Arrow Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 23 - Schism

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.


Plot

With HIVE's master-plan foiled, Damien Darhk risks a direct assault on Team Arrow, stealing the laptop holding Rubicon in check and assaulting The Bunker. As Felicity and Curtis work to redirect the nuclear missile heading straight for Star City, Oliver Queen will have to draw upon a new-found power of his own to counter Darhk's death magic and save the world!


Influences

Green Arrow: Year One (the Lian Yu segments), Green Arrow: City Walls (Green Arrow fighting a magically-empowered villain by rallying the people of a city behind him), the film Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (centered around a doomsday device similar to Rubicon that could launch multiple nuclear missiles at once), the Spider-Man movies of Sam Raimi (the scene where a group of ordinary people show up to save the hero from the super-villain or support him after he nearly dies saving them.), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (ARGUS taking custody of the idol and disappearing it into storage) and Green Arrow: One Year Later (Oliver Queen becoming Mayor of Star City following a super-villain attack).


Goofs

Felicity says that Warren Air Force Base is in Colorado. That may be the case in the DCTVU, but in our world it is located in Wyoming, though it is close to the Colorado/Wyoming border.

Where does Curtis go to in the final part of the show after Darhk is defeated?

All of the talk about Laurel being merciful and not wanting her murderer to die directly contradicts everything we've seen about Laurel's character throughout the show's history. In Season Two, she was ready to see The Arrow shot dead by a SWAT team when she was blaming him for Tommy's death. In Season Three, the only reason she didn't kill the assassin she thought killed her sister was because she never checked to see if the gun she stole from the Arrow Cave was loaded. And for all of the talk about how she believed in law and order, she routinely abused the authority of her office and subverted rules and promises when it suited her to do so. Hopefully we'll get less of this white-washing in Season Five.


Performances

This may be Stephen Amell's finest hour yet as Oliver Queen.  When he is speaking to the people of his town begging them to stop writing and when he later confronts Darhk before an angry mob ready to take back their city from the man wanted to destroy it, he IS the fat-cat bashing champion of the people from the comics.

Honestly, the entire cast bring their A-game to this episode and everyone has at least one amazing moment.


Artistry

The special effects during the sequence in which Darhk contains one of Oliver's exploding arrows are of cinematic quality.

The fight scene in The Bunker between Team Arrow and the ghosts is one of the best in the show's already impressive history.

The fight scene between the HIVE ghosts and the mob of Star City citizens is probably the largest one in the show's history and is well-shot and choreographed.

The final scene as Ollie is sworn into office and we see all of the team parting ways is a wonderful bit of direction and editing, with a powerful music score.


Trivia

Instead of the usual "My name is Oliver Queen." introduction, the episode opens with a recap of the major events of Season Four.

Sara is briefly mentioned as being at an ARGUS safe house in Coast City. Coast City, in the DC Comics Universe, is a city in California and home town to the Green Lantern Hal Jordan.

After Baron Reiter's idol is claimed by ARGUS, Amanda Waller commands it to be transported to The Slab. In the DC Comics Universe, The Slab is a maximum security prison for metahumans. Originally located in New Jersey, it was relocated to Antarctica following the events of the story Joker's Last Laugh.



Technobabble

Darhk's attack on Curtis leaves him with possible internal bleeding, cracked ribs and a hemothorax. This has to be treated by an immediate release of pressure.

The runes on Baron Reiter's arm prevent the power of the idol from overwhelming his mind.

Rubicon launches 15,434 nuclear missiles.

It takes 45 minutes for a Minuteman ICBM to travel from Warren Air Force Base to Star City.

Curtis suggests, when Felicity is unable to remotely hack the ICBM aimed at Star City, to use a line-of-sight attack on the missile to disarm it once it is close enough.

Nukes are designed to detonate 100 feet above their actual target.

Felicity uploads a GPS spoof to disable the missile as Curtis points an IR receiver at it.

The odds of disabling all the nukes launched by Rubicon with the line-of-sight hack is 1 in 375 million.

When Felicity hacked the nuke aimed at Star City, she gained access to its on-board computer and cloned its hard drive remotely before running a back-trace to determine the source of the initial launch signal.

By inverting the horizons of the remaining 15,433 missiles, Felicity and Curtis are able to cause the missiles to explode in space.


Dialogue Triumphs

(Green Arrow jumps through a window, tuck and rolls and comes up his bow drawn and an arrow ready.)
Darkh: Okay, I know you don't live here anymore but those were nice windows.

Taiana: You are a murderer! You killed my brother! You are darkness.
Oliver: Yes I am!  But you don't have to be!

Oliver: We can't just lose all hope here.
Felicity: You have. I can see it in your eyes.
Oliver: (sighs) I just can't believe that I thought... that I'd be the one to unite this city while Damien Darhk was trying to kill it. That was arrogant. The same arrogance that made me feel like I could be The Green Arrow without descending into darkness. Bottom Line: it was foolish.
Felicity: You don't believe that-
Oliver: I didn't believe that. Until Laurel died.
Felicity: I thought you weren't blaming yourself for her death anymore?
Oliver: We made a decision to come back here. I tried to do things differently and for a time I did. And now I am left here to wonder... if I hadn't, would Laurel still be alive?
(Curtis limps into the room, clutching his side.)
Oliver: Curtis! You shouldn't be up.
Curtis: Tell me about it. Someone's got to provide a little optimism. Doesn't seem like anyone around here is in the head space to do it.
Oliver: You know we've lost the city?
Curtis: No. I know you're running out of time to get it back. Look, living in Star City requires a special kind of tenacity. A sane person wouldn't live here. It's a fact that Paul likes to remind me of weekly. We were this close to leaving Star City last October. After three terrorist attacks, we were done. But then - the night before we were going to start packing - The Green Arrow popped up on our TV. And he reminded me that this city is worth saving. And my home... that my home was worth fighting for. That guy gave me inspiration. He gave me hope. And if he could give me hope then, why can't he give it to others now?

(Oliver Queen addresses a crowd of rioting citizens.)
Oliver; Please! I know what you're feeling right now! I'm feeling it too! The sense of helplessness?! Of Hopelessness?! I don't know how we even begin to process what might happen to us right now! But there are a few things that I do know! I know that this city has been through tough times before and we have pulled through! We survived The Undertaking! We survived The Siege! We survived The Outbreak! And somehow, someway, we will survive this! A friend of mine told me that living in Star City takes a special kind of tenacity. But we do live here! Because this is our home! This! Is! Our! Home! It is our friend, our family, our lives!  And we will not - we will not - throw those precious gifts away by descending into chaos! We will look to each other for hope! We will cling to each other for strength! And if we do that, no matter what happens, we can all stand here united!

John: Oliver, you yourself said going after Darhk was a suicide mission.
Oliver: Well, John, I'm not gonna die tonight!

(Green Arrow enters the nexus room under Star City's city hall.)
Green Arrow: Darhk!
Darhk: (rolling his eyes) What does a guy have to do to end the world in peace?!

(Thea shoots the two HIVE Ghosts that were sneaking up on Merlyn)
Merlyn: Thanks. Unless you were aiming at me.
Thea: At this point, I honestly can't tell.

(Darhk has just brought an entire crowd to their knees with one magical growl.)
Darhk: Humanity is feckless! And I wanted to cleanse it of a millennium worth of rot it has been infected by and I will do it!
Green Arrow: (from behind Darhk, coming to his feet) No you won't!
(Darhk turns and smirks at Green Arrow.)
Darhk: Okay. Just for fun. How are you going to stop me?
Green Arrow: Because it won't just be me who's going to stop you!
(Darhk freezes as he hears the mob behind him starting to come to their feet, enraged and inspired by one man standing up to Darhk's power. Without a word, Green Arrow draws a shaft and lets it fly. It cuts Darhk's face.  He touches the blood with one finger and looks at it astonished.  He reaches out toward Green Arrow and nothing happens... save that Green Arrow's eyes glow gold as they did when Green Arrow last tapped into his sense of hope to repel Darhk's magic.)
Green Arrow: Not so easy without the magic, is it?!
Darhk: Oh, I don't need magic. I'm a former member of the League of Assassins. Or have you forggoten that?
Green Arrow: Remind me.
(The mob cheer as Green Arrow closes in on Darhk and the two begin to fight.)

(Quentin Lance helps Green Arrow up after he's shot in the chest with an arrow Darhk fired.)
Quentin: Now you know how it feels.
Green Arrow: Wait, I thought you and Donna-?
Quentin: Don't worry. She's safe. But I had to come back to stand with my city because this Oliver Queen guy gives a hell of a speech.
Green Arrow: (looking to Spartan and Lyla, who just walked up) You two were supposed to stay as back-up!
Spartan: I already lost one brother!

(Green Arrow grabs Darhk by the shirt-collar with one hand and holds an arrow in the other.)
Darhk: What are you going to do now, Oliver? Stop the posturing We both know you can't do it. You spared the life of the man who killed your own mother.
Green Arrow: You killed a friend of mine. You killed tens of thousands of innocent people. With Slade Wilson I had a choice. This time, I don't.
(Green Arrow stabs the arrow into Darhk's chest and lets him fall to the ground.)

Oliver: You okay?
John: Not really. I told Lyla the truth about Andy.
Oliver: What did she say?
John: She's a soldier. She understood. But I don't and I don't think I ever will.
Oliver: What are you going to do?
John: Take some time away from this team. Away from the city. Figure out where I went off track and how to get back on.
Oliver: John, I have never done this without you. You're the one who keeps me in line.
John: Oliver, I don't know if you've been watching lately, but.. it's been the other way around, man.

Amanda Waller: You saved a lot of lives.
Oliver: I took some, too.
Amanda Waller: Do you remember what I told you? That the only way out is through?
Oliver: Well, I'm not out, Amanda. I'm still filled with darkness.
Amanda Waller: This was never about expunging your darkness, Mr. Queen. That darkness will always be a part of you.
Oliver: Then what was the point?!
Amanda Waller: To show you that sometimes killing is the only path to justice.

Felicity: You okay?
Oliver: No. (sighs) It's Thea amd John.
Felicity: Them leaving has to be a blow.
Oliver: They're leaving because of their own personal darkness. I just can't help but think that maybe they were infected by mine.
Felicity: Maybe. Like you said, maybe you can't become a hero without succumbing to the darkness even a little bit? But you were able to defeat Darhk by giving the city its hope back.
Oliver: You're saying it's not black and white?
Felicity: I'm saying that there's a man who killed Darhk in cold blood. And that same man stood on top of a car and gave a city its hope back. What you're feeling isn't darkness. It's a schism. You're at war with two sides of yourself.


Continuity

Baron Reiter has magical power enough to destroy a small airplane with a gesture.

Oliver and Taiana kill Baron Reiter together, with Taiana tapping his life force and Oliver throwing a knife into his back.

Diggle freezes up in the middle of the fight with The HIVE Ghosts, seeing his brother's face.

Lyla notices this, prompting him to confess that he didn't kill Andy Diggle in self defense.

Lyla doesn't care but Diggle does.

Oliver snaps Taiana's neck after she asks him to kill her before she becomes more of a monster than Reiter.

Taiana reminds Oliver of his promise in 418 to tell her parents what happened if she died.

Felicity reminds Cooper Seldon of how they wanted to save the world, seven years earlier, as seen in the flashbacks in 305.

Cooper Seldon is killed by Darhk after he refuses to continue working to keep Rubicon running.

Darhk refers to the events of 223 and Oliver's refusal to kill Slade Wilson.

Quentin Lance is officially let go from the CCPD and decides to leave Star City for a while with Donna Smoak.

Thea also decides to quit being Speedy for fear of losing too much of herself and being Malcolm Merlyn's daughter, based on her threatening to kill Darhk's daughter to save Ollie's life.

John also says he's going to go away for a while and figure out where he went off-track.

Oliver buries Taiana.next to Yao Fei, Robert Queen and Shado on Lian Yu.

Oliver uses the comm gear Amanda Waller gave him to radio ARGUS in order to rescue the rest of the prisoners on the island.

Oliver refuses Amanda Waller's offer of employment as an ARGUS agent or a ride back to the USA so that he can keep the promise he made to Taiana and go to Russia.

Thomas Kemp - the chair of the Star City council - informs Oliver Queen that they want to appoint him as an interim mayor until the next election in August 2016, based on his speech to the people of Star City during the rioting.  Oliver agrees to take the job.

As the episode closes, Quentin is seen leaving Star City by car with Donna Smoak, Thea is seen sitting on a couch in the apartment she shared with Laurel and John is seen packing a bag while wearing a dress military uniform, apparently having reenlisted.


The Fridge Factor

Felicity is dumbed-down to give Curtis Holt a chance to contribute - first by his having the idea to use a line-of-sight attack to disable the nuke approaching Star City and then by suggesting they invert the horizons of the missiles so they will explode in space.


The Bottom Line

Taken on its own, this is a solid episode with some great performances, wonderful action sequences and great writing. Taken in the context of the whole season, however, it's something of a disappointment. The whole point of Season Four was to make Arrow lighten up. and its hard to see how having everyone except Felicity leave the team in order to cope with their own personal issues fits into that theme... particularly since Oliver ultimately has to abandon his new-found optimism and promise not to kill in order to defeat Darhk once and for all. Still, the idea of Oliver falling to leave up to his ideals is par for the course in the comics, too. Unfortunately, having Oliver win in this fashion does make much of his conflict for this season seem completely pointless.

Arrow Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 22 - Lost In The Flood

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

Rubicon has been delayed for a day. But Felicity's old flame, Cooper Seldon, is now working for HIVE and all too eager to prove himself the better hacker once and for all. Now, as Noah and Curtis join forces with Felicity to protect the world's nuclear arsenal, Oliver and John must race to rescue Thea from HIVE's underground city before Anarky can destroy it. Unfortunately, Ruve Adams has turned the whole city against them. And Merlyn has turned Thea against Oliver!

In the flashback sequences, the dark power of the Idol begins to change Tiana for the worse. And Baron Reiter is not quite as dead as Oliver thought...


Influences

Green Arrow: Year One (the Lian Yu segments), Green Arrow: City Walls (Green Arrow fighting a magically-empowered villain inside a sealed city), the film Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (centered around a doomsday device similar to Rubicon that could launch multiple nuclear missiles at once, name-dropped by Darkh), the film War Games (centered around hackers averting World War III, name-dropped by Curtis) the Fallout game series (Tevat Noah resembles the more idealistic visions of the underground vaults and serves the same purpose), the works of William Shakespeare (Cooper Seldon quotes Richard the Third and Hamlet), Brave New World (Spartan name-drops the book, there's some resemblance between the society HIVE is creating and The World State of this book), the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming (the destruction of Tevat Noah is pretty much every James Bond villain base going up in smoke, Darhk lets Green Arrow and Spartan live only so they can die a worse death while watching hiim win) and pretty much every Dennis O'Neil or Elliot S! Maggin story where Oliver Queen doubted his role as a vigilante doing real good for society at large.


Goofs

There's a lot of weird lens flares and other oddities in the lighting that distract from the action.

Noah and Donna's argument is remarkably quiet until Felicity has sufficient time to ask Curtis what is going on and notice that he's drinking.

Granting that it's in a backyard, you'd think SOMEONE would have done something to clean up Alex's dead body!

Also, what genius decided that powering Tevat Noah with a power source so unstable that one arrow going into the machinery in its control room could cause the whole complex to explode was a good idea? Was HIVE contracting out to the lowest bidder?

Cool as the fight looks, it's impossible to beleive that Anarky is capable of fighting both Green Arrow, Speedy and Spartan to a stand-still, even in the middle of a collapsing room!

How does Merlyn know Ruve Adams was killed? He was busy evacuating people when she died. (Possibly he's working with Anarky planning a double cross of Darhk and the escaped Anarky told him? Or he just knows because he is/was Ra's Al Ghul.)


Artistry

The sequence in which Spartan, Speedy and Green Arrow fight Anarky in the midst of a collapsing control room looks amazing, between the practical effects and the fight choreography.


Trivia

As is tradition with previous seasons' penultimate episodes (i.e. Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Streets On Fire, This Is Your Sword), the title of this episode comes from a Bruce Springsteen song.

Taiana says her home village is ruled over by a "strongman" named Kovar, who works for the Russian Government. This could be a reference to Leonid Konstantinovitch Kovar a.k.a. Starfire a.k.a. Red Star. Kovar was DC Comics first Russian superhero, created in 1968 and first appearing in Teen Titans #18. The son of an archeologist, Leonid and his father investigated a spaceship crash that bathed the teenager with a strange energy when the ship exploded. Afterward, Leonid found that he had enhanced strength, speed and psychokinesis, A devout Communist, Leonid offered his services to his country and became Russia's first state-sanctioned superhero.


Technobabble

The nuclear missile which destroyed Havenrock was a long-range KN-08 ballistic missile.

Felicity's back-trace of Thea's phone signal has an accuracy rate of 99.9999%..

Diggle says that Tevat Noah is just like Mount Weather - a Continuity Of Government facility built by FEMA during The Cold War in case of a nuclear attack.

Oliver is either able to pick locks with an arrowhead or has a special arrowhead that is shaped like a lock-pick. He uses it to break into one of the houses in Tevat Noah while seeking cover from the guards.

Smartphones are protected by encryption. If you fail to enter the proper passcode or fingerprint after so many tries, the phone "bricks" itself (i.e. locks so no one can access it). Curtis suggests that rather than trying to break the encryption on Rubicon, they make it stop working in the first place by overwhelming it with too many access requests.

Cooper shuts down Felicity's system with an X-Axis Bi-numeric Algorithm virus. It's one she created back in college.

Cooper then sends electrical surges to all their previous IPs. Unfortunately, this allows Felicity to ping back to his location. This let's Noah hitch their own code onto the back trace. The code they use is an executable Curtis designs to overload Rubicon with access requests.

Tevat Noah is powered by a dwarf star alloy. Powerful, but touchy, as Anarky describes it. This means that a stray shot in the control center could blow up the whole complex.


Dialogue Triumphs

(Oliver shoots two arrows at Dark. They vaporize before they come close to touching him.)
Darhk: Cool. You know, I didn't even mean to do that?!

Darhk: Today was supposed to be Christmas and I woke up to a lump of coal. Is it because I've been naughty this year?

Darkh: (To Cooper) Not that it's not scintillating to watch you type, but when exactly will I have Rubicon back?

Man: You can't win! You can't stop Genesis!
Spartan: Well, what are you going to do when you're not here to enjoy your Brave New World?
Green Arrow: Spartan! Easy...
Spartan: He almost got us killed.
Green Arrow: They're like Thea. They're not in their right minds.
Man: You mean the pills? We haven't taken any. Not even one. None of us have. We're here because we believe. Because we know the world is evil and darkness. It's beyond saving.
Green Arrow: How can you believe that?
Man: Because we lived it. Every day. So many promises were made to save the city. But it all just fell apart. And we were the ones left in the rubble. Damien Darhk has given us hope. Can you, with your masks and your guns, actually say the same?

Green Arrow: Do you ever think that maybe Darhk has a point?
Spartan: No. Darhk is psychotic. Everyone down here is.
Green Arrow: Are they? He's not wrong. The world is coming apart just like Star City. I mean, it is worse than it has ever been...
Spartan: That's because Darhk's been spending the past year trying to kill it.
Green Arrow: Then why is he giving these people more hope than we ever could?

Thea: (to Merlyn) Drug me again and I will kill you, you son of a bitch!

Spartan: So Machin is down here?
Merlyn: An ongoing pest we've yet to exterminate.
Thea: He killed Alex, who brought me down here because Ruve drugged him. Just like you did to me.
Merlyn: We can discuss my parenting philosophy later. Mr. Machin is the immediate threat!
Spartan: To Darhk and his wife and I still don't understand why we should care.
Merlyn: Because he has already tried once to kill everyone down here!
Green Arrow: Malcolm's right. We're not letting anyone else die. (turning the family whose house they took over) This place isn't safe. I need you to get them out of here in order to protect them. Please...
(Green Arrow turns back to Merlyn.)
Green Arrow: Now you know the way out. So if we can't stop Machin, then you are going to lead the evacuation.
Merlyn: I don't recall volunteering.
(Spartan draws his gun and puts it to Merlyn's head. Merlyn doesn't blink.)
Merlyn: And even if I did, where exactly where would I evacuate them to? Everything above our heads is going to be under a mushroom cloud!
Green Arrow: I refuse to believe that.
Merlyn: Because you're a fool.
Green Arrow: Because I have hope.

Green Arrow: The city's safe...
Felicity: You sound like there's a "but" to that sentence.
Green Arrow: People still need saving. They still need hope.

Darkh: Tell me.
Merlyn: It was Machin. He's-
Darkh: Ruve?!
Merlyn: I'm sorry.
Darkh: My daughter?
Merlyn: We're still getting reports of survivors.
Darkh: We're locked out of Rubicon. Momentarily. I know someone who can get us back online.
Merlyn: Damien... Tevat Noah is gone! It's buried under miles of ash! Even if you could regain control of Rubicon, they would be no place on Earth that is safe!
Darkh: If there's no place left on Earth that is safe... let it all burn.

Felicity: Go to hell!
Darhk: Why bother? I'm going to bring it to us.


Continuity

Curtis makes reference to the city-threatening events that have occurred in Starling City over the past three years including earthquakes (Season 1), viral attacks (Season 3) and armies of super-soldiers (Season 2).

Curtis is apparently on the Dark Web and knows Noah Kuttler by reputation.

Cooper Seldon is seen for the first time since 305. He broke out of Iron Heights during Damien Darhk's escape.

We learn the name of HIVE's underground city is Tevat Noah.

Thea's phone signal comes from the corner of Berkeley and Childress, right in the heart of The Glades.

Taiana becomes more blood-thirsty and willing to kill as people die near her as she is holding the idol.

Merlyn drugs Thea to make her compliant.

Felicity tells Donna that she's been working with The Green Arrow for three years.

Taiana is from a village, Krasnoyarsk, which is ruled over by a "government strong man" named Kovar. She wants to use the power of the idol to free her people.

Noah claims he wasn't given any choice regarding abandoning his family.

Noah recognizes the virus Cooper uses as one Felicity designed, saying that he did keep tabs on his daughter and her work.

When Donna Smoak gets stressed, she folds clothes.

Donna Smoak confesses to Felicity that Noah didn't abandon them - she took Felicity and left him when Felicity was 7.

Felicity notes, however, that Noah never once tried to correct Felicity's belief that he was a deadbeat dad.

Thea is now a good enough shot with a bow and arrow that she can shoot the sword out of someone's hand.

Anarky refers to the events of 410 - the last time he took Darhk's wife and daughter hostage.

Tevat Noah is powered by a dwarf star alloy, much like Ray Palmer's technology.

Anarky stabs Ruve Adams to death with one of Speedy's arrows.

Anarky seems to escape the collapse of Tevat Noah.

Green Arrow saves Damien Darhk's daughter.

The destruction of Tevat Noah does damage to The Glades above it.

Donna asks Noah to leave and never contact Felicity again. As the episode closes, he seems to.

Curtis points out that Donna's refusal to believe Noah could change his lying ways mirrors Felicity's dumping Oliver over his lying.


The Winick Factor

Everyone - HIVE and Team Arrow alike - is nerfed so that Anarky can be built up as a threat. Ditto the return of Cooper Seldon, who is now suddenly a competent enough hacker to handle Felicity AND her dad at the same time.


The Bottom Line

Everything about this episode feels like so much padding. When everything should be racing to a conclusion after last week's exciting episode, this episode slams on the breaks so we can focus on Felicity's family issues (which still aren't really resolved) and Thea's fight with Anarky last week proves to be completely pointless so that we can have all of Team Arrow have a far harder time fighting him than they should.

The cast gives it their all but that doesn't change the fact that the first half of the episode revolves around people typing while spouting technobabble and - as Damien Darhk himself notes - that's not exactly scintillating. The second half is somewhat better, but Thea's being brainwashed is a waste of time as is Oliver's momentary consideration that he's failed the city as a beacon of hope.

And yet, I have hope that next week's finale will prove to have been worth this diversion. It's a dim hope, but it is there.

Arrow Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 21 - Monument Point

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

With Damien Darhk's plan exposed, Team Arrow and ARGUS will have their hands full preventing a nuclear catastrophe! Unfortunately, cracking the Rubicon Protocol is beyond even Felicity's talents. Now, Team Arrow must find The Calculator before HIVE does. But even if they manage that trick, can Felicity's felonious father be trusted? Meanwhile, in Darhk's underground city, Thea reluctantly teams up with Merlyn to stop Anarky from killing all of the city's inhabitants. And Quentin Lance makes a fateful decision regarding his job and his relationship with Donna Smoak.

In the flashbacks, Oliver moves to confront Baron Reiter as Taiana escorts the rest of the escaped slaves to an airplane off Lian Yu.



Influences

Green Arrow: Year One (the flashbacks on Lian Yu), the Fallout game series (Darhk's underground city is reminiscent of The Vaults), the film Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (centered around a doomsday device similar to Rubicon that could launch multiple nuclear missiles at once), the film War Games (centered around hackers averting World War III) and 24 (the continual ticking timer in the background, the global stakes, espionage  and continual shifting of focus throughout the episode)


Performances

This episode may be Willa Holland's finest turn yet as Thea Queen. She is fierce throughout the episode and my fears of her being turned into a damsel in distress for this final act proved totally unfounded!

The subplot with Quentin and Donna may seem unnecessary given the high-stakes in the episode's other stories. Still, it's a welcome moment of humanity that doesn't slow the pace of the action at all and Paul Blackthorne and Charlotte Ross play it wonderfully. In fact, I can't recall us ever seeing them interacting together alone ever since they became a couple and I now wish we'd seen more of it.


Artistry

Great fight scenes throughout, as per usual.

The direction of the fight-scenes in the fifth segment, with Thea fighting Anarky intercut with the HIVE ghosts fighting Team Arrow is cut together perfectly.


Trivia

Mention is made of the fictional DC Comics nations of Markovia and Corto Maltese, along the nations whose nuclear weapons have been taken over by HIVE.

Markovia has been mentioned several times before on Arrow, most recently in 416 as the home of Damien Darhk's alias, Kenneth Bender.  In the DC Comics Universe, it is home to the superhero GeoForce and located in Western Europe, between France, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Corto Maltese has also been mentioned before on Arrow, and was the setting (and title) of 303. It is an island nation in the DC Comics Universe, located off the South American coast. Originally created by Frank Miller as the site of a rebellion that was backed by the US Government in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, it has become a catch-all location for shady dealings or stories requiring a modern-day Banana Republic

Felicity refers to Brick and Murmur as "last year's greatest hits." Both villains were introduced to the DCTVU during Arrow's third season.

Because Merlyn doesn't trust Thea with a weapon, he says she'll have to make do with Krav Maga when facing Anarky. Krav Maga is a martial art developed by the Israel Defense Forces that mixes elements of aikido, judo, boxing and wrestling along with realistic fight training.

The DEFCON level is primarily controlled by the Secretary of Defense and The President of the United States. It describes the levels of readiness for the US Military in a crisis situation. DEFCON-5 is the lowest. To give some perspective, The Cuban Missile Crisis was a DEFCON-2 event whereas The September 11th Terrorist Attacks were a DEFCON 3 event.

In the Justice Society of America comic written by Arrow Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim, Monument Point was a large Metropolis located within commuting distance of Washington DC. The town was saved several times by The Justice Society, who wound up adopting the town as their base of operations and the city council appointed the Jay Garrick Flash as their mayor.

The location of Monument Point as indicated on the map in the episode shows that it is in a similar location, just west of Washington D.C.


Technobabble

Rubicon uses fourier protocols - something Noah Kuttler practically wrote the book on.

A nexus chamber is a collector of magic. In order to take advantage of the deaths caused by even a single nuke going off, Darhk will need to be inside it.

Oliver deduces the nexus chamber in Star City it must be on a ley line (the wi-fi of the magic, as Vixen calls ti), but that still leaves too much of the city to search easily.

Felicity tracks down Calculators new lair by searching for a deep-trunk fiber-optic hookup with polymorphic encryption.

Calculator has a root directory on his system called Ravenspur.

Felicity develops a ley line algorithm to find possible hiding places for the Star City nexus room.

Green Arrow makes use of an explosive arrow to cover his and Spartan's tracks after the fight with Brick and Murmur in Cyprus Cove.

Noah claims he will need the quantum subliminal processor that Palmer Tech developed to hack Rubicon in twelve hours

Anarky targets the CO2 scrubbers of HIVE's city. This will render the atmosphere unbreakable.

Ollie uses an electronic lock-pick to open the door into Palmer Tech for Felicity and Noah.

An electro-magnetic wave-generator and a battery tender can be used to force the restart of an electronic lock.

Noah uses his sniffer device to copy the processor's operating code wirelessly, when Felicity is unable to open the case holding it.

Noah is only able to copy 90% of the code. It's possible for him to extrapolate the remaining 10% of the code to build a workable processor, but that will still require them to upload the override codes to every individual missile silo manually. This can only be done from a server farm.

When Felicity takes down the sub-node at the sever farm, this releases a tapeworm in the Rubicon code - an anti-hack fail-safe, created by HIVE. Noah is able to override it, but not before it broadcasts their location to HIVE.

Noah is able to set the remaining launch algorithms into an infinite loop. He guesses this will buy them 24 hours.

Unable to hack the controls on the nuclear missile, Felicity instead decides to "move Monument Point" using a GPS realignment. As a prank, Felicity once relocated a GPS satellite. This caused everyone on the Eastern seaboard to think they were twenty miles west of where they really were. This allows Felicity to redirect the missile to the smaller town of Havenrock, saving millions at the cost of killing tens of thousands.


Dialogue Triumphs

(Thea is sitting in the kitchen of the house she and Alex were staying in. Two HIVE guards are watching her. Thea is whistling along with the birdsong looped in the background. She gestures to the side as the dog is supposed to bark as Merlyn enters and says 'Woof'.)
Merlyn: I know. The predictability was a terrible flaw in the design.
Thea: Predictability is your flaw too. Every time my life starts to suck, you show up.
Merlyn: Leave us.
(The HIVE Guards leave them alone. Thea looks at Malcolm's new hand.)
Thea: Is that hand a present from your new best friend?
Merlyn: I'm not doing this for a prosthetic, Thea. I'm doing it -
Both: - to keep you safe.
Merlyn: Yes. To keep you safe.
Thea: Mmm-hmm. Yeah. Like I said. Predictable.

Thea: (To Merlyn) Look, I am way, way past the point of telling you that you are crazy! I just want to see Alex. I just want to know that he's OK. I get it. I'm stuck here. But I can be stuck here and compliant. Or I can be a pain in your ass! So take me to him. Now.

Donna: You told me that you knew what Laurel was doing.
Quentin: Yeah.
Donna: Yeah. So... this is a lie.
Quentin: Yeah, but it's a complicated lie.

Oliver: I spoke to Lyla. She's worried about you because you said you shot Andy in self-defense.
John: Oliver, I don't want to talk about this.
Oliver: You just never said anything about self-defense to me, John.
John: Couldn't tell Lyla the truth and have her look at me the same way anymore.
Oliver: C'mon! You don't know that!
John: Oliver, you're the last person on Earth to lecture someone about lying to the people they love!
Oliver: I'm not lecturing. I'm worried. You're better than me at this. And you're hurting worse than I have ever seen. Don't compound that by lying to your wife. (pauses) The fact that I lied to Felicity does not give me less credibility. It should tell you that I know what I'm talking about.

Felicity: Let's make this simple. This isn't a reconciliation. This isn't a reunion. This is you helping me save the world.
Noah: And what makes you think I can?
Felicity: Damien Darhk thinks you can. That's why he sent last year's greatest hits to take you down. You're a smart man. I'm assuming you know what Rubicon is?
Noah: And I'm assuming it's under Mr. Darhk's control?
Felicity: We have twelve hours to stop it.
(Without a word, Noah sits down at Felicity's command console.)
Felicity: That's it?
Noah: You seem surprised.
Felicity: I was expecting a quid pro quo.
Noah: Felicity, I may be a terrible father-
Felicity: "May"?
Noah: But I'm not a monster. Terrible or not, I am your father. As long as you live in it, I have an interest in seeing that this world doesn't end.

Oliver: So, John's right. We'll go in and help you and your father boost it from...?
Felicity: (protesting) It's in Curtis' lab!
(Ollie just stares at Felicity.)

Felicity: You want me to help my father steal from me?
John: Well, it's not exactly yours anymore, is it?
Felicity: ... nope. Guess not.

(regarding Anarky's bomb)
Thea: Can you disarm it?
Merlyn: We'll soon find out.

Noah: I'm not the man my daughter thinks, you know?
Green Arrow: Don't tell me. Tell her.
Noah: I've tried. I tried explaining to me that there are two sides to me. The Father and The Hacker. She sees only The Criminal. I mention this because you strike me as someone with experience leading a dual life. Any insights you'd care to share?
Green Arrow: Yeah. It doesn't work. You leadint a dual life is why you lost her.
Noah: You sound like you're talking from some personal experience...

Lyla: POTUS and SecDef have taken us to DEFCON-2.
Spartan: Just 2? They're optimistic.
Lyla: They don't want to cause a panic. The President asked me if the fate of the world is resting in the hands of an IT girl, a criminal and two guys in Halloween costumes.
Green Arrow: They're not Halloween costumes...

Anarky: What is it with you? Why are you always at the mercy of some guy? You can make your own decisions, Thea. You're not a pawn. You're a queen. Get it?
Thea: Yeah. Yeah, I get it.
(The two close in to fight.)


Continuity

Amanda Waller was the one who ordered the creation of Rubicon.

John refers to 415 and what Vixen said about ley lines being the wi-fi of the magical world.

Alex's brainwashing was Ruve Darhk's idea - not Merlyn's.

Brick was last seen in 312. He is now working as muscle for Damien Darhk in exchange for his release from prison, but is not happy about it.

Murmur is seen for the first time since 418. He escaped from Iron Heights along with Darhk and is still part of his team.

Calculator was last seen in 413. He was among the prisoners who escaped from Iron Heights but did not join HIVE in the aftermath.

Anarky was last seen in 410.

Oliver repeats Taiana's words from 414 back to her, regarding needing a monster to fight a monster.

Quentin signs a statement confirming that he knew his daughter was The Black Canary, despite it almost certainly meaning that he'll be fired from the SCPD.

Ravenspur was the name of a cabin in Cypress Cove where Noah Kutler and Donna Smoak used to go on vacation. It may have been where Felicity was conceived.

Felicity is fired from her position at Palmer Tech, following a vote by the Board of Directors.

The elevator from the old Arrow Cave into The Palmer Tech building was shut down following The Bug Eyed Bandit's attack in 417.

Noah recognizes Quentin as the cop who arrested him in 413.

Taiana saved Oliver's life from Baron Reiter. They flee for the plane together with Taiana carrying Reiter's idol.

Anarky kills Alex.

Noah takes a bullet for Felicity.

One nuclear missile is launched - a Russian one aimed at Monument Point.

The town of Monument Point was first mentioned in 417.

The Star City nexus room is located under Star City City Hall. It is revealed that this is why Darhk had his wife running for mayor - to ensure his access to the building.

As Tiana and Oliver are making their escape, she complains of feeling pained and drops the idol. Her eyes flash with the same gold light as Reiter's when the dark magic overtook him.

The episode ends with Oliver and John confront Darhk in the Nexus Room under Star City's City Hall.

Location

The Missile Attack Warning Center in Kaliningrad, Russia
HIVE's underground city.


The Fridge Factor

Averted majorly with Thea, who holds her own in the fight with Anarky and stands up to her father. There's also a suggestion that she really was ready to help Anarky bring down the whole HIVE ark provided she had a wave to save her boyfriend in the process.


The Bottom Line

Greatness. The action doesn't let up for a moment in this episode. Even the short scenes with Quentin and Donna and the flashbacks don't slow the pace of this episode one bit. It looks like they've finally found their pace as the endgame begins.

Arrow Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 20 - Genesis

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

As Oliver and Felicity seek a magical means of countering Damien Darhk's powers, John gets a lead on his brother's whereabouts. Meanwhile, Alex takes Thea away on a dream vacation that quickly becomes a nightmare.

Influences

The Bible (referenced in the title, Genesis, references to the Biblical flood that led to the rebuilding of a better world), The Dresden Files novels (the ideas behind light and dark magic presented here, while common to many fictional and real-world magic conventions, match up fairly well to the ideas on magic presented in this series) and numerous science-fiction stories about underground cities being used to survive a cataclysm.


Performances

David Ramsey.  Just... David Ramsey. All through this episode.  Flawless.


Artistry

The fight sequence with John chasing Andy is a great one.

The sound editing on the sequences with Thea is remarkable. The sound-effects that tip Thea off that something is wrong are present from the very first moment and it makes repeated viewing of these scenes all the creepier when you realize the clues were there from the beginning.

The fight scene where John escapes from Andy is great, even by the standards of this show.

The special effects when Oliver is practicing magic with Esrin are movie-level quality.

The entire fifth segment of the show is perfectly executed on ever level. The stunts. The direction. The writing. It all gels perfectly.


Trivia

Felicity and Oliver travel to Hub City. In the DC Comics universe, Hub City is the home town of the superhero The Question.

Esrin Fortuna is an original character unique to the Arrow universe. There was a Mama Fortuna who looked after the street children of Gotham City's East Side (aka Alleytown) in the Batman comics. Her Alleytown Kids became a spy network of sorts for the villain Black Mask and was later utilized for nobler purposes by the second Catwoman, Holly Robinson.

Esrin is an anagram for Siren - a creature from Greek myths, whose singing could lure unwary sailors to their doom.

The Rubicon is the name of a shallow river in north-eastern Italy. In Roman times, it marked the boundary between Gaul and Rome. Julius Ceaser once famously crossed The Rubicon with a single legion, setting into motion the events that would see him made dictator of Rome. Since then, the phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has come to mean passing the point of no return, particularly in regard to a risky action.

The name Rubicon seems fitting for the ARGUS technology that Lyla describes in the end of this episode - a device which is capable of preventing an entire nation from firing their nuclear weapons.


Technobabble

Black magic - such as Darhk's idol - can take a good person and turn them dark, soulless and inhuman, according to Oliver's experience.

A shaman is someone who has influence in the world of good and evil spirits.

Lian Yu is a place of nexus - a central point connecting many other points - as is Star City and Hub City. It is for this reason that Damien Darhk chose to operate in Star City.

Immortals like Esrin Fortuna generally do not get involved in the affairs of men.

Idols do not give a magician power - merely a means of channeling their power.

Darhk's power comes from death. The more people he kills, the more powerful he becomes.

In magic, all things have an opposite. As Darhk draws power from negative energy and fear, so could another person draw power from positive energy and hope to repel his power. Esrin Fortuna refers to this as La Luz Del Alma - "the light of the soul".

If a person whose inner darkness is stronger than their their light tries to draw upon the light of the soul, instead of repelling dark magic it will fuel it and make the dark magic user more powerful.

The tattoo John Constantine gave Oliver Queen in 405 is capable of many things, according to Esrin Fortuna. She does not go into detail in describing these things, but apparently one of them is acting as a totem or idol for Oliver's personal power.

Esrin Fortuna describes magic as a manipulation of primordial energies. Primordial, in this case, also meaning pre-linguistic. This is why her magic lessons are more physical application than rote-driven.

Rubicon was a stored in a subdermal implant under Lyla Michael's skin. It was a ballistic launch override protocol, designed to prevent any country from firing a nuclear missile. With some work and the right expertise, Rubicon could be corrupted and used to trigger a nuclear missile launch rather than preventing it. This could, potentially, given Damien Darhk control over the entire world's nuclear arsenal and the ability to trigger an extinction-level event by setting them all off at once.


Dialogue Triumphs

Darhk: What happened to Ian and Judy? They come down with that nasty little flu that's been going around?
Armitage: Some were wary of this meeting, given that -
Darhk: - you all abandoned me to my imprisonment?
Merlyn: Well, I visited! Somebody should teach THIS evil organization a lesson in helping their fellow man.
Darhk: I'm sure it's all just a simple misunderstanding. After all, why would I rely solely on the word of Malcolm Merlyn? He can be so... underhanded.
Merlyn: Cute.

Darkh: I had a lot of time to reflect while I was in prison. Mostly about religion and bundt cake.

(John is chasing Andy into a dark alley, trading shots, when his phone rings.)
John: Hey, honey! It's a little tough for me to talk right now!
Lyla: You'll want to hear this. Satellite track just picked up Andy.
John: Let me guess - he's somewhere south of Main, between Grammercy and Addison, right?
Lyla: ... how do you know that?
John: Because I'm trading shots with him right now!

(John handcuffs Andy to a column, takes his gun and draws it on him.)
Andy: Do it. Do it for Laurel.
(John stares at Andy and slowly lowers the gun)
Andy: She'd be so disappointed in you.
John: The only reason why you're still breathing is because one of us is still human.

(As Oliver fights dream images of Malcolm Merlyn, Deathstroke and Damien Darhk)
Esrin Fortuna: The darkness and light are within you. In truth, you are only fighting yourself. The friends you've failed. The people you've killed. They have no place in this. Don't give in. Cast aside your doubt. Resist your darkness.

Felicity: We'll find someone else to teach you magic. Someone with more patience and less smelly incense.
Oliver: She was right, you know. It's not about the magic. It's about me.
Felicity: If she didn't see anything worthy inside you, she never would have dealt with us.
Oliver: She didn't deal with us. She dealt with you. She didn't reveal herself until you offered her your chips. And that has always been the way with us, Felicity. You are the one who brings the light. You know, I told you that I've seen magic that's turned good people dark but all Fortuna did was show me who I really am.
Felicity: Don't do this. Every time you face a setback, you throw yourself a pity party.
Oliver: It's not a pity party. It's acceptance. You said it yourself. No matter what I do, I'm always gonna revert back to the person I became on the island.
Felicity: Yeah, when I said that I was hurt. I was going through one of the most painful experiences of my life. No, Oliver. You are not perfect. None of us are. The good news is that all of us can change.

(After being chased by two HIVE agents on his motorcycle for some distance, John pulls over and draws his gun as the two agents stop. He looks at them and they look at him, not seeing the van that suddenly guns down the alley and hits them both. Felicity hops out of the van.)
Felicity: Oh, it's been a while since I've hit anyone with this thing!

Darhk: You seem like a likable guy, Oliver. I bet you've got a lot of friends. I'm gonna enjoy killing every last one of them.

(John draws his gun on Andy.)
Andy: It isn't over.
John: You haven't been paying attention, Andy!
Andy: Darhk got out. I got out. I'll get out again. That mobile safe house you got looked really homey. Bet it gets cramped when Sara gets older.
John: (lowering his gun) Shut up!
Andy: She's got to go to school eventually. And Lyla, well, you can't watch her 24/7.
John: (grabbing Andy by the shirt) I said shut your mouth, Andy! Shut your damn mouth!
Andy:You're the one who's obviously not paying attention. Because this is war.
John: And women, children - they're expendable in your war?!
Andy: Genesis is coming, John! Lyla and Sara won't be the only women and children who die. (pauses) Tell me - how's it feel knowing that you have no problem pulling the trigger to protect a bunch of Afghanis that you never knew but you don't have the guts to do what's necessary to protect your wife and child?
(John raises his gun and shoots reflexively. The look on his face stunned as he looks at his brother as he drops to the ground dead.)

Felicity: You okay?
Oliver; Earlier with Darhk, it worked. He tried to use his magic on me and I was able to repel it.
Felicity: That's incredible! How did you do it?
Oliver: I heard your voice in my head. And you were reminding me of all the good things that I have in my life. I heard Thea. I heard John. I heard Laurel. Just telling me to keep fighting. To never give up. Just telling me to have hope.


Continuity

Milo Armitage and Phaedra Nixon are both killed by Damien Darhk.

Thea mentions Lonnie Machin - last seen in 410 - when discussing about who might be killing HIVE's leadership.

Oliver says he made contact with John Constantine - whom we were told was literally in Hell in 415 - and it was he who referred him to Esrin Fortuna.

Lyla and Sara have been hiding out in a mobile ARGUS base, hidden inside a heavily armored 18-wheeler.

Oliver has been living in the deepest parts of The Bunker since breaking up with Felicity.

Felicity makes reference to the fern that she got Oliver to decorate the original Arrow Cave.

Constantine's directions send Oliver and Felicity to Hub City, where Roy Harper had reportedly made a new life for himself in 412.  It is also where Ray Palmer and Kendra Saunders lived together for two years in the 1950's in L109.

As first revealed in 121, Felicity is a master gambler.

Esrin Fortuna describes herself as an immortal shaman. John Constantine owes her money.

The images Oliver sees as he is attacked by visions of his own darkness include the death of Tommy Merlyn (123), the death of Moira Queen (220), his near-death at the hands of Ra's Al Ghul (309), his near-death at the hands of Baron Reiter's magic (417), the death of Laurel (419), Robert Queen's suicide (101) and (apparently) the death of Taiana before he finally sees Felicity returning his engagement ring (415).

Esrin Fortuna declares that Oliver's darkness is greater than the light and that there is nothing she can teach him.

The looping sound that Thea notices in the background of wherever she and Alex are is three bird chirps, a bark, and then four chirps.

Alex has been taking the pills HIVE gives their soldiers to make them fanatically loyal, told by Mayor Adams that they were vitamins.

Thea has no memory of how she got to wherever Alex took her., She concludes this is because she was drugged.

Ollie refers to Felicity's speech in 416 about how he will always revert back to the person he was on the island.

As in 221 when John was nearly killed by Isabel Rochev, Felicity hits someone (i.e. two HIVE agents) with a van in order to save John.

Oliver is able to resist the effects of Darhk's death-touch. He says later he was able to do this by focusing on Felicity, John, Thea and Laurel saying positive things.

John kills Andy. He lies about the circumstances to Lyla later, making it sound like Andy had gone for a weapon when John shot him.

Darhk steals the codes to Rubicon - last mentioned in 411. They were kept in a sub-dermal implant under Lyla Michael's skin.

As the episode ends, Thea is trapped in HIVE's "ark" - a town hidden in an underground dome beneath Star City.


Location

Hub City


The Fridge Factor

Thea is reduced to being the damsel in distress in need of rescue. To her credit, she does figure out something is up with her vacation destination within a day of arrival.

Averted with Lyla, who does a damn fine job of defending herself against Darhk's men.


The Bottom Line

Another solid episode. The season continues to improve with every passing episode as we enter the climax. There's not a single wasted scene or subplot and David Ramsey gives perhaps his finest performance yet.

Arrow Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 19 - Canary Cry

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.































Plot

In the wake of Laurel Lance's death, Team Arrow is more broken than ever.  John Diggle in particular is shaken, blaming himself for not seeing his brother Andy's treachery coming. And as a distraught Quentin Lance turns to Nyssa Al'Ghul for some way - any way - to restore his daughter to life, reports come in of a new Black Canary assaulting the corrupt administration of the newly elected Mayor Adams.


Influences

Kevin Smith's Quiver (The vigilante running around when everyone who knows them believes them to be dead plot came from this Green Arrow mini-series, though it had a seemingly back-from-the-dead Green Arrow rather than Black Canary)


Goofs

Curiously, everyone is given a chance to vent about their feelings of guilt over Laurel's death except Thea. While the episode is already top-heavy with grief speeches, you'd think Thea might have been given one as well since her failure to kill Merlyn when he stole Darhk's idol also indirectly led to the events that saw Laurel die.

I've taken the show to task before for how Laurel Lance was fast-tracked from lawyer who had taken a few self-defense classes to vigilante capable of fighting multiple League of Assassins members simultaneously over the course of Season 3. That's nothing compared to how quickly Evelyn Sharp fills Laurel's boots, managing to hack one of Cisco Ramon's weapons, improve upon it and use it to far greater effectiveness than Laurel ever did in a matter of hours! To say nothing of how effective she is planing out her attacks on Mayor Adams and her underlings.

Did anyone ever tell Nyssa that Sara recovered after the events of episode 405? It seems like she still thinks Sara is dead or soulless based on her talk with Quentin.

While the emotion in the scene that follows is honestly played, Stephen Amell and David Ramsey shouting at each other in their Christian Bale Batman voices is just goofy as all hell.

If the goal of this episode was to try and paint a rosier picture of Laurel in death, then the flashbacks have a damn curious way of going about it. Not only are we reminded that Laurel was the sort of person who broke the rules to get ahead in her job (we find out she literally bought her way into the Presidency of her Senior Class), but we find out that she was all but recovered from Tommy Merlyn's death after a week and was putting the moves on Ollie and talking about looking forward to a future together with him.

For that matter, Green Arrow pleading to the fake Canary that she's dishonoring the legacy of the heroine she saw fighting HIVE on the night he failed to save her family REALLY shouldn't work, given that - logically - Evelyn Sharp should be just as pissed at Black Canary leaving her and her family to die as she is Green Arrow.


Performances

Paul Blackthorne's performance in this episode is nothing short of phenomenal. You feel every bit of his pain and his denial is completely understandable, given how purposefully ignorant he's been kept of the strangeness Team Arrow deals with and how much he's learned in spite of that. All things considered, his belief that Laurel is alive somehow isn't nearly as insane as it might seem on the surface. After all, he's lost his other daughter twice before...

David Ramsey is right behind Blackthorne on the Episode MVP list and it's still a close thing. Ramsey usually plays Diggle with restraint and control, as befits his soldier's training. We know from past episodes that when Diggle loses control, things are bad. Yet we've never seen John as bad-off as he is in this episode and an enraged Diggle is something to behold.

Stephen Amell gives Oliver Queen a remarkable level of power in this episode. With everyone else crumbling around him, it is Ollie who has to be the pillar for everyone else.  Ollie's always been the leader of Team Arrow but this is one of the first times we've seen him truly take the mantle on in a capacity outside of the battlefield.

Katrina Law plays Nyssa with her usual level of gravitas, despite not having a lot to do in this episode. Still, she makes the most of what brief scenes she has.

Emily Bett Rickards is just plain scary as Felicity in the final scene in the car with Oliver. You know it's bad when Felicity has gone hard-core.


Artistry

There's some nice parkouring action as Green Arrow chases down the fake Canary.

It's a nice subtle note in the blocking, but none of the police move to obey Mayor Adams' order to arrest The Green Arrow or even bother to shoot at him as he escapes. Apparently they aren't ready to start hunting the local hero down just yet...


Trivia

This episode did not open with the usual "My name is Oliver Queen" intro.

The teenage girl who becomes the new Black Canary is named Evelyn Sharp. She shares a name with two prominent feminist icons - an American aviator who was one of the first female pilots and a British suffragist.


Technobabble

Cisco Ramon keyed the sonic device that provided Laurel with her canary cry to Laurel's vocal chords. This was to prevent anyone else from being able to use it.

A frequent-flyer is a slang-term used by hospital personnel to refer to patients who frequently check themselves into the emergency room. Dr. Schwartz believes one of them may have taken Laurel's choker with the canary cry device.

The fake Canary uses the sonic device at higher decibels than Laurel ever did. She also modified it so that it would overpower the earplugs Team Arrow wore so as not to be affected by the canary cry.


Dialogue Triumphs

(John is on the phone with Lyla, checking on her. He hangs up and looks up to see Oliver standing in front of the case where Laurel kept her costume.)
John: Didn't expect to see you standing there.
Oliver: Where else would I go?

Oliver: Are you worried about your brother?
John: I don't think he'd do anything to hurt my family, but... I don't know. Clearly I never knew him.
Oliver: Alright, John. As the...world's leading expert in blaming yourself, please don't do it.
John: You warned me, Oliver. Straight up, you warned me. If I'd listened to you instead of trusting my brother, Laurel would be alive right now.
Oliver: You can't know that.

(Oliver is sitting at the table in The Bunker. He looks up and is surprised to see Felicity walk in with John and Thea)
Oliver: Hi. I didn't know-
Felicity: You called for the team.

Quentin: Thanks for coming.
Nyssa: I fear I lack the words to convey the true depths of my sympathy. To lose a child once is unimaginable... but for it to be both children...
Quentin: Listen, I know you and I haven't always been on the same side of things, but, uh, Laurel, you know, she thought of you as a friend.
Nyssa: Just as I thought of her. She brought me comfort during a difficult time period. The world will be a darker place without her.
Quentin: Yeah, well, not for long. Okay. I got all of her things. What else do I need?
Nyssa: I'm afraid I don't understand.
Quentin: What else do I have to bring for her when she comes out of this, you know, Lazarus Pit thing?
Nyssa: I would do anything for your daughter, but I destroyed The Pit months ago.
Quentin: Um, ok, well... there's gotta be something else.
Nyssa: I am so very sorry.
Quentin: So you don't want to help me?
(Nyssa just bites her lip and looks conflicted.)
Quentin: Fine. I'll find some other way to bring her back.

Oliver: I tried to do the right thing and i came up short. I came up short for that girl. And for Laurel. Maybe I shouldn't feel responsible, but I do.
Felicity: Yeah. That's going around.
Oliver: You mean John?
Felicity: I mean me. John was looking for someone to absolve him.Reassure him that what happened wasn't his fault. And I couldn't do it. I think, for a second, I let him blame himself, because for a minute it saved me from blaming me. (starting to sob) I should have been there. I wasn't there for the team, in The Bunker. I know I would have just been behind a keyboard. I know it seems like hubris, but I've made a difference before and I can't help but think that maybe if I was there, you know, maybe she'd still be here?!
Oliver: Do you know why I always blame myself in situations like this? Because at least it's an answer. Sometimes we need a reason... when a situation is completely unreasonable.

Oliver: Laurel is gone and there is no bringing her back!
Quentin: No, no, no! To hell with that! And if you don't want to help me, then to hell with you too!
Oliver: I am helping you -
Quentin: No, you're not! Because you know why? Because you do not know what it is like to lose a child! No idea!

Oliver: But I have lost a father! I have lost a mother! And I have lost Laurel! We have lost her!
Quentin: (stopping walking, the fight suddenly seeming to flow out of him) Yeah.  We have. 

Oliver: If there was a way - if there was ANY way to bring her back, I woul find it and I would do it... but there isn't. For either of us.
Quentin: (turning to Oliver) You don't understand! When I lost Sara? When I became a drunk? When no one else believed in me, she did! She's my rock!  I... (quietly) she was my rock.

(Quentin collapses to his knees, sobbing. Oliver puts a hand his shoulder.)

Oliver: I knew Laurel Lance for... almost her entire life. She was my friend. And I loved her. Before she died, I was lucky enough to hear her say that she loved me too. Laurel Lance became a lawyer to help people, who may have appeared helpless. She wanted to give a voice to the silent. But just being a lawyer wasn't enough! She wanted to do more for those people and for this city. Because she loved this city so much. By now, everyone knows that Laurel was killed in the Iron Height's prison riot. And while it's true that she was an assistant District Attorney, that's not what she was doing there that night. Before she died, Laurel told me the truth. Laurel Lance was The Black Canary! In the past few days, I have had to sit and listen to people try to paint the Black Canary as a criminal. She was not a criminal! She was a hero!  She was a hero in every way that a person can be, And if Laurel were here, I know that she would expect all of us to live up the example that she set. She'd want us to save our city.

Oliver: Are you ok?
Felicity: Are you?
Oliver: No.
Felicity: You know what you have to do, right? You have to kill the son of a bitch!
Oliver: I know. (pauses) I don't know how.
Felicity: Because of his magic?
Oliver: It's too strong. I've seen it before. Back on Lian Yu. And it is not just magic. It's darkness. And whenever I have come up against it, I have gone nowhere. He feels unstoppable.
Felicity: I refuse to believe that. And I refuse to let you believe that. If Darhk wins, Laurel died for nothing! I fell in love with you for many reasons and one of those reasons is that you always find a way. And you have to find a way now. For Laurel. For the city. For all of us. 

Dialogue Disasters

(After kissing Ollie a week after Tommy Merlyn's funeral.)
Laurel: I'm really excited about the future, Ollie


Continuity

The Merlyn and Lance families are apparently both Catholic, based on their funerals.

John Diggle refers to his sister-in-law, Carly, and nephew, Andy Jr., not seen since Season One.

Dr. Schwartz, the doctor who handled Laurel in this hospital, is aware of her secret identity and seems to know that Oliver Queen is The Green Arrow.

Evelyn refers to the events of 409 and how Green Arrow and Black Canary left the various people brainwashed by HIVE for dead in Reddington when he was focused on saving John, Felicity and Thea. This is a reference to Reddington Industrial - the building HIVE was using as a base.

Evelyn Sharp is her class President, a gymnast and an academic decathlete. Her parents were found dead of hypoxia, two days after Christmas 2015.

Nyssa seems to be unaware of Sara Lance's recovery, referring to Quentin having lost both his daughters.

Nyssa refers to the destruction of the Lazarus Pit in 403.

Laurel was elected Student Body President of her and Ollie's senior class. She won by exchanging gift-baskets for votes. Ollie says this was Tommy's idea.

Dinah Drake, last seen in 309, is seen at Laurel's funeral.

It is revealed that Oliver returned to Lian Yu in between Season One and Season Two because he feared holding Laurel back in her efforts to save Starling City.

It is also revealed that he left Laurel the picture of her that he carried with him during his give years of exile, along with his Dear John letter.

The flash-forward sequences from 401 and 410 are seen in-whole in the episode's final scene.

Laurel's tombstone has her full name - Dinah Laurel Lance - as well as her codename - The Black Canary - carved into it.


Location

The flashbacks are set in Starling City - May 2013, after the end of Season One.


The Fridge Factor

Averted hard with Evelyn Sharp, who proves to be hyper-competent as the faux-Canary.


The Winick Factor

Laurel is remembered in the flashbacks as the scheming opportunist she was back in Season 2. Some of Laurel's fans on-line may believe this was a disservice to the character. I believe the real disservice was in giving such a despicable character the same name as one of my favorite comic book heroines. I've said it once and I'll say it again - Laurel is Black Canary in name only.


The Bottom Line

Easily the strongest episode of the season to date. Laurel's death, for better or worse, has raised the stakes on this show immeasurably and for the first time in several episodes there is an actual sense of urgency to the plot. The subplot with the Black Canary impersonator is utter nonsense but - much like the better episodes of The Flash this year -  the villain is a brilliant framing device for the short, character-driven scenes and excellent performances that were what made Arrow great before the series began treading water waiting to reach this point. Now that it's here, I am excited about next week's episode in a way I haven't been for some time.

Arrow Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 18 - Eleven-Fifty-Nine

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.



Plot

Andy Diggle tells Team Arrow about Merlyn's recruiting him to break Damien Darhk out of prison. John suggests turning him into their man on the inside, but Oliver wonders if Andy can truly be trusted. At the same time, Laurel is offered the District Attorney's post under the newly elected Mayor Adams - a position that will put her in a better position to spy on Darhk and his minions but will require her giving up being Black Canary.

In the flashback, Oliver and Taiana make their move to rescue the other prisoners and trap Baron Reiter in the caverns under Lian Yu.


Influences

Green Arrow: Year One (The Lian Yu flashback sequence), Saw (the booby-trapped warehouse Andy lures Team Arrow into) and every single cliche involving prison break stories you can imagine.


Goofs

Oliver says that Laurel had always dreamed of being District Attorney. Back in Season One, however, we were told repeatedly that her dream was to use her law degree to help the needy - hence why she worked with a legal-aid organization rather than as a prosecutor.

Laurel says that Oliver is the great love of her life. Nice to see that Thomas "Tommy" Merlyn still means so much to her after all these years. You remember? The man whose death drove her to drug and alcohol abuse back in Season 2? Because Laurel sure doesn't!


Performances

David Ramsey gets some great material here, torn between his belief that his brother can be redeemed and his trust in Oliver.  He winds up choosing poorly - ironically because of his belief in Oliver's ability to redeem himself, right up until the point that Ollie's suspicions break his faith in "his other brother".

This episode is also a great one for Willa Holland.  Thea's central conflict this season has centered upon her controlling her anger and not giving into her blood lust. Ironically, now she finds that she has successfully conquered it and her anger towards Merlyn... at the worst possible moment.

The final scene between Stephen Amell and Paul Blackthorne is some of the greatest non-verbal acting ever seen anywhere. Not just on this show but anywhere.


Artistry

The fight scenes for the episode are all top-notch and very well choreographed.


Trivia

In police scanner code, 11-59 is a warning that intensive attention should be paid to a high hazard area.

"Khushu" means "Humbleness" in Arabic.

Darhk makes mention of Homo Magi carving The Khushu Idol along with other magical artifacts.  In the DC Comics Universe, Homo Magi is a sub-species of humans who wield magic with natural ease. While any human can learn magic with time and training, Homo Magi are born to the art. The magical heroes John Zatara and his daughter Zatanna are both Homo Magi.

Darhk identifies the missing piece of The Kuushu Idol as The Ribulvei Stone. In the mythology of Shazam (a.k.a. Captain Marvel), Ribulvei was the name of one of the deities invoked by The Champion - an early champion of the wizard Shazam, who gained his powers by saying the magic word "Vlarem!"  Ribulvei's blessing was a blessing of Power. It enhanced the physical and mental abilities of The Champion as well as granting him physical invulnerability and resistance to most forms of magical attack.

The abilities granted by Ribulvei in the comics match up with the powers we've seen Damien Darhk manifest. Darhk has shown increased strength and durability and his telekinesis qualifies as an enhanced mental ability by most standards.


Technobabble

Homo Magi form their idols in the image of those whose powers they wish to channel. Attention to detail is essential and the idols will not function if a piece of it is missing.


Dialogue Triumphs

Oliver: There's something I haven't told you guys.
Thea: (sarcastically) Shocker.

Thea: I’m going to hit the streets.
Oliver: Thea, no one is going to give up Merlyn.
Thea: Then I’m going to hit people on the streets.

John: (to a wounded Andy) Don't worry about it, man. We deal with this kind of stuff every week.

Merlyn: I don't think you appreciate what this cost me!
Darhk: Oh, come on. Stop being so high-handed.

Taiana: If he's found that idol, you won't be able to stop him.
(Oliver looks around and spies several crates full of C-4 explosives)
Oliver: We don't need to stop him. We need to trap him.

Andy: If I'm the man that you think I am then you know torture is not going to get me to say anything!
Oliver: I haven't started torturing you yet.

Oliver: John, you are the one who always tells me "Do not have a blind spot when it comes to your family."
John: And you're the one who told me to give Andy a second chance! You're the one who wanted to extract him from HIVE! You're the one who said he could come back from the darkness the same way you did!
Oliver: But I didn't. I've tried. I've tried harder at this than I ever have at anything. But at the end of the day, I am who those five years away turned me into. I'm what they turned me into!
John: So what, Oliver? Just because Felicity left you, I'm supposed to believe that all men are incapable of redemption? Not all men are like you, Oliver. Some of us change. Some of us grow. Some of us evolve! You are stuck, man! Stuck in your self-pity and your self-righteousness. And THAT is why Felicity left you.

Merlyn: (To Thea) You no longer have the drive to kill and it shows. You lost part of yourself when they cured you of that blood lust. And that is why you will never beat me.


Dialogue Disasters

John: Why does that thing (Darhk's idol) creep me out the way it does?
Laurel: Because it's creepy.

Laurel's whole dying speech about Oliver being the love of her life even if she isn't the love of his life. It's sickening to the fans of the Black Canary for the comics because Laurel is such a co-dependent wretch compared to the real Dinah Lance. It's sickening to the Laurel fans that she wishes Ollie well on wining back Felicity. And it sickens everyone that she apparently forgot about Tommy Merlyn in favor of the memory of the frat boy who cheated on her at least twice.


Continuity

Oliver confirms that Darhk's idol - The Khushu Idol - was the same one Baron Reiter found on Lian Yu.

Tiana has a photo of herself and her brother, similar to the photo Oliver had of himself and Laurel.  At the end of the episode,

Sara tried to teach Quentin Chinese, but he only learned how to say "no, thank you".

Murmur works in the prison library at Iron Heights.

Darhk figures out the secret identities of all of Team Arrow. Not because Merlyn told him but because it was quite easy to piece together once he knew that Andy Diggle's brother, who worked for Oliver Queen, also worked for Green Arrow.

Darhk recovers his idol, flees Iron Heights with about fifty inmates and fatajly wounds Laurel Lance.

Oliver promises that if Tiana does not survive the escape attempt he will tell her family what happened. She makes a simialr promise to travel to America and tell Laurel what happened to him if he does not make it.

Laurel kept the same picture of her and Ollie in a pouch on her Black Canary costume that Oliver kept during his time marooned on Lian Yu.

Laurel Lance's time of death is 11:59 pm. She dies just before Quentin arrives at the hospital.


Location

Iron Heights Prison, somewhere between Star City and Central City.


The Fridge Factor

Strictly speaking, Laurel's death doesn't count as a fridging because it was not done purely to give angst or meaning to a male character. It was clear from the first funeral scene at the start of Season Four that Oliver's reaction is not angst-driven and Laurel's death touches everyone directly, with Diggle and Thea perhaps having the strongest reactions as they both could have prevented this from happening through choices they made earlier.

That being said, Laurel's death bed speech is a blistering insult to the strong woman from the comics. Written properly, Dinah Lance was always her own woman. In her final moments, Laurel calls Oliver the great love of her life even if she wasn't the great love of his life - a line so utterly co-dependent I'm shocked Judd Winick didn't write it.


The Winick Factor

Honestly, the whole cast got downgraded for the Merlyn/Andy/Darhk scheme to work.


The Bottom Line

This episode was a powerful game-changer but for all the wrong reasons. We're supposed to be moved by Laurel Lance's death but the honest truth is that every other subplot in the episode  (John realizing his brother's betrayal, Thea's continuing fight with Merlyn, Ollie's struggle to keep the team united in the face of their own problems) is far more compelling and will have far greater effect on the end of the season than Darhk murdering Laurel.

It's a telling thing that, for hours after the episode ended when aired in the United States, #Oliver, #Felicity and #Olicity were trending on Twitter when various hashtags aimed at promoting Laurel and promising to never watch the show now if she died did not. In the end, Laurel Lance will be little more than a footnote in the character's history, on par with the infamous 1980's costume and the early 1990's butch biker bitch Black Canary comic. Laurel's fans may say that she deserved a better end than this episode gave her but the character of Black Canary deserved a better cross-genre translation than Laurel.

Arrow Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 17 - Beacon Of Hope

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.



Plot

The Bug Eyed Bandit has escaped from prison and is after Palmer Tech's innovative new implant technology. The only problem is there's only one prototype and it's currently in Felicity Smoak's spine. But when Green Arrow becomes incapacitated by a deadly bee weapon, a new hero will arise to save the day.


Influences

Green Arrow: Year One (the flashbacks on Lian Yu), Die Hard (people held hostage in a skyscraper, Felicity refers to the adventure as Die Hard with bees) and Independence Day (Curtis uses a virus to destroy the bee drones, Quentin name-drops the movie).


Goofs

As before, given her choice of weapon and costuming, it would make SO much more sense for The Bug Eyed Bandit to be called Queen Bee. Presumably the name is tied up in the Justice League film rights?

Wouldn't it have been far easier for The Bug Eyed Bandit to just go straight to Felicity's office rather than taking the Palmer Tech Board of Directors hostage? Particularly when we find out she already knew the only prototype was in Felicity's body.

The Bug Eyed Bandit's concern over bees dying out doesn't ring true, given the reason that she was fired from her job originally was that she took robo bees that were meant to help solve the agricultural crisis caused by bee deaths and weaponized them for the military to make money.

Curtis is remarkably agile for someone who was suffering a 104 degree fever and severe dehydration, when he's flipping around The Bunker trying to dodge the one drone.


Performances

The chemistry between Willa Holland and Emily Bett Rickards during their scenes together is great. I can't remember the two ever having any scenes together alone and it's nice to see the friendship between the two of them hasn't been hurt by the break-up... even if I can't recall their friendship ever being firmly established.

It's also a great solo episode for Emily Bett Rickards as a solo performer. It's great to see Felicity facing her arch-enemy with no back-up for most of the episode, holding her own and getting to be the big damn hero, saving multiple lives and staying behind to sacrifice herself. Heck, she even takes out the bee-man who takes down Ollie and Thea.


Artistry

The costume design for Bug Eyed Bandit this time around is an interesting one, with the honeycomb patterns and yellow/black color scheme.


Trivia

In the comics, the original Bug-Eyed Bandit was an inventor named Bertram Larvan, who invented a robot insect that could be used to eliminate real insects. Unable to secure the financial backing needed to mass produce his robots, he resolved to steal the money he needed with his prototype... then just kept on stealing, as he built more and more robotic insects and arachnids. He would go on to be a frequent nemesis of The Atom, until he accidentally dosed himself with amnesia gas and forgot all about his evil plans.

The DCTVU version of The Bug Eyed Bandit is similar, except that she is a woman named Brie Larvan. Also - in her first appearance, at least - she seemed to be less interested in money and more interested in revenge on the people responsible for her losing her job.


At one point, Oliver claims to have read a few of the Harry Potter books but to be unaware there were movies based on the books. Surprisingly, this is something of a nod to Oliver's character in the Mike Grell Green Arrow run, where Oliver was surprisingly well-read but his taste in movies tended toward classics like the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie or Singing In The Rain.

Quentin asks if there's any chance that the robo-bees have anything to do with HIVE. In the comics, bee-themed armor and weapons are a part of HIVE's modus operandi.

Curtis once again voices his theory that The Green Arrow was someone in Palmer Tech's data-processing department named Neal Adams. This is the name of a famous artist, who re-designed the Green Arrow costume in the late 1960s and drew the now legendary Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic that largely redefined Green Arrow as a champion of the working class.

Damien Darhk makes reference to a town called Monument Point. In the Justice Society of America comic written by Arrow Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim, Monument Point was a large Metropolis located within commuting distance of Washington DC. The town was saved several times by The Justice Society, who wound up adopting the town as their base of operations and the city council appointed the Jay Garrick Flash as their mayor.


Technobabble

The implantable bio-stimulant which Curtis developed costs $250,000 per unit to manufacture.

12,000 people per year suffer spinal injuries that leave them paralyzed.

The bee drones are capable of remotely jamming all WiFi frequencies and cel-phone signals within a certain radius - at least large enough to cover a large skyscraper - by broadcasting hundreds of different kinds of radio frequenceies

The bee drones stingers are capable of penetrating police-grade Kevlar, as well as Green Arrow's armor.

Curtis uses the same cel-phone he was given to help Team Arrow with rescuing Ray Palmer in 406 to locate The Bunker.

The command console Felicity used in The Bunker is a STAR Labs 5000 Exostation.

The idol that Baron Reiter seeks allows him to command the primordial energies that flow through all things.

The bee drones are able to lock together to form a man-size armored figure.

The bee drones are capable of digging their way inside a human body and self-replicating, eventually bursting out of the victim's body as a swarm. One of the Palmer Tech Board of Director's dies in this fashion and Oliver nearly dies the same way.

The bee drones are also capable of adapting on the fly (no pun intended), so that any method used to disable them won't work a second time. This is why Curtis can't hack them after doing so once and instead develops a sonic-based solution to deal with the drones inside Oliver.

Curtis figures that if the bee drones are modeled on real bees, they'll operate on a singular frequency to orient themselves. If he can disrupt the frequency, they can disperse the colony. This requires a portable sonic projector (i.e. Laurel's Canary Cry choker)

Curtis explains that Laurel's Canary Cry choker works by reading her vocal emissions and then reprocessing them via digital output into a multi-channel sound. One Mariah Carey impersonation is all it takes to disable the drones.

Felicity uses an autonomous communication device that Curtis designed as a make-shift bomb to blow a hole in the elevator shaft so that they can evacuate the board room. Curtis had yet to figure out how to make the devices not explode.

The Bug Eyed Bandit now controls her drones through neural implants.

Bees are dying off at a rate of 30% per year.

The reason the Bug Eyed Bandit wants the implantable bio-stimulant is because she has a tumor on her L4 Vertebrate that can be removed with surgery but will leave her paralyzed.

The bee drones are made up of elastic nanotubes, ultarsonic motors and piezoceramic elements.

Curtis deciphers the upgrade protocol of the bees, developing a virus that - the next time the drones upgrade - will disperse throughout the swarm. He develops a trick arrow with a computer virus payload that will transmit when shot close to the drones.


Dialogue Triumphs

(As Thea talks about her boyfriend needing a new job.)
Laurel: Palmer Tech. They're hiring a new head of Public Relations.
Ollie: ... oh.
Laurel: (quietly) I just heard that from... someone.
Ollie: (smiling) Laurel. She's not Voldemort. And I'm fine. (To Thea) That's a good idea. You should tell Alex to talk to Felicity.
Thea: Mmm-hmm.
Ollie: What?
Thea: Nothing it's just... it's shocking you know who Voldemort is.
Ollie: Well, I'm not immune to pop culture! I've read a few of the Harry Potter books.
John: Really? I was going to bet Thea that you just saw the movies.
Ollie: There were movies?

(Darhk is chained down in a visiting room in Iron Height's Prison. Merlyn steps out of the shadows.)
Merlyn: I thought you just lost your magic, but your charm seems to be waning, as well.
Darhk: How in the hell did you get in here?!
Merlyn: I used to be Ra's Al Ghul.
Darhk: Yes. This I know. What I'm less clear of is why my resources haven't been deployed to get me out of here.
Merlyn: Well, that's what I'm here to explain.
Darhk: Although my time in here might be limitless, Malcolm, my patience isn't!
Merlyn: That's cute. As I was saying, I've been in touch with your resources. And they don't seem to have any love left for you, Damien. Something to do with "hocus" and "pocus"and "killing fellow members when you get miffed". HIVE is moving forward with Genesis but not with you. They like you here. Out of trouble. But they do wish you the best of luck with your trial.
(Darhk grunts and tries to grab Merlyn with the telekinesis he no longer has, on reflex.  Merlyn laughs at the pitiful attempt.) Merlyn: Don't be embarrassed. Performance issues are common for men of your age.

Laurel: Oliver, it's okay to miss Felicity.
Oliver: I-I appreciate what you're doing, but I don't think you're the-
Laurel: - person to help you through it? Why? Because of what we used to have?
Oliver: Yeah.
Laurel: I thought maybe that just gave me a little insight.
Oliver: Well, I mean, in fairness, I did wreck what we had too, so...
Laurel: In your defense, you were missing and presumed dead for five years, but that's not what I mean. I know how passionately you love and how much it hurts when that love goes away.
Oliver: Betweem Merlyn, Slade Wilson and Ra's Al Ghul, I thought that I'd be a little...tougher than this by now.
Laurel: That's a different kind of pain. And this takes longer to heal. But I'm here for you.

(After Curtis stumbles into The Bunker and passes out)
Quentin: So can anybody just walk in here?

Curtis: With Felicity trapped inside, you're going to need someone to hack them. But I'll have to "bee" careful.
(Curtis laughs. He is the only one who does.)
Curtis: It's too soon for bee puns, right?
Oliver: (coldly) Let's assume that it is.

Donna: They just got their butt kicked by that... bee man!
Felicity: (To Thea) This is why we leave the nicknames to Cisco.
Donna: What?
Felicity: Inside joke.

(Regarding the drones inside Oliver)
John: When these things hit critical mass, there's-
Curtis: It's gonna be like John Hurt in Aliens! Sorry! When I get nervous, I make pop culture references!

Oliver: It just doesn't seem fair that I can save a city and not save my relationship.
Laurel: Oliver, life's not fair. Whether you're in Star City or Ivy Town. But you're right. You can save this city. You do it every night. You're a beacon of hope to people. I just wish you would try and use some of that hope for yourself.

(After Murmur beats his two minions to death.)
Darhk: I know you're probably asking yourself, "Self, what the hell just happened?" It turns out your friend - my new friend - Mr. Amar, has a soft spot for his only surviving relative. A grandmother in Monument Point. It is amazing what people will tell you with a few phone calls and a kind voice. Anyway-
(Darkh glances down at the minions and realizes they aren't moving)
Darhk: Are they dead?  Are they dead?!  NO! (To Murmur) I had this wonderful speech about how I was gonna kill your grandmother had you not killed them. (sighs) Never mind...

Thea:  Ollie's going to be fine. He always is.
Felicity: Well, unfortunately, in Oliver's case,"he always is" isn't an accurate predictive meter.
(Thea sighs and steps away from Felicity.)
Felicity: Sorry. I'm just sick of worrying. I'm sick of the violence.
Thea: Yeah, and so am I, okay?  Of course I am! But we put up with it! We push past it. Because what we do is important, okay? We have to be that beacon of hope. Nobody else is.
Felicity: YOU'RE the beacon of hope. I quit the team because I couldn't stand to work with Oliver. But now that I'm out, I look at life from a different perspective. I mean, look around you! Thea, we're in a "Die Hard" movie with bees! Maybe I'm meant for great things. Maybe I'm not. But whatever it is, it's not this. (sighs) I'm sorry. I'm not coming back.

Thea: Don't you miss this? I mean, I know you said that you wanted to get away from it all... but how could you?
Felicity: What do you mean?
Thea: This? The thrill of it? The rush? I mean, we just took down a bad bee-yotch tonight. It doesn't get any better than this.
Felicity: I was never in it for that. Not ever. I wanted to make a difference. Be part of that beacon of hope you speak of.
Thea: So come back. Rejoin the team.
Felicity: I think I figured out another way. Actually, that insane bee-lady gave me the idea, ironically. To remake the company. To use the technology that helped me walk again to make lives better. To make Palmer Tech into the beacon of hope.


Dialogue Disasters

Every thrice-damned bee pun from The Bug Eyed Bandit and Curtis.


Continuity

The Bug Eyed Bandit appears for the first time since F118.

The Star City mayoral election is April 6, 2016.

Ollie is capable of fighting and defeating Laurel and Thea at the same time in an escrima stick fight. He can take down Diggle in a one-on-one match when Diggle is tired.

Murmur, last seen in 316, is seen in Iron Height's Prison threatening Damien Darhk with his gang. Eventually, it is revealed that he is now working for Darhk, due to his grandmother being threatened.

Curtis once again voices his theory that The Green Arrow was someone in Palmer Tech's data-processing department named Neal Adams, from 404.

Oliver calls the current Team Arrow hideout The Bunker.

Curtis recognizes Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance and Quentin Lance by sight. He recalls meeting John Diggle, but can't place remember his name.

Felicity kept files on various criminals on the computers in The Bunker. Curtis finds one on The Dodger - the jewel thief Team Arrow fought in 115.

The idol gives Richer super-strength, telekinesis and makes him bullet-proof.

The Bug Eyed Bandit figures out that Felicity was the hacker who put her in prison.

Curtis turns the been drones against The Bug Eyed Bandit. She is stung repeatedly and left in a coma.

Curtis decides he's had enough adventure and that he's done helping Team Arrow.

Felicity has an idea on how to use Palmer Tech to make people's lives better.

At the end of the episode, Merlyn speaks to Andy Diggle about how Dhark called him an ace in the hole.


The Fridge Factor

With Felicity out of the picture, it seems like the writers are trying to nudge Laurel and Oliver back together with the interaction between the two of them in this episode.  The only problem is that Laurel's speech - in which she gently encourages Ollie to be nicer to Curtis and to be the beacon of hope the city needs - flies in the face of every bit of characterization she's had in the past three years. Ollie even points out how she's the last person who should be trying to comfort him regarding his screwing up his relationship with Felicity and she's definitely the last person in the world who should be giving Oliver a hard time over lying to a loved one. Remember Season Three and the lengths Laurel went through to hide Sara's death from Quentin?


The Bottom Line

As a focus on Felicity, it's great. As a filler episode, it's okay, though The Bug Eyed Bandit is easily the most annoying special guest villain ever.. As an effort to set Curtis up as the latest member of Team Arrow, it's less successful, with the script trying way too hard to make Curtis into a Felicity/Cisco hybrid in spite of the character being relatively restrained in most of his previous appearances. In fact, most of the humor in the episode is forced even ignoring the bee puns.

The real shocker is that  Laurel gets a few good moments here and Katie Cassidy carries them off well. Which probably means the writers are actually putting some effort into making Laurel seem like the Laurel we liked in Season One before she is killed off.