Real life caught up with me, so I couldn’t talk about last week’s episode of Arrow. In short, Ray Palmer declared war on Arrow and determined that he was Oliver Queen, and Ra’s al Ghul continued his smear campaign of the Arrow to try and force him to take on the mantle of the Demon’s Head. There was a side story involving the Suicide Squad and the presumed death of Deadshot. It wasn’t that good. But it ended in a bang (or whatever sound an arrow makes…a whsssh?) when Maseo, dressed as the Arrow, fired a volley of arrows into City Hall, killing the mayor and hitting Ray Palmer, leaving him bleeding from a chest wound. Detective Lance, who witnessed the entire attack, reaffirms the city’s anti-vigilante stance, declaring the Arrow to be public enemy number one.
We then go back to the market in Hong Kong, where Ollie and Akio meet up with a woman who looks eerily like Oliver’s lost love Shado. Upon Ollie calling her Shado, she confirms that her name is Mei and Shado is her missing twin sister (convenient!). Ollie begs her for help, asking her to take him and Akio off the streets and away from the ARGUS goons hunting him down.
Back in the present, Thea and Roy are basking in their post-coital glow when the news reveals that the SCPD has launched a manhunt for the Arrow and all of his associates. This puts not just Ollie in the line of fire, but also Laurel, Diggle, Felicity, Roy, and Thea. Jeez!
Ray Palmer wakes up in the hospital where he’s recovering from his arrow to the chest. He’s not out of the woods yet, though, as the surgeon tells him that he developed a thrombus, which unfortunately for him is inoperable. He has to either wait for the blood clot to kill him on its own, or have it kill him when he’s back under the knife. Ray tells the doctor that he has developed nanobots that, when injected to his bloodstream, will shrink the blood clot down to virtually nothing? Is this the thing that finally makes the Atom earn his namesake?
Possibly not, as the doctor refuses, stating that the hospital won’t perform experimental procedures, which makes sense from a liability standpoint but “damn the man” regardless! Felicity is distraught, but she doesn’t have time to process her emotions before her cocktail waitress mother enters…
Oliver meets up with Nyssa, asking her for information regarding the whereabouts of the League of Assassins in Starling City. She initially refuses, but finally relents, revealing an abandoned building that the League is using as a safehouse. The team heads out and is confronted by a group of assassins led by Maseo, who does little more than distract the team until Ra’s al Ghul can make his grand entrance. He gives Oliver an ultimatum: take leadership of the League of Assassins for “spend the rest of [his] days in a cage.”
The choice is taken away as the SCPD show up. They pursue Team Arrow through the streets until Detective Lance corners Black Canary in an alleyway, but she’s saved at the last minute by Nyssa. Ollie evades the cops long enough for Diggle to pick him up in the van, and they make their getaway.
The team regroups at HQ, and Roy enters last, haunted by the fact that he had to disable some cop to escape, which reminds him of the cop he killed in season 2 while under the influence of Mirakuru. Ollie comforts him, reminding him that he didn’t kill anyone and he did what he had to in order to survive.
We flash back again to Hong Kong, where Mei has brought Ollie and Akio back to her home to evade Waller’s men. Mei asks about Shado, and Ollie feeds her a line about being in Shado’s class in med school. He evades the questions further, asking Mei if he can take a shower. She obliges, and spies on him undressing (like every other straight girl who watches this show would) and spots his shoulder tattoo that matches the one that Shado had.
Detective Lance gets kidnapped by Maseo, who brings the cop to meet Ra’s al Ghul. Ra’s al Ghul reveals the Arrow’s identity as Oliver Queen, giving Lance the ammo needed to bring the Arrow in.
Laurel confronts her father about his manhunt, and he snaps back, disgusted that Laurel would keep yet another secret from him. He then goes on to blame Oliver for Sara’s death, saying that he killed her once when she went with him on the boat that brought them to Lian Yu, and killed her again when she took on the mantle of the Canary.
Back at the hospital, Felicity’s mom stages a diversion, allowing Felicity to inject Ray with a syringe full of nanobots. He seems fine, but then he has a violent seizure, which he calmly chalks up as a side effect of the nanotech in his bloodstream. At the same time, the police raid Verdant, trying to bring Oliver in, but he escapes.
Back in Hong Kong, Mei confronts Oliver about his tattoo that matches Shado’s. He tries to calm Mei down, but she reveals that she’s already called the police. A handful of laser sights pepper the walls, and gunfire rips through the walls and windows, but the people that arrived aren’t the police.
Back in the present, Ray’s doctor pulls Felicity aside, telling her that Ray’s most recent MRI reveals that his blood clot is completely gone she has no time to celebrate (or come up with a valid explanation for the sudden uptick in health), as Detective Lance is on the news, revealing to all of Starling City that Oliver Queen is the Arrow.
Flashing back again, the “police” that are raiding Mei’s house are revealed to be ARGUS agents. Ollie tries to fight them off, but one has him cornered. Thankfully, the Yamashiros enter, saving Ollie and slaughtering the rest of the agents.
Back at the hospital, Ray is making a speedy recovery thanks to his nanobots, and he tells Felicity that he loves her. Confused, she leaves without replying, and runs into her mother. Felicity’s mom tells it like it is: Felicity doesn’t love Ray, she loves Ollie, thus fulfilling the CW soapy drama quotient for the episode.
Ollie heads down to SCPD precinct to turn himself in, and Lance throws him into an interrogation room. The rest of the team shows up and protests his decision, but Ollie insists that he’s doing it for their own good, as he will demand immunity for the rest of the team. That’s not usually how that works, but I guess I’m not a lawyer on a superhero show, so what the hell do I know?
Back in Hong Kong, Maseo has “dealt with the bodies” of the ARGUS agents (where the hell did he put like ten dead soldiers?) and Ollie finally reveals to Mei that Shado and her father are dead, giving her peace and closure, as well as a newly-ventilated house. What a guy!
Finally, we see Ollie and Detective Lance in a police transport, when Ollie tries to explain why he does what he does. Lance spits back to him that he’s not a hero; he’s a villain. The weight of his comment doesn’t have time to sink in before the transport van rocks, having been attacked. Lance opens the door, revealing the attacker to be none other than…the Arrow? The false Arrow surrenders and pulls back his hood, revealing himself to be Roy Harper.
After last week’s lame episode (I know I didn’t recap it, but trust me), the show seems to finally be picking up some steam after a lot of weird filler and strange lulls. The return of Felicity’s mom was welcome, as she provides equal measures of comic relief and genuine heart, which helped define more of Felicity’s weird love triangle. The introduction of the shrinking nanotech also holds some hope for the Atom, as up until this point he was little more than a low-rent Iron Man, so the hope that Ray Palmer will have some new abilities in the future is exciting indeed. However, there are some weird concerns that this episode raises: is Lance really so blinded by hatred for the Arrow that he’ll take information from a weird guy in a bathrobe that kidnapped him? Does Ollie really think that he can get immunity for the rest of the team when he’s turned himself in, when Starling City already has a pretty strong case against him? Also, now that Lance let the genie out of the bottle on television, how is Oliver going to deal with his secret identity being not-so-secret? Hopefully this show didn’t paint itself into a corner just so it can pull out a cheap deus ex machina at the 11th hour.
Catch new episodes of Arrow Wednesdays at 8/7 c on The CW