This week, Arrow puts another character in the forefront as someone from John and Andy Diggle’s past shows up in Star City while Felicity and Oliver must learn to cope with Felicity’s new life.
SPOILERS AHEAD
We open with John and Lyla walking home when they get confronted by an agent looking for Lyla. Lyla barely has time to say she’s out of ARGUS when he gets hit by a military unit and stolen away. Oliver is helping Felicity get settled in the apartment as she learns to live with her wheelchair. He is called away to The Quiver where he and the team try to figure out why the agent, Alan Chang, came to Lyla and who took him. Diggle is continuing to get through to his brother and it’s here that the flashbacks take place this week. We go back to Andy and John in Afghanistan where they take down a huge shipment of opium after a heated firefight that almost gets Andy killed.
Back in the loft, Felicity is beginning to feel the loneliness, but have no fear, she starts having medication induced hallucinations of her past emo-self. Cause we need a visual metaphor to help us understand what she’s going through, I guess. The police find Chang’s body and Laurel clears the scene for Diggle. Not only has Chang been tortured, they mutilated his body too, taking fingernails and an eye for good measure.
Diggle and Lyla go to ARGUS where Waller denies any and all knowledge of what’s happening. Which is surprising to Diggle when she slips Lyla a flash drive. The drive is full of information of Shadowspire, an organization that ARGUS took down for its crimes as well as it being Andy’s old crew. It also contains information about the other two agents who had been in Shadowspire and working for ARGUS who Diggle suggests they talk to Andy to dig up information on. Back in Afghanistan, a Shadowspire soldier tries to recruit Andy and John, but Andy tells him where to stick it. John is impressed by the new leaf his brother has turned over and let’s him know how proud he is of him.
Diggle confronts his brother about the appearance of Shadowspire and Andy offers what he knows, which leads the team right to their base. They call Felicity to help get around the security and all is going well until she gets overwhelmed and almost gets Diggle caught. Arrow bails him out and the team scrambles once they find the ARGUS agents dead. Oliver tries to comfort Felicity who is blaming herself for not being good enough. Her hallucination shows back up and cause her to snap and Oliver, understandably thinking it’s at him, leaves her alone. Diggle and Lyla take Andy to ARGUS so Waller can debrief him. The dead agents were guarding rail guns that Shadowspire has confiscated and the team is scrambling to get to them first. Andy tells them that the rail guns are a misdirect, a tactic Shadowspire uses well. Which makes sense when the team get left high and dry on the stakeout with the rail guns and ARGUS gets hit by Shadowspire, using Chang’s removed eye to bypass security.
With Shadowspire in control of ARGUS, which seemingly takes up very little space considering its pull, the commander of the Shadowspire unit, Joyner, has kept some hostages alive. He gives Waller the choice of giving him Rubicon, or watching the hostages die. Lyla manages to alert Diggle, who uses some fancy tricks from Felicity to get a signal out to the team. Back in Afghanistan, John sees Andy talking to Joyner and confronts him but Andy swears to him he was just teaching him about cards and convinces John to trust him.
After some pretty blatant self effacing from her imagined past self, Felicity returns to the Quiver and gives Oliver a ‘it’s not your fault’ speech and follows that up with a ‘this hero business is my choice’ speech. Which were pretty good speeches! They pick up the signal from John and the team springs into action with Felicity back behind the keyboard. Back at ARGUS, Waller tells Joyner he can kill everyone in the room, even her trusted agent Lyla, and she’ll never give up the codes. So, Joyner shoots Waller and forces Lyla to open the Rubicon vault for him. John has to make a decision about whether or not to trust his brother as soldiers close in on their location.
The team shows up at ARGUS and Arrow gives Felicity her codename – Overwatch. In the basement, John seems to have left Andy for his old comrades as he’s nowhere to be found when they arrive. Andy tells them to bring him to Joyner where he outs Lyla as his sister-in-law and Diggle being somewhere in the building. They grab John, even as the team makes their way to them. John tells Lyla to give them the codes and Felicity blocks them from opening the vault, but Speedy and Canary head to the vault as a backup and Arrow goes to get John. As Joyner loses patience and goes to kill Diggle, Andy tackles him and saves his brother. Arrow shows up and the squad put a stop to Shadowspires plans with Andy earning his redemption.
We conclude as the team commemorates Waller in a brief reflection and we come back to Afghanistan one last time as we find out it’s Baron Reiter who is in charge of Shadowspire and is looking for Lien Yu. We come back to Felicity finally letting go of her old self and Oliver vowing to never to give up on finding a way to restore her to her old self. And last but not least, John brings Andy back to his home and the brothers begin to reconnect.
Overall, the episode was pretty good, considering. It’s always nice when they focus on another character and use the flashbacks to fill in some of their history. The change in focus also pushes Oliver to the side and whenever that happens, the other players tend to be almost an afterthought. Not that I’m complaining Laurel got less screen time this week, but I’m wondering if Thea is ever going to get a proper and a quality season arc. I also have been enjoying the reconnection of Andy and John, as improbable and out of left field as the storyline is.
While Felicity’s struggle is a good attempt at adding some personal depth to the show, I can’t help but feel that her ‘hallucinations’ were a real hindrance to the episode. Though, I suppose there really wasn’t many ways to show what they were doing, but it was a painfully obvious metaphor and it didn’t really contribute all that much to her arc. I did, however, appreciate the reference to Oracle. Well played, writing team. Well played.
With no sign of Damien Dahrk tonight, I guess he was true to his word when he gave Arrow two weeks to say his goodbyes on the last episode as he may not be making an appearance next week either. However, it seems like lots of familiar faces will be back next week, so come back and see how it all plays out.
Doug will recap each week’s episode of Arrow – so stay tuned right here for more. Be sure to also check out our recent recaps of The X-Files, Legends of Tomorrow, and The Flash!