about her not preventing the Queen’s Gambit from going under, because she wanted their father to pay for abandoning her. And just to add some extra salt to the wound, she drops a whole building on the Team! Meantime in the future, our heroes still have to handle a group of super soldiers enhanced by Felicity’s Archer program. By the way, how did that end up in the hands of the bad guys, since she destroyed it in the present? Let’s get an answer to that first…

At The Root. In the future, Felicity learns about that new super soldier program Galaxy One is planning to reveal, now called Zeta, and decides they need to permanently destroy the Archer program, and to do that, they need the person who gave up the program to them: Alena! Alena only gave up the program to protect her loved ones, but hey, once Felicity basically froze all her accounts and passport, she is now more than happy to help destroy Archer. Feeling a bit left out of things, William revisits Kevan at his office to download the files they need to start destroying Archer, but oops, it’s all a massive trap. William and Rene get caught in Kevan’s office, and almost all of our heroes get swarmed by soldiers in the lair! So, at least things are lookin better in the present, huh?

Yeah, I’m just gonna guess this sociable meeting didn’t go well.

Tommy Boy. In the present, Ollie wakes up from that ceiling collapse to discover he’s pinned between two slabs of concrete, his gear scattered everywhere. He reaches out to get one of his trick arrows, when someone kicks it to him. And that someone is…Tommy Merlyn? Clearly Ollie is hallucinating him, but Ghost Tommy is able to break down the situation very succinctly: get out of that concrete sandwich, escape, but try not to bring the rest of the building down on your head while doing it, okay Ollie? Ollie uses the trick arrow to freeze and shatter the piece of rebar keeping him from escaping, and he gets out before the concrete can crush him. So far, so good, except his bow is busted, so he has to fix that before using some explosive arrows to escape.

Elsewhere, Felicity is arriving at her Smoak Tech loft to find Alena trying to whisk her away, because the cops are there, impounding evidence. Besides that video of Team Arrow arriving at their doorstep, they learned the stolen Archer program was used during that mission, and guess who’s wanted as a suspect for making said program? Felicity hits a little button on her watch and a sonic burst in the room knocks the police unconscious. Turns out she installed her own security system in case the loft got broken into…again. She grabs some tech from the place and takes Alena with her to the Bunker, because they still have to contact the Team. Speaking of them, how is the rest of the Team?

Underneath the Wreckage. Diggle, Dinah, Rene, and Roy come to, and they are relatively okay, but unable to contact Felicity or Ollie (not that Ollie is faring better with contacting anyone either). They’re all frustrated with how things have turned out, but when Felicity is able to reach them on their comms to tell them the bad news going on outside, it’s only made worse. Roy offers to turn himself in for those killings when they get out, hopefully to take heat off the Team. Speaking of heat, Felicity needs the Team to disable some of the equipment in that building, since it’s maintaining volatile chemicals and could possibly blow up the whole place around them!

While Ollie is busy fixing his bow, Ghost Tommy starts chatting with him about this whole Emiko situation. Ollie is convinced there’s no chance of redeeming Emiko, especially after learning about how she let the whole Queen’s Gambit sinking happen. It’s pretty clear he’s talking about killing her, but Ghost Tommy is arguing that this approach really hasn’t fixed much of anything for Ollie before, so why would it now? Not that it may matter if Ollie can’t get himself out of there.

Back at the Bunker, Felicity and Alena are busy trying to get in touch with Ollie and find out where the Ninth Circle is. They don’t have to really wonder long on the latter, because Emiko shows up to kill them both! Before Emiko can do anything, Felicity blurts out that she’s pregnant, which causes Emiko to pause, and maybe not in a “I’m concerned for your well-being” kind of way before she takes off. That doesn’t seem foreboding at all.

Always helpful to have a ghost buddy snap a shoulder back into place. Thanks, Ghost Tommy.

Powder Keg. Alena makes certain the Bunker is secure before talking to Felicity about what just happened. It’s clear to Felicity that she has to seriously rethink the way she’s doing things now, with the threat of someone like Emiko running around and whatever threats are in the future right now. Maybe go and live off the grid for a while, perhaps? Anyway, the Team arrives to where that malfunctioning equipment is and has to shut it down, even though there’s some potentially fatal gas hanging around where the shutoff button is. Roy doesn’t even hesitate to risk his own life and heads into the gas to disable it. He does, and somehow gets out, although, he’s not in the best of shape afterwards.

Meantime in the floor above them, Ollie is still hearing from Ghost Tommy about how he needs to break free of having to honor his father and maybe not kill his half-sister. Ollie doesn’t see any other way to deal with Emiko other than that, because it’s clear his attempts to reach out to her and let her in have been for nothing. Anyway, he blasts a hole through the room, and decides it’s time to reunite with the rest of the Team. Ghost Tommy is a little disappointed, but hey, he wishes him the best of luck.

Ollie runs into the rest of the Team, and they make their way to the nearest way out. But Emiko and her goons are waiting there, and they all get into a big fight. Ollie goes after Emiko, and has an arrow pointed at her…and he puts it into her chest! Then he turns to see his whole team with arrows in them too, also dead! Sigh, yeah, Ollie was hallucinating his escape from that sealed room, because Ghost Tommy wanted Ollie to see what his actions would cause if he went through with killing Emiko. Ghost Tommy tells Ollie that he shouldn’t throw away all the work he’s done over the last year just on revenge, but prove that he is a changed man. Ollie tells Ghost Tommy that he misses him, and Ghost Tommy says he’ll always be there. Sniff.

Always With You. Ollie comes to, still stuck between those concrete pillars, as the Team arrives to pull him out. They all head back to the Bunker, and figure out what to do next. Roy still wants to turn himself into the police, but we learn immediately that the cops have another problem, such as someone dressed as the Green Arrow attacking people in the police station! The Team gets there to find injured and dead police, plus Emiko in that Green Arrow garb and goons to fight.

While the Team deals with those goons, Ollie follows Emiko to the roof and confronts her face to face. She almost wants Ollie to kill her, but he refuses to do it. Well, she jets off, and the Team is being surrounded by cops arriving at the scene. So, this is just getting worse and worse.

Next week, it’s season finale time!

“Season ending dramatic group pose, people!”

–Comic book connections: Not necessarily comics related, but those Zeta soldiers seem to take their name from the cyborg soldiers introduced in the animated Batman Beyond show, which yes, is set in the future too.

–On the matter of Bat-people, news came over the wire as I was finishing this up of that Batwoman pilot being picked up for series, which means we’ll be hearing more about that over the next few months.

–It seems like we’ve gotten a big set up for Felicity getting out of town for the duration of her pregnancy, and seeing as how she won’t be a regular character after next week’s season finale, I wouldn’t put too much stock in future Felicity being alive for much longer.

–We don’t get too much on whether or not Roy will turn himself in or not. Dinah is almost okay with that until seeing him risk his life with those chemicals. Ollie is not cool with the idea, but who knows? Roy has been known to take matters into his own hands before.

–Not exactly a big fan of the “it was all a dream” fakeout, and maybe less so while it’s a dream within a dream!

–So in case you were wondering if the actress playing Alena was wearing a wig, apparently this episode confirms your suspicions. Congratulations, you’ve spotted a wig, which should be a drinking game for this show at this point.

–“I’m going to go do…anything else.”

–“Is it the beard?”

–“You have Oliver Angry Face on right now.”

That’s it for now, but come back next time for the recap of the season finale, “You Have Saved This City”…