Laurel is on the ropes, her face reduced to a bloody pulp by…her murdered sister Sarah?
Thus, begins “Canaries,” the latest episode of Arrow that delivers some amazing new wrinkles while being wrapped up in the return of the villain nobody asked for.
48 hours earlier, Arrow and Arsenal are chasing a perp across the rooftops. He’s almost made his getaway, but Laurel pops out and kneecaps him before dispatching him unceremoniously. Ollie and Laurel get into another disagreement, as he doesn’t want her being the Canary and getting hurt in the line of duty, a sentiment that he then argues with Diggle about. Diggle reminds Oliver that this is no longer just his crusade. Their disagreement is interrupted by Malcolm Merlyn, who thinks that “it’s time to bring Thea into the fold.”
Flashback to Hong Kong, and Maseo is packing up so that he, Tatsu, and his son can escape. They’re planning on taking a ferry to Shanghai in order to avoid both Amanda Waller and China White, both of whom are looking for their pound of flesh after Maseo used the Alpha chemical as a bartering chip for his kidnapped wife. Ollie says that he’s going to stay behind, much to Maseo’s chagrin.
Back in the present Werner Zytle, aka Count Vertigo (Peter Stormare) is being escorted down the steps of the courthouse when the marshal begins to hallucinate the swarming press as demons. He fires wildly, but gets knocked out by Laurel. In the ensuing chaos, Vertigo makes his getaway, wondering why they didn’t just make him the goddamn Scarecrow.
Ollie takes Merlyn’s advice and reveals his secret to Thea, who is understandably in shock. He tries to make amends, explaining that “I know that this isn’t going to mean much, but I lied all of this time to protect you.” Surprisingly, Thea realizes that every time Ollie was MIA, he was out saving someone as Arrow. She hugs him and simply says “thank you.” Bonus points for making a sweet, slightly unexpected development, guys!
Thea then explains to Ollie that Merlyn never once let slip that Ollie was in fact the Arrow, but Thea is angry at her father for manipulating her by acting as if Ollie was simply absent, thus isolating her from her family.
Flashing back to Hong Kong again, we see Ollie on the phone leaving a voicemail for his mother, explaining that he’s alive and in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, he’s found by Waller’s men and tased into submission.
Back at HQ, the team is trying to figure out how the marshal got dosed with the vertigo drug. Laurel points out that one of the reporters on the scene shot the marshal with a hypodermic, and Ollie sets out to interrogate the junkifying journalist. Laurel wants to come along, but Ollie denies her, explaining that she’s nothing more than an addict. Be it booze, or pills, or danger, Laurel is simply chasing her next high.
Arrow and Arsenal make it to the reporter’s office, where they find said reporter wired up with a bomb. He explains that if he didn’t do this, Count Vertigo would kill his wife. Ollie tries to reason with the man, but to no avail, as he and Arsenal leap out just as the reporter hits the switch and detonates himself.
Back at Thea’s apartment, Ollie talks to her openly about the night’s events, as he reeks of the explosion. She asks him why he does it, and he simply responds that it’s his job. He then asks her to trust Malcolm Merlyn, and she responds that she can’t and she won’t.
Flashback time, and Ollie’s being waterboarded by Amanda Waller. He won’t give up the location of the Yamashiros, and Waller explains that she could very easily harm his family. While she erased the answering machine message remotely, she said that Thea is still in danger, as Waller could have her killed and make it look like an overdose. Defeated, Ollie tells Waller that Maseo and family are headed to Shanghai.
Back in the present, Laurel is getting the Zytle/Vertigo files from her father when he asks her if she’d heard from Sarah. Laurel lies and says that she hadn’t, but Detective Lance persists, telling her that he wants to speak to the Canary.
Roy and Thea share a rare moment, where Thea reveals to him that she wants to get as far away from Merlyn as possible, even though her brother has decided to ally himself with the Dark Archer. Down in HQ, the team gets a ping on a tracker down on the docks. Ollie revealed that he’d tagged Laurel the last time she was in HQ, and she led them right to the supply of Vertigo’s drugs being shipped in. The head out, but not before Laurel gets injected with a dose of Vertigo, which leads to her hallucinating Vertigo as her sister Sarah, who blames Laurel for her death and stealing her mantle. Vertigo beats Laurel savagely, but is stopped at the last minute by Ollie. The two scuffle, and Count Vertigo gets away, proving that doughy Eastern European men can outrun men in peak physical condition. I think I should be a villain in Starling City.
The team brings Laurel back to HQ, where the hallucinations are starting to have a more violent reaction. Thea comes down, and Ollie barks at her go get out and go back upstairs. Roy intercedes, telling Ollie that he can’t talk to Thea like that, but Thea complies. Laurel is stabilized, and Ollie and Roy argue over whether or not he should have questioned Oliver. Felicity snaps, and tells Oliver that he has no right to come back and question other people’s choices, as they established new rules in his absence. Roy leaves to talk to Thea, but instead sees her leaving with her sinister DJ Chase, who apparently is a member of the League of Assassins as well as a dropper of phat beats. Makes you wonder what Deadmaus or Paul Oakenfold do on the side…
Ollie and Diggle discuss the situation with the team, and Diggle lets Ollie in on a secret: in his absence, the team learned that they weren’t fighting Ollie’s fight, but that they were “fighting for themselves.”
Flashing back yet again, we see that Maseo is thrown into the same room that Ollie is being held captive in. Ollie is apologetic, telling Maseo that he spilled the beans, but Maseo admits that he lied about the ferry as a contingency, but came back for Ollie when he found out that he had been captured by Waller.
Laurel comes to, and her and Felicity talk about Laurel’s attempts at being the Canary. Laurel feels that she’s not able to live up to her sister, and Felicity explains that that’s not a bad thing. Sarah wore her mask to hide her demons as well as help people, whereas Laurel has a “light” to her that Sarah didn’t. “Stop trying to be Sarah,” Felicity declares, “and be yourself.” The two then find out that one of the chemical drums has been opened in a lab, meaning that Count Vertigo is moving forward with his plan to…make more Vertigo, I guess.
We then cut the Thea and Chase in Thea’s apartment, post coital. Chase pours Thea a glass of red wine, which reminds her of something her father told her: that the rich bouquet of red wine could overpower the scent of an underlying poison. His true intentions revealed, Chase attempts to kill Thea, but is stopped at the last minute by Roy and Merlyn. “Wait,” my fiancée interjected at this scene, “was Roy out there listening to them have sex the whole time?” Uhhhh… Anyways, it seems Chase has spun his last record, and he quaffs a vial of poison, killing himself.
Arrow tracks down the lab where Vertigo is working, with Laurel in tow. Vertigo drops a vial of a highly flammable chemical, leaving his enslaved scientists to burn. Ollie starts freeing the lab techs, and Laurel chases down Count Vertigo. She gets dosed again (geez, Laurel!) and begins Ms. Lance’s Wild Ride yet again, hallucinating the attacking Vertigo as both Sarah and then her father. She cuts through the visions and beats Vertigo to a pulp. Ollie declares the situation to be over, but Felicity tells him “you have to get home. It’s Thea.”
Laurel heads into her father’s office, then tells him that she has to tell him something about Sarah. He smirks, says that he knows that Laurel is the Canary, and tries to comfort her. However, Laurel finally tells him the entire truth, and Detective Lance breaks down in tears. Just about then, some onion powder went rogue in my living room. I’ve got to clean these vents.
Ollie arrives at Thea’s apartment, where she is being comforted by Roy. She understands now what Ra’s Al Ghul is capable of, and that she needs to better protect herself. Merlyn explains that they need to conquer their fears, and that there’s only one place to do that. We then see Ollie and Thea hiking through the forest, and it’s revealed that they’ve been brought back to the desert island that was Ollie’s home for so many years.
Finally, we flash back one last time, and see Ollie, Waller, and Maseo in a car as they pass a sign that greets “Welcome to Starling City!”
OK, there was some great, great stuff in this episode. Laurel finally making peace with the loss of Sarah and her becoming the Canary? Great stuff. Ollie revealing his secret to Thea? Also great stuff. Detective Lance’s crushing realization that his daughter is dead…again? Just great.
But the carriage method of Count Vertigo is just…yecch. Look, I love Peter Stormare, but he’s somehow a weaker Count Vertigo than that Eurotrash goth fop that they used in seasons 1 and 2, and that guy was like everything wrong with the late 90’s personified.
The use of flashbacks were exceptionally tight this time around, with the parallels being more obvious and the end-of-episode intersection being one hell of a double-twist. Seriously, after the kinda lame return of Oliver Queen and the surprisingly dopey Count Vertigo, I was a little worried, but this episode was overall really damn good.