This week, things with Damien Darhk take an interesting turn as the team uncovers the identity of one of the Ghosts.
SPOILERS AHEAD
We open to find an armoured car under attack by the Ghosts but luckily, the team is there to intervene and dodge automatic gunfire. But, it turned out to be not what it seemed as the Ghosts burned the money which turned out to be federal funds sent to support the fledgling city. Darhk is all but ensuring the city goes under.
The team puts their heads together and summarize that Darhk must be trying to establish Star City as HIVE’s base of operations. Diggle presents the information he found out about his brother to Oliver which is still pretty shocking for the both of them but Oliver insists that Diggle keep an open mind about his brothers past.
Felicity taps Ray to help her with the tooth they recovered off the Ghost a couple of weeks back, to try to pull some DNA from it and they discover the Ghosts DNA is being masked by a chemical patented by a rival company. Meanwhile, Alex continues to help Oliver with his campaign as well as continuing his romance with Thea in secret. The team suits up to break into the building in order to track down the tech needed to ID the Ghosts. They manage to obtain the liquid and Diggle downs one of them in the process. He unmasks the Ghost only to discover it’s Andy, his brother! Talk about an act break!
This revelation obviously has a pretty big impact and the team argues about what to do about Andy. They recall that time that the Ghost didn’t shoot Diggle (which I complained about!) and how it all makes sense that Andy would be him. This all seems pretty coincidental and it was a little weird that Diggle was the one who needed convincing to try to break his brother out of HIVE, but that’s the turn that the show took and stuck with it for the rest of the episode. So, the teams mission for the week is set.
Lance meets with Darhk and the villain indicates that he’s on to Lance’s double work but is willing to give him another chance. Malcolm shows back up uninvited to see Thea and help her combat her bloodlust by slaying a pedophile… which she rejects. At the ball Oliver is attending for his campaign, Diggle’s a bit of a mess but Oliver is in full politician mode. Oliver needs a little double agent info from Lance which is now a bit of an issue with Darhk watching him now but luckily Lance was able to catch some info information on some potential Ghost locations.
While Laurel and Diggle bond over the ‘siblings back from the dead’ tie that binds them, Damien Darhk makes his appearance and propositions Oliver… politically. Oliver decides that becoming a double agent of his own is in everyone’s best interest as he plans on pretending to be Darhk’s accomplice as mayor. But still fight him as Green Arrow. Cause Darhk doesn’t know about that, somehow. Anyway, Thea and Alex go on a date where Thea gets aggressively hit on and she proceeds to beat the bejesus out of the guy in front of Alex.
Diggle can’t decide what to do as he’s torn between whether or not to break the news about Andy to the rest of his family. The fact that he has literally nothing to tell them other than he saw him with on other witnesses around, this is really weighing on Diggle. Oliver shows up and the two of them plan on going after the Ghosts to get Andy on their own. Darhk shows off that the same liquid the Ghosts take to mask their identity also makes them extra compliant until Arrow and Diggle get spotted and they barely manage to fight their way out.
Diggle has had enough and he’s willing to give up on his brother. Oliver is not so ready and blames the pills Darhk is feeding him but Diggle is having none of it. He and Oliver argue and Diggle tells him that if he truly wants to defeat Darhk, he can’t hide anymore. Ray tells Felicity about why he’s been avoiding returning from the dead legally. He still needs to find a reason why, which is helpful since he’s about to start jumping through time in a couple of weeks. Luckily though, Ray has managed to figure out where the Ghosts are holed up.
The team suits up to go rescue Andy despite Diggle’s protests. After some pretty serious hand to hand combat, Thea manages to capture Andy but the rest of the team is thoroughly engaged. ATOM shows up to help them out, bailing Green Arrow out of an overwhelmed position and while Thea waits, Darhk shows up and grabs her. He attempts to use his powers on her but something goes wrong and they backfire on him instead. Thea makes her escape and Laurel and Ray manage to grab Andy. Diggle shows up just in time to save his brother’s life – the Green one (yeesh).
Thea enlists the help of Malcolm to recreate what happened with Darhk as it alleviated her bloodlust temporarily. Diggle goes to talk to his brother who is less than forthcoming, only telling Diggle all the terrible things he’s done are true. Alex promises not to out Thea’s actions while Oliver goes against Darhk as he announces his plan to revitalize the harbour in a not so subtle speech aimed at the villain. If Darhk can’t put together that he’s the Green Arrow after that, well, I guess it’s just more in line with the inept cartoony villain they’re creating.
In the flashbacks, the man that Oliver killed last week turns out to be the brother of the woman he had ‘killed’ to prove himself to Reiter. Oliver knows Conklin was behind it and Reiter punishes Conklin by getting Oliver to flog him. Oliver tells the woman he rescued that Conklin killed her brother which will obviously come back to haunt him and he manages to get her to help him.
Another week has passed on Arrow and my enjoyment of the show takes another hit. While I’ve been encouraged that the beginning of Legends of Tomorrow would remove some of the clutter that Arrow has taken on and the focus of Arrow vs Darhk would bring the show back to its former glory, the past few weeks have tempered that feeling immensely. While I feel that getting rid of a bunch of extraneous characters over the next couple of weeks will absolutely help the show, I can’t help but think that it can only help so much. It almost feels like they took all the best writers with them to The Flash and left us with the junior writers who are being headed up by Speed Weed. Maybe once the crossover happens they can bring some back and help right the ship.
P.S. At this point in the resurrection game on this show, Robert Queen is going to be next seasons villain.