Plot
With Oliver Queen still missing some three days after he left to duel Ra's Al Ghul, it falls to the rest of Team Arrow to protect Starling City. But demoralized and disorganized as they are, can they hold-up as an aspiring crime-boss makes a bold move to release hundreds of criminals from prison and form an unstoppable gang? And if they can't, could a new vigilante take flight in the city's time of need?
In the Hong Kong flashbacks, Ollie and Maseo must work quickly to recover the other half of the compound needed to make Chien Na Wei's bio-weapon if they are to have any hope of saving Tatsu.
Influences
The Green Arrow comics of Judd Winick.
Performances
David Ramsey, Colton Haynes and Emily Bett Rickards are each given a good amount of screen-time to showcase how their characters are coping with the apparent reality of Ollie's death. Felicity takes it the hardest, of course, and has the most dramatic reaction. Diggle is the most understated, ironically only losing his cool in the fact of an increasingly unsure Roy, who copes with things by looking inward and questioning his actions... just like Ollie in a crisis. This episode is written as an ensemble piece for the rest of Team Arrow and the actors all nail their parts.
Artistry
The opening chase scene is of cinematic quality and a feather in the cap of the show's stunt team.
Trivia
Danny "Brick" Brickwell is based on a crime-boss from the Judd Winick run on Green Arrow.
Like his comic-book counterpart, the Arrow version of Brick seems to possess some form of super-durability that makes him resistant (if not immune) to the effects of ballistic weaponry and bludgeoning damage. He does, however, seem to be less resistant to arrows.
Thus far,the Arrow version of Brick does not seem to possess the super-strength that Brick in the comics had. He also lack's the comic Brick's red skin and increased size. He does, however, possess his comic-book counterpart's talent for hand-to-hand combat.
Technobabble
The Omega element has to be mixed with another compound called Alpha in order to create a viable bio-weapon.
Ray Palmer tries to generate a two second electrical burst at 800 volts through a gauntlet..
When Felicity enters his office, he admits to having trouble modulating the stress energy tensor.
Ray tried over-clocking the magnetic coils but that didn't work.
Ray then asks Felicity to see if she can get a nanite chip to function.
He later asks if the problem is the transplex interface.
Dialogue Triumphs
(On seeing Arsenal chasing them)
Thug One: It's him!
Thug Two: I thought he was green!
Diggle: (defensively) I'm more a Glock kind of guy.
Arsenal: I didn't say anything.
Ray Palmer: Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Start small!
The scene in which Oliver fails to easily break a window even after Maseo shoots it is rather funny given how easy breaking in through a window is usually made to look on TV and in the movies.
Merlyn: Could you put the gun away? They don't scare so much as annoy me.
Roy: Thea just asked me to talk to The Arrow about finding Oliver.
Diggle: And what did you tell her?
Roy: What else? I lied.
Diggle: Oliver didn't want Thea to know.
Roy: That was then. But now, what's the point?
Diggle: I keep asking myself the same question, Roy.
Roy: Then why do you keep going over the case evidence?
Diggle: Because it helps me keep my mind off of Oliver.
Roy: Doing this without him while we're waiting for him to come back is one thing. But doing this without him WITHOUT him? That's a whole other situation.
Diggle: And what do you want me to tell you, Roy?! I can only see one inch in front of me and this is the only thing in front of me right now.
(After Diggle tries shooting him in the head and nothing happens)
Brick: Smart man. Nobody thinks about going for a head shot.
(After shooting Brick in the back while he was strangling Diggle, causing a grunt of pain)
Arsenal: I guess arrows work a little better on this guy than bullets.
Diggle: He's not coming back. Oliver. I know you don't want to believe it, Laurel. God knows I don't. But he's not coming back.
Laurel: Are you? Are you coming back?
Diggle: I don't know. For the first time since I've met Oliver Queen, I don't know what happens next. I know it's silly but... I still like to think of myself as Oliver's bodyguard. I just couldn't protect him.
(Laurel hugs him)
Diggle: It's funny. He was worried something would happen to me.
Continuity
As this episode opens, it has been three days since the events of A309 and eight months since Slade Wilson's attack on the city.
Diggle wears the Arrow suit for the first time since A105.
Ray Palmer has hated clowns since childhood.
Roy Harper knows Brick by sight.
The blueprint Diggle and Roy find is of the police evidence storage facility. The list they find is case numbers of all the violent offenders convicted in Starling City in the past eight months.
League of Assassins custom demands that any weapon used to kill someone in a duel be left on the dueling site as a memorial to the fallen.
Merlyn brings the sword Ra's impaled Oliver on to Felicity as proof of Oliver's death.
Roy does not usually drink alone.
Thea figured out on her own that Roy was The Arrow's new partner - the man in red.
Felicity is 25 years old.
Felicity quits Team Arrow and returns the chip Ray asked her to fix.
Laurel takes Sara's wig, mask, gloves and Canary Cry greanades from the Arrow Cave.
Merlyn asks Thea to flee the city with him, never to return.
Oliver plants a tracker on one of Chien Na Wei's men and lets him go so they can follow them back to her base and rescue Tatsu. Maseo swears to repay Oliver for this someday.
In the present, we find Maseo is the one who took Oliver's body from where it fell after the duel. We find out he took it to Tatsu, whom he did not want to see. Somehow, she brought Oliver back to life.
The Bottom Line
A solid episode that gives the supporting cast a shot at the spotlight. As usual, the weak point is Laurel but this is due more to the script than any failing on Katie Cassidy's part. The sad fact of the matter is that Laurel has been isolated from the rest of the cast for so long that she no longer has more than a passing acquaintance to most of the show's important characters. So there's no chance at the same wonderful interplay we get between Diggle and Felicity or Diggle and Roy because Laurel is absent for most of the episode. Even when we do see her, she doesn't show any reaction to Oliver's death once she hears about it and does little in the scene where she does find out apart from hug Diggle. Still, we do get to see her in costume for the second time and she doesn't get beaten up this time, so that's something.
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