Time to Mourn
As Oliver, Felicity and Roy are making their way to headquarters they find Laurel waiting for them and see Sara’s dead body on the table with three arrows sticking out of her chest. The team is devastated with Laurel in particular so distraught that she hasn’t gotten around to closing her sister’s eyes.
The team while grieving still, waste no time searching for Sara’s killer. Not long afterward, Captain Lance (who remains unaware about Sara’s death) contacts the Arrow saying that some people have turning up dead in Starling City in much the same way as Sara and the Arrow is all too happy to investigate. At first Diggle suggests that Sara could have been killed by the League of Assassins but Oliver is quick to dismiss that theory saying the League doesn’t target their own.
A short time later however, thanks to a shakedown of a local drug dealer and accessing some files from A.R.G.U.S. they quickly deduce that the killer is a mercenary named Simon Lacroix AKA Komodo. It takes some doing with Oliver and Roy in the field and Felicity’s hacking skills but they’re eventually able to capture Komodo. Unfortunately, Laurel isn’t satisfied with merely arresting the guy and pulls a gun on him. Oliver tries to talk her out of it but she pulls the trigger anyway. It turns out Oliver had apparently expected Laurel to be out for blood (especially after almost getting herself killed interrogating a witness earlier) because he removed the bullets beforehand. When they question Komodo over why he shot Sara, he reveals that actually wasn’t the killer and tells them that he was getting drunk in Bludhaven at the time of her death which sadly leaves Team Arrow back at square one.
The team decides to keep Sara’s death a secret from the general public for the time being (including Captain Lance) but decide to hold a private funeral for her at her previously empty grave. Laurel is still understandably angry about the whole thing and laments that now there’s no way anyone will remember her. Diggle disagrees with her saying that they will still remember her and to further prove his point reveals that he and Lyla have decided to name their newborn daughter after Sara.
Oliver, Felicity and Ray Palmer
While the team has been grieving the loss of Sara, Felicity notices that Oliver is being unusually calm about the whole thing. He says it’s because he knows the team is looking to him be strong so they can be allowed to grieve. He also laments that in all likelihood it’s only a matter of time before he suffers the same fate as Sara.
While this is going Ray Palmer continues to not only try to rebuild Starling City (which includes donating half his net worth and giving himself a one dollar salary) but try to convince Felicity to work for him and most likely have more than a boss/employee relationship.
Not taking no for answer from Felicity, Palmer buys the not Buy More she works at effectively making him her boss anyway. Between this and Oliver’s depressing prediction about his life, she finally decides to take up Palmer on his job offer presumably in the hopes of having more going on her life than working as sidekick for Oliver.
Flashback Time
Now that Oliver has reluctantly agreed to cooperate with Amanda Waller his handler Yamashiro (Karl Yune), gives him his first assignment. He’s instructed to take out a target with a sniper rifle which would be straightforward enough for Oliver except for the fact that his target is his best friend Tommy Merlyn (special guest star Colin Donnell). Naturally, Oliver refuses to take the shot and demands to know why Tommy is even a target in the first place. Yamashiro tells him that Tommy came to Hong Kong to look for him after he had briefly accessed his old e-mail account in the previous episode. Since Waller doesn’t want anybody on Oliver’s trail she figures the easiest thing is to kill Tommy.
Okay, I’m not a big expert on strategy but that seems like an incredibly stupid way to go about things. So her plan was to have the son of one of the richest guys in the world shot by a sniper rifle in a foreign country? Not only that but the fact that he would have been killed while searching for his missing friend would also raise some serious red flags. Even if Waller could convince the government and the media that his death had nothing to do with Oliver, there’s no chance that Malcolm Merlyn would ever let that go. A guy as distrusting, methodical and paranoid as Merlyn would spare no expense to get to the bottom of this.
Of course since this is indeed a flashback, we know they don’t go down that rabbit hole. Instead Oliver has Tommy abducted and taken to a dark room. There Oliver pretends to be a criminal that hacked his e-mail account in the hopes of luring a Queen family member to the country so he could hold them for ransom which seems to convince his dear friend that Oliver Queen is indeed dead. Shortly afterward, Tommy is miraculously “rescued” by Yamashiro
So How’s Thea Doing Anyway?
Throughout the episode, Oliver, who continues to be in the dark about why she left Starling City, has been trying to get a hold of Thea but she’s still not answering her phone. Roy seeing this begins to feel guilty about keeping Thea’s letter a secret from Oliver. When he tells Felicity about the letter, he says that he was hoping that she might just need some time and space. Felicity reasonably counters that it’s been five months and that Oliver needs to know. When Roy finally works up the nerve to tell Oliver, he takes it surprisingly well though it probably won’t be long before he does something about it (judging from the preview shown after the episode it’s probably next week).
Meanwhile, in a mansion in Corto Maltese three people are sparring in the lobby with one of them making quick work of the other two. Watching the match not far off is Malcolm who congratulates the winner revealed to none other than Thea who replies “Thanks Dad.”
Analysis
For the most part this episode wasn’t really about the action but more in watching our heroes deal with loss. Even during the flashback scenes we see Tommy Merlyn become utterly devastated when the one speck of hope he had that his buddy was still alive is quickly taken away from him. It also shows some solid acting from Stephen Amell whose character is forced to be the team’s rock while at the same time forced to confront his own mortality.
As for Komodo, he wasn’t particularly interesting but admittedly he showed enough skill that my gut tells me he’ll make an encore appearance (possibly in another Suicide Squad themed episode).
