ARROW Season 8×05, “Prochnost” recap

20 Nov

Welcome back, Arrowheads! We’re at the halfway point of this final season, and we’ve had plenty of shocks and big events, but probably no event more shocking than our current Team Arrow meeting their hero children from 2040! How and why they are there is still a big mystery (bet The Monitor on this one), but while they are there, this gives Ollie and Diggle an opportunity to see the future through their children, adopted or otherwise. But while Ollie tries to figure out how to fight The Monitor if it turns out he isn’t the good guy he might be, we know The Monitor has agents in Team Arrow’s midst, like Lyla, and maybe another one, if he recruits Evil Laurel into the fold with the promise of bringing back Earth-2! Will Evil Laurel join The Monitor’s cause and betray Ollie and company? And how does Russia fit into Ollie’s quest to get a Monitor fighting weapon? Read on to find out…

Family Vacation. We see through a montage that Ollie is bonding with Mia the only way Ollie seems to be comfortable at: training her to be a better fighter! We see Mia is doing a bit better than her dad at many things, but that training gets interrupted by William, with some news about that anti-matter weapon. He’s found out the general who has developed it, Burov, is somewhere in Russia, but even with the weapon, they need power for it, namely plutonium. So we get a double mission: Ollie is taking Mia and William to Russia for Burov, while Diggle goes to steal the plutonium from a weapons depot. Diggle will not be going alone, though: instead of bringing in Connor, he goes to find someone he asked William to locate: Roy! Roy is not okay with going on a mission again, thanks to that whole bloodlust murder thing last season, but he agrees to do one last mission with Diggle.

Before we go to Russia, Evil Laurel ends up meeting Lyla, and learns she is an agent of The Monitor and wants the plans for the anti-matter weapon stolen from the Team when they get it. Evil Laurel does question The Monitor’s mission and claims of being able to restore Earth-2, and we find Evil Laurel…hasn’t decided whether to help The Monitor or not. With that, Evil Laurel joins the Queens in Russia, where they meet their contact in…Anatoly! Turns out Ricardo Diaz’s BBQing made it okay to head out of Witness Protection, and Anatoly is now a connected bar owner. The General happens to be in the process of selling the plans for that anti-matter weapon, all at a cage fighting place known as The Bloodbath. Catchy.

“Hello Oliver! I am ‘fun uncle’ this season, yes?”

The Octagon. Our Team (at first minus the Queen kids, but Mia goes anyway) goes to the Bloodbath, and meet Burov, wanting the anti-matter weapon plans. Burov will actually give it to Ollie, as long as he wins a fight with Bloodbath’s reigning champion, a giant of a guy. “No problem”, Ollie says, and turns out, it is no problem beating the champion.The problem comes afterwards when a Bratva captain comes looking for payment from Burov, kills him, and takes Ollie and Mia captive.

While Ollie and Mia are out cold for the moment, we join Diggle and Roy as they plan to nab the plutonium they need at the weapons depot entrance. Roy talks about how he left Thea after all that fear of bloodlust, and how he plans to go deeper into hiding after this mission, but Diggle lets him know that in the future, that won’t matter. Eventually, William will find Roy and bring him back to Star City, where he’ll start to heal himself thanks to being around his former teammates. And yes, the two get the plutonium they need.

Ring, Ring. Ollie and Mia awaken in a Bratva safehouse, where the evil Captain interrogates them as to what is one the flash drive Burov was going to give them. When Mia gets threatened with death, Ollie gives him the info he wants, and just to be sure, said Captain puts Mia through a faux Bratva initiation. With dad and daughter tied up again, Mia has to ask about how he’s known in the Bratva, which is something he’s very reticent to even discuss at all. But no worries, because they escape just as the rest of our Russia Team arrives to save them.

We find out the Bratva Captain is going to sell the plans at the Bloodlust the next night, and Ollie really doesn’t want his kids to go because, well, grown up or not, they are still kids in his eyes (and still are in his present, by the way!). Anatoly has a chat with Ollie about his reluctance to discuss the Bratva and need to protect his adult kids, while Mia chats with Evil Laurel about the reputation of these present heroes not being perfect. Both talks have their own effects, the latter of which we’ll bring up later, but the talk with Anatoly convinces Ollie to bring Mia along for a scheme to steal back the plans. It’s gonna involve a cage match.

Cue Mortal Kombat music!

Tag Team Match. In order to distract the Bratva Captain while the rest of our Team sneaks in to steal the plans, we get a set up for a cage match that will get everyone’s attention in the Bloodbath: Ollie and Mia fighting six people in the cage! So as father and daughter demolish these guys, the Team grabs the plans and they all escape in smoke bombs and confusion. That night, our Team celebrates by having a few shots and Ollie finally starts telling his kids about some of those less pretty parts of his past. With that, the Team says goodbye to Anatoly (probably for the last time), and head home to Star City.

A Traitor Revealed. Back at home, the Team chats and we learn Diggle’s chat about the future has convinced Roy to stay to help fight The Monitor. Speaking of, Lyla meets Evil Laurel at the roof of a building to hear if Evil Laurel stole the plans. She actually says no, not believing The Monitor at all, and recommends Lyla just come clean about this whole alliance to her hubby and Ollie as soon as possible.When Lyla says she will soon, Evil Laurel reveals Ollie and Diggle are already with them now and overheard the whole thing! Before Diggle and Ollie can even question why Lyla would do this, both guys and Evil Laurel are knocked out cold by tranquilizer darts!

Well, now what’s gonna happen? Did the rest of Team Arrow and Future Team Arrow know about this meeting? And what will Lyla do now that her work with The Monitor has been exposed? Questions, questions, questions…

“Oh hi, honey! Um…Happy Anniversary?”

–Series connections: so we got a reference back to the season five Russia flashbacks in Mia having to run the same initiation game Ollie had to when he was initiated into the Bratva.

–Connor is off saying hi to his mom? I mean, have your grown up son appear is a lot for Team Arrow, let alone for some woman who had a kid with Bronze Tiger, man!

–Still not bothering to call Felicity about her grown up offspring being in the present, huh? Okay, fine.

–Are we getting set up for a Roy/Thea reunion in the very last episodes, because it sure seems that way. The timeline is irrelevant now!

–Next week, we got another former series regular returning. Get ready to squee, kids.

–“He’s twice your size!” “Good. That means he has half a chance.”

–“You met her where?!”

–“Aren’t members of your family constantly injecting themselves with tracking devices?”

–“You’ve got to teach me how to do that!”

That’s it for me, but come back next week for the recap of “Reset”…