Where’s Damien?
In the aftermath of the shooting, Felicity is in the hospital fighting for her life while Oliver meanwhile has gone on the warpath. He beats up any Ghost he comes across demanding to know where Damien is, which naturally goes nowhere since said Ghosts all opt to kill themselves rather than talk.
As Felicity goes in for another surgery, Oliver decides that with no leads, he needs to ask Captain Lance where to find Damien. Oliver is worried about blowing Lance’s cover but Lance figures that ship has sailed anyway and gives him the address to Damien’s lair. By the time Oliver gets there though he finds somebody has already beaten him to punch. While Damien is still nowhere to be found, Oliver finds several dead Ghosts and bloody calling card left by Anarky who it turns out also wants Damien’s head.
At the hospital, Thea confides in Laurel about the incident with Damien and also expresses her worry that Anarky will be coming after her for setting him on fire. Shortly afterward, they also find out about Captain Lance and Donna’s new relationship. It’s worth noting though that neither one of them seems to care all that much, so I can’t help but ask why they kept it a secret in the first place? Lance then tells Laurel that after the cops examined the crime scene at Damien’s lair they find that blood Anarky used to leave his calling card came from an elderly couple named Michael and Crystal Olguin, who just happened to be Anarky’s foster parents.
Back at HQ, Team Arrow concludes that Anarky is likely hiding out at the Olguin’s house. They hack into some cameras to confirm their suspicions, which is noticeably harder for them to do without Felicity but they nevertheless find that Anarky is indeed laying low over there.
Team Arrow goes to the house to confront Anarky, who isn’t particularly surprised to have some unannounced visitors since it turns out he booby-trapped the house with a couple of machine guns which causes Thea to break off from the team. It also turns out that Thea was right to assume that Anarky would be fixated on her but not in the way she expected. On the contrary, he’s actually grateful to her, saying that her setting him on fire “saved me from myself.” He then basically dares her to kill him which she appears to be on the verge of doing but luckily the rest of the team back her up just in time to knock him out instead.
Oliver has Anarky held captive in an abandoned building so he find out what Anarky knows about Damien. Laurel and Thea both think it would be better to just hand him over to the cops but Oliver is too angry to listen to either of them and they also have no other leads on Damien. However, Oliver doesn’t get too long into his interrogation before Thea tells him that there was a complication in Felicity’s surgery.
Oliver makes it to the hospital and Donna tells him the bad news. The surgeon found too much damage to her spinal cord and that Felicity will likely never walk again. Oliver is aggravated further when he finds out on the news that Laurel had to cops take in Anarky while he was gone. Anarky’s police transport doesn’t get very far though before Oliver shows up to bust him out. Oliver uncuffs Anarky and tells him to make sure Damien is dead.
Back at HQ, Laurel chews Oliver out for letting Anarky loose, though Oliver is no mood to argue with her especially since he feels she forced his hand by calling the cops on Anarky in the first place. Laurel however insists that it was morally wrong to hold him prisoner though Oliver is quick to remind her of the situation with Sara. Oliver also insists that he still knows what he’s doing and reveals that he put a tracker on him so he can find Damien himself. When Diggle gets wind of Oliver’s plan he tells him that he’ll back him up no matter what but warns Oliver not to lose sight of the humanity he’s been slowly gaining back since he returned from the island.
Meanwhile, Thea fearing that her bloodlust will soon get the best of her once again decides to break things off with Alex (anybody else surprised this is still a thing?) saying she needs to deal with her “anger management” problems. Alex understands though he lets her know that he’ll still be around when she’s ready to start things up again.
Back at HQ, Oliver’s plan has quickly gone out the window when Anarky ditches his tracker. The team notices how much this has rattled Oliver and tell him to go visit Felicity at the hospital while they figure out a new way to find Damien and Anarky. When he visits the hospital, Felicity helps him regain his perspective and they reaffirm their love for each other.
Thanks to a tip from Andy, the team then discovers that Anarky has decided to attack Damien at his home and we cut to Damien’s house to find that Anarky has tied Damien’s wife and daughter to chairs and is preparing to set them both on fire. Team Arrow shows up just before that can happen. Oliver and Thea fight Anarky while Diggle and Laurel take Damien’s family to safety. It isn’t long though before Anarky flees the fight and Oliver and Thea decide to split up to try to find him (because splitting up is never a bad idea). Along the way, Oliver runs into Damien while Thea tracks down Anarky. Thea has Anarky tied to a tree and once again he’s daring her to kill him but she’s able to fight the temptation and Anarky uses her hesitation to his advantage and makes his escape. Meanwhile, Oliver fights with Damien and it unsurprisingly goes like all their previous fights and Damien has Oliver at his mercy. However, since Oliver saved his family, he says he’ll give him a few weeks to enjoy what little time he has left with his own family.
In the aftermath, Thea decides to patch things up with Alex (so was the ten minute breakup just to remind us that he still exists?), while Oliver pays another visit to Felicity at the hospital. He suggests they both go on vacation but Felicity knows Oliver has bigger fish to fry first and he won’t be able to relax until Damien is out of the picture.
Meanwhile, Damien is riding in a limo with his wife and daughter. He promises to take them somewhere safer but his wife is more angry that Damien didn’t kill Green Arrow when he had the chance. Damien points out though that even for him it would’ve been a dick move to kill him after he just saved his family’s lives but promises things are still going according to plan.
Diggle
Diggle continues to be plagued by family issues this episode or rather issues with Andy. Diggle tries asking him for a lead on where to find Damien but he quickly realizes that usual methods haven’t worked on Andy so far, so instead Diggle straight up beats the crap out of him.
Diggle eventually decides to go home to cool off and tell Lyla about what happened. When she hears about Diggle did to Andy, she tells him that his biggest problem in dealing with Andy is that he’s been treating him like an enemy operative and not like his brother.
Diggle goes back to Andy to apologize for beating him up, which causes Andy to remember that this wasn’t exactly the first time Diggle felt the need to do so. As it turns out, Diggle did the same thing ten years ago when he found out Andy was dealing drugs before eventually talking Andy into enlisting and get his life straight (temporarily anyway). Andy then talks about how Damien wants to build a new world, though Diggle points out that he still shot Felicity and whether or not Damien actually wants to save the world, he still crossed a line. This seems to at least partially get through to Andy but he still shows some evident resentment towards Diggle.
Afterwards, Diggle decides to take Lyla’s advice to heart and goes to visit Andy again but instead interrogating him he has them playing cards instead.
Flashback Time
Conklin takes Oliver and Taiana as well as the maps Oliver just found to Reiter. While normally Oliver would probably find a way to fight off Conklin before it got to that point, a very recent shark bite he suffered looking for the maps makes it clear that’s not an option. Conklin then reveals to Reiter that Oliver is working against them. Oliver tries talking his way out of it again but Reiter isn’t buying it this time.
Reiter gives Conklin his permission to kill Oliver but Conklin instead decides to get his revenge on Oliver by flogging him. He only get a few lashes in though before Reiter notices the tattoo Constantine left for Oliver is glowing. Oliver, realizing the Reiter now wants him alive, takes Conklin’s gun and threatens to kill himself. Oliver then makes a deal with Reiter that he’ll help him find whatever he’s looking for on the island in exchange for Taiana’s safety and Reiter agrees. Conklin of course tells Reiter that Oliver can’t be trusted but Reiter reminds him that “there’s no part of my plan which requires you to be alive.” Conklin may not be thrilled that Oliver is still alive but he’s all too happy to stick him and Taiana into one of the island’s jail cells.
Flash Forward
We find ourselves back at the cemetery like in the season premiere with Oliver telling Barry “I’m going to kill him.”
Oliver then gets into a limo with Felicity (who doesn’t seem to be wearing her engagement ring anymore) and she tells him “You have to kill that son of a bitch.”
Analysis
I’m not sure what it is about this episode. Maybe it was the month long hiatus or that it felt like another set-up episode but even though this episode wasn’t necessarily bad, it was still underwhelming. It might be because at the end of the day, there wasn’t really any forward progress with the plot. Anarky’s still on the loose and Damien is still as vague about his master plan as ever.
One scene that bugs me more than any other is Laurel getting mad at Oliver about Anarky. Okay, Laurel is technically correct that what Oliver did was wrong and is well within her rights to be pissed at Oliver for setting Anarky free but it’s not like this is the first time they’ve held someone prisoner for information (heck they’ve had Andy prisoner in the next room for weeks). Also, all things considered holding a criminal prisoner is pretty low on the list of morally questionable things the team has done over the years (many of which Laurel has committed herself), so Laurel acting all high and mighty about it now feels pretty forced but then again with Laurel it wouldn’t be the first time.
As for the flash forward scene, it’s still frustratingly vague. The only concrete piece of new information we got is that Felicity isn’t the one that dies (no doubt to the disappointment of countless fans). The fact that both characters are still playing the pronoun game saying stuff like “I’m going to kill him” still has me wondering if they’re even talking about Damien. It also has me thinking the writers still haven’t made up their mind about where the hell they’re even going with this plot line.
Hopefully things get a little more exciting next week as Lyla gets kidnapped (again) in ‘A.W.O.L.’
