Tonight is Arrow’s turn for its mid-season finale as Oliver takes the fight to Damien Darhk before their winter break. Will the show rebound from its uneven first half? Will Damien Darhk finally become a villain who actually feels like a threat?
SPOILERS AHEAD
We open on citizens of Star City banding together to clean up the harbour, the initiative that Oliver started that put him firmly in Damien Darhk’s sights. Thea and Alex still have a little tension in their relationship while Diggle is still coping with having discovered the truth about his brother. Obviously citizens picking up trash can’t be tolerated, so a mini-helicopter drone armed with machine guns starts shooting up the beach. Felicity’s hacking skills know no bounds or rules, so she uses her tablet to deactivate the drone, but not before Oliver has to heroically rescue a young girl from its fire. Darhk has fire shots across the bow!
Oliver, as you can imagine, is pretty miffed. Alex wants Oliver to give an official statement, but Oliver is downtrodden by this unspeakable act by Darhk. The team assumes that the Bay has an unknown importance to Darhk and they need to find out what and questioning Andy is their best bet. Diggle confronts his brother who is still playing the silent game. Diggle is still really upset that his brother left his niece and nephew without a father, despite the fact that HIVE faked Andy’s death and supposedly has pretty much had him under mind control (yes, they went in that direction again) this whole time. Diggle offers him the chance to redeem himself but Andy isn’t budging.
Back at their apartment, Felicity shows up to reassure her mother she’s still alive after the attack. Donna is decorating the apartment and she happens to stumble upon that engagement ring that Oliver has left in at least three obvious places by now. Cue the ‘proposal confusion’ storyline! Meanwhile, Oliver holds that press conference that Alex wanted to have and instead of offering the usual politician condolences, Oliver offers a very different message. He outs Darhk and HIVE as the terrorists who have been terrorizing the city which understandably upsets Darhk. Looks like those shots earlier was just the beginning.
Despite having angered a supernatural super villain and his manically devoted army of black ops soldiers, the team convinces Oliver to continue the holiday celebrations. Malcolm arrives to see Thea and check in on how she’s feeling. Thea still hasn’t felt the return of her bloodlust since Darhk grabbed her a couple of weeks ago and deems herself cured. Malcolm, on the other hand, is more concerned about what the real cause is.
The celebration party gets into full swing with some added security from Lance and a favour Diggle called in. Curtis shows up with his husband in tow and helps Felicity put together when Oliver had really planned on asking her to marry him. She goes to speak to her mother and finds her canoodling with Lance (god help us). Moving past the awkwardness of all that, Felicity needs some answers from Oliver. And right when things are about to get romantic between the two, the Ghosts and Darhk show up. So, not for the first time, Arrow pulls off a scene that is INCREDIBLY similar to a scene from The Dark Knight. Anyway, Darhk knocks out Oliver and kidnaps Felicity, Thea and Diggle.
Oliver comes to and promises that there’s going to be hell to pay for this, which he takes out on a number of Ghosts. Laurel’s work on Oliver’s hotline turns up an unexpected tidbit of information and she confronts her father about working for Darhk. When Lance tells her about playing double agent for Oliver, Laurel slides right back into sociopath territory and yet again, the ‘you don’t trust me if you keep secrets from me’ speech is now pretty much guaranteed for this episode.
Oliver calls them both back to The Quiver (I’m just going to call it that from now on) where he hasn’t turned up anything. But Malcolm appears from nowhere, as per usual, and offers Oliver a way to track down Darhk but he can only see trading himself for them as the only option he has. Meanwhile, Darhk is hosting a number of HIVE bigwigs who mention the Genesis Project when Oliver contacts him which leads to a stare down and some threats to end the act on a down note, weirdly.
Darhk brings Oliver back to his lair and shows Oliver a demonstration of Genesis, which seems to be a nerve gas. They had been using the harbour to grow an algae to give them ‘the Bloom’. Okay…
Malcolm, Laurel and Lance get ready to go after Oliver in what is sure to be a completely successful rescue attempt with no hitches whatsoever. Darhk brings Oliver to Felicity for a final farewell which Oliver fills her in that it was all part of the plan. They even have the Green Arrow covered (cause Malcolm is there, remember) so Darhk won’t know it’s Oliver. Cause somehow that’s still a secret, I guess. Oliver and Felicity get to have their romantic moment that was interrupted earlier and it looks like marriage is on the table for the couple. This can only end badly for Felicity. But Darhk doesn’t play by the rules of ‘agreements’ and such. Felicity and Oliver are brought out to find Diggle and Thea in the gas chamber and then he adds Felicity for good measure. Now that’s an act break!
Things don’t look good for Team Arrow as Darhk gets ready to gas them. Laurel and ‘Green Arrow’ show up just in time and Darhk and the HIVE leaders beat a hasty retreat. Laurel uses her Canary scream to break the glass and the team is reunited. Dahrk and ‘Green Arrow’ face down and Darhk shows off more of his powers in a brief, but flashy battle. As Darhk begins to Force choke him, Oliver comes back and breaks it up. Darhk has let his psychotic followers out of their cells and the team tackles the minions. As Darhk tees off on Oliver (in what has to be one of the worst fight sequences I’ve ever seen) Malcolm gets a shot in and an arrow finally lands on Darhk. Malcolm leaves an explosive arrow and suddenly the arrows are made of pounds of C4 and level the area. But Darhk muttered something in a foreign language first so it seems he’s a little harder to kill than that.
Back in The Quiver, everyone says pretty much that same thought and the hunt for Darhk is back on. Diggle shows up to talk to his brother again and is convinced that Andy is brainwashed, but if Andy truly is a Ghost as he claims, then the rules of the game have changed. Meanwhile, Darhk (that didn’t take long for him to come back) shows the heads of HIVE what he’s been working on which turns out to be a MASSIVE underground farm land. That was really what he was using the algae for! We cap it off with Oliver giving a speech to the city to show that he’s not afraid of Darhk. And of course he uses the speech to ask Felicity to marry him.
As the pair leaves in their limo, they are pulled over by the Ghosts who light the limo up in an enormous hail of gunfire. We get to see Darhk with his family (?) for the holidays while Oliver manages to get himself and Felicity out of harm’s way. But when he checks on her in the back, she’s been hit and badly!
In the flashbacks, Oliver and the slave he freed continue their trek to find out what is so important to Baron Reiter (see how they’re still trying to keep the stories connected!). Oliver plans on returning to the sunken ship from season 2 in order to get detailed maps of the island to figure out what Reiter is after. Oliver makes it onto the ship and finds the maps he was looking for but has to fight off a shark (seriously!). Conklin finds Oliver after he gets out of the water and things are definitely taking a bad turn for Oliver.
How was this fall finale? Underwhelming. After weeks of me complaining about Darhk being a terrible villain for the season, they actually did turn him into a threat which was good to see. Sadly, most of the episode was spent building on the mayoral campaign, Oliver and Felicity’s romance and giving us misdirects on Darhk and HIVE’s plans. The Godfather-esque ending was fairly satisfying even if it begs the question how Felicity got hit and Oliver didn’t. There’s also that scene from the season opener at the funeral, but at this point, it still seems too obvious for it to be Felicity. But I guess we’ll have to wait a few weeks to see if Felicity can pull through!
P.S. Saw the Legends of Tomorrow trailer again. Both Arrow and LoT are better off without Arrow trying to get that show off the ground!