Arrow - 'Bratva'

It's that man again.

After weeks of thematic linking, it's time for a literal connection between the present day and Oliver's Russian flashbacks. No spoilers; the episode is after all called 'Bratva'.

Quentin Lance returns after his time in rehab, ready to take on the job of deputy mayor. He's just in time, as Thea is off doing chief of staff things and Oliver is preparing to head for Russia to track down General Nuke-Stealer after he and his men shoot their way out of federal custody and head off to sell their bomb to a bunch of separatists. Oliver contacts Anatoly, who is understandably a little pissed that Oliver chose to tap Bratva resources in Star City, but then refused to return the favour.

Needing to track the nuke before it vanishes and thwarted by their inability to track or pursue a 65 year old flag officer on the grounds that he got through an unlocked door thirty seconds before them(1), OTA go a little bit off the res. Oliver (aided by Dinah) does a little Bratva leg-breaking, while Diggle uses one of Nuke-Stealer's men as a punch bag and Felicity gets Rory and Curtis to dress up as thugs and slips into a slinky, ice maiden number to blackmail the fuck out of some poor corrupt executive having dinner with his family. Rory checks Felicity on the latter and they have the 'with great power' discussion, coupled with the understandable 'no more Haven Rocks' talk.

"Does it hurt?"
"Only when I laugh, so you're okay to stay."

They get the General, but the bomb has been stolen back from the separatists and set to blow if tempered with. Felicity isn't able to disarm it, so Rory swathes it in his rags to contain the blast. Unfortunately, this uses all of the rags' remaining magic, so Rory decides to quit the vigilante game and I swear I am going to be hella pissed if he turns up dead in a few episodes time. He makes one last appeal for Felicity to stay good before he leaves.

Back in Star City, Rene coaches Lance for his big interview with sassy reporter lady who knows too much (am I doing badly with names this season, or are they just not getting used as often?) because that is a thing that Rene understands how to do. Lance gets angry when Rene reminds him that Sassy McKnowledge will totally go there and talk about his oft-dead daughters, so Rene tells her how when he as a young punk then-Officer Lance set him on the mostly straight and narrow, and thus persuades her to cut Lance some slack. Or maybe she's just feeling charitable, either because Oliver has finally put out, or because she's found compelling evidence that her boyfriend is a Bratva captain and the Green Arrow(2).

I'm actually amazed that I couldn't find a
picture of Bat-Mite dressed as Green Arrow.

And in flashback land – at this point I'm waiting for Prometheus to start having flashbacks of his own to explain his training – Talia teaches Oliver to be a proper badass and Oliver offers to kill the boss Bratva guy after he has Anatoly beaten up for speaking out against Kovar.

As noted before, Arrow is weird, because it isn't weird; not properly. It's even phased out NTA's magical hero, and yet it exists within the same world as The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, and in the same Multiverse as Supergirl, which means that it is totally within the realms of possibility that Oliver Queen could be stalked by an off-brand version of Bat-Mite, because that is totally a thing in continuity now. The fact that they're dealing with something as down to earth as the Bratva and that nuclear bombs are still quite a big deal for them make the foundering sub-Gotham of Star City feel like a very small and mundane corner of a world that is leaving it behind, economically and ontologically (and in a way that never seems to happen to Gotham itself.)

(1) Seriously, he ducks through a door, they spend at most half a minute punching out his bodyguards and then immediately declare him lost. No sound of a car, no recce outside the door, just "Damn, he got away." Out of shot, out of mind, I guess.

(2) Although surely the old Russian photos would be the first, 'Hood' iteration of the costume.