Holy shit we watched a lot of Arrow this weekend.
Secret squirrels non pareil ARGUS (arguably the Arrowverse equivalent of SHIELD, or possibly UNCLE) recruit John Diggle - via his ex-wife Lilah - for a mission to If-you-squint-it-doesn't-look-exactly-like-Starling-City-stan. The target is a drug trafficker and arms dealer with an interest in WMDs (revealed as the buyer for the prototype earthquake machine) and his team consists of Lilah and the 'Suicide Squad': Convicts Deadshot, Bronze Tiger and Shrapnel, but not their cell-block mate, an unnamed 'trained therapist' with a high pitched voice and an ongoing rights issue.
The primary purposes of the episode seem to be to remind us who ARGUS are and to mess with Diggle's moral certainty. While Waller and Lilah fail to convince him that drone-striking a party is the equivalent of what he and Oliver do in Starling City, Deadshot's genuine nobility, and the revelation that he has a daughter he avoids because he knows he's a bad person. Bronze Tiger turns out to be a highly reliable psychopath and Shrapnel gets to show how the head bomb works. All in all, it's a bit filler, and I was disappointed that having ended last episode with Diggle knocked out by unseen assailants he was just fine at the start of this one.
At the end of the episode, with his Bratva contacts having failed to find Slade Wilson and then been murdered, Oliver calls on Waller, with whom he apparently has a past*, for help and learns of the mercenary Deathstroke.
'Birds of Prey' is another filler-heavy episode, mostly revolving around the return of Helena 'Huntress' Bertinelli (or as Felicity likes to call her, 'Oliver's psycho ex-girlfriend hell-bent on revenge against her father.') Laurel gets to woman the fuck up after her whiny bitch from hell act of past weeks, not just kicking some goon butt with the Black Canary, but eventually blackmailing the DA into giving her her job back. Roy, meanwhile, is going a bit loco, and Oliver instructs him to stay away from Thea, which fully succeeds in getting her kidnapped by Slade Wilson.
In 'Deathstroke', Slade holds Thea captive long enough to get Oliver riled, then tells her that she is Malcolm Merlyn's daughter and lets her go. It's telling of the Queen family's relationships that she believes him without question. This sets her against Oliver and her mother, but the incident also provokes Oliver to temporarily make Isabel - remember her? - acting CEO, which she uses to become permanent CEO because she's working with Slade. Also, Quentin Lance - increasingly for me the true hero of this season - is arrested for conspiracy for working with the vigilante.
In 'The Man Under the Hood', Team Arrow take out Queen Consolidated's Applied Science building to prevent its use for mass producing Mirakuru, but Wilson responds by breaking into the Foundry and stealing the skeleton key, then swiping an experimental multi-recipient blood transfuser from Star Labs' Starling City branch, nearly killing an incredibly sweet and young looking Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramone in the process (what a difference a year makes.) This is bad, but based on something Ivo told him on the island, Oliver knows there is a cure for Mirakuru, and Felicity asks Caitlin and Cisco to work on it.
Oliver tries to assassinate Slade while he is weak from the transfusion, but finds he is using Roy, and while he and Diggle rescue Roy and Diggle kills Isabel, Slade has his army and uses his own blood to revive Isabel.
Laurel, having learned the Arrow's identity from Slade, tries to give her father the leverage he needs to get out of jail, but he refuses, as the Arrow matters more to Starling than who he is under the hood. Instead, Laurel just blackmails him out, because she's getting good at this.
In 'Seeing Red' Roy recovers from his 'surgery' in the full grip of Mirakuru madness. As Slade sees and hear Shado telling him to kill Oliver, so Roy hallucinates Thea telling him this is all her fault and she needs to be murdered, because Mirakuru is a dick. Eventually, Roy is brought down and Sin - Sara and Roy's friend who has been popping up again lately - stops Sara killing him, instead putting him in a serious coma until a cure can be made.
Back on the island, Roy and Anatoly get the old Japanese sub working and one of the other prisoners sacrifices himself to pilot a kamikaze torpedo and blast it free of the rocks. He gives Sara a picture of his daughter before he goes; it's a picture of Sin.
And then Slade captures the Queen family. Oliver refuses to choose between his mother and his sister, so Moira - who in another flashback turns out to have bought off a girl Oliver knocked up - makes the choice for him and is run through the heart to save her daughter.
Which brings us to 'City of Blood', as the now unopposed Sebastian Blood takes office as Mayor and unleashes the Mirakuru Corps to provoke the level of blind civil obedience needed for the sweeping reforms he feels the city requires (militarised police, curfews, a partial return to feudalism and so on.) Oliver is ready to sacrifice himself to Slade, but his team drag him back to his feet and Laurel uncovers Blood's secret identity, which allows them to identify his agenda and Oliver to realise that he can't put an end to Wilson's plans** by dying.
Unfortunately, an attempt to bury the Mirakuru army under an overpass is thwarted by the appearance of Isabel, wearing a part-face version of the Deathstroke mask (leaving her mouth exposed and sadly making her look a bit more like a fetish hooker than a super assassin, although the rest of her costume is basically practical,) determined to even the score with Diggle. Meanwhile a Mirakuru thug attacks Police HQ, and we end with basically everyone fucked and the Army of Blood (so many possible names) marching into town like the cosplay parade at a Jason Vorhees convention.
* Interestingly, Hanna assumes this to be a romantic past, presumably because Waller looks like she would have been about twenty if she met him on the island.
** The arch villain of this series is called 'Mr Wilson'. That's a bit awesome.
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| I might accept, at a stretch, that Codename Mockingbird is the real Amanda Waller's daughter. I guess CCH Pounder was tied up with NCIS New Orleans. |
Secret squirrels non pareil ARGUS (arguably the Arrowverse equivalent of SHIELD, or possibly UNCLE) recruit John Diggle - via his ex-wife Lilah - for a mission to If-you-squint-it-doesn't-look-exactly-like-Starling-City-stan. The target is a drug trafficker and arms dealer with an interest in WMDs (revealed as the buyer for the prototype earthquake machine) and his team consists of Lilah and the 'Suicide Squad': Convicts Deadshot, Bronze Tiger and Shrapnel, but not their cell-block mate, an unnamed 'trained therapist' with a high pitched voice and an ongoing rights issue.
The primary purposes of the episode seem to be to remind us who ARGUS are and to mess with Diggle's moral certainty. While Waller and Lilah fail to convince him that drone-striking a party is the equivalent of what he and Oliver do in Starling City, Deadshot's genuine nobility, and the revelation that he has a daughter he avoids because he knows he's a bad person. Bronze Tiger turns out to be a highly reliable psychopath and Shrapnel gets to show how the head bomb works. All in all, it's a bit filler, and I was disappointed that having ended last episode with Diggle knocked out by unseen assailants he was just fine at the start of this one.
 |
| In a break from standard, Laurel does not completely suck in this episode. |
'Birds of Prey' is another filler-heavy episode, mostly revolving around the return of Helena 'Huntress' Bertinelli (or as Felicity likes to call her, 'Oliver's psycho ex-girlfriend hell-bent on revenge against her father.') Laurel gets to woman the fuck up after her whiny bitch from hell act of past weeks, not just kicking some goon butt with the Black Canary, but eventually blackmailing the DA into giving her her job back. Roy, meanwhile, is going a bit loco, and Oliver instructs him to stay away from Thea, which fully succeeds in getting her kidnapped by Slade Wilson.
 |
| "Are you high? I have the strength of twenty men!" |
In 'The Man Under the Hood', Team Arrow take out Queen Consolidated's Applied Science building to prevent its use for mass producing Mirakuru, but Wilson responds by breaking into the Foundry and stealing the skeleton key, then swiping an experimental multi-recipient blood transfuser from Star Labs' Starling City branch, nearly killing an incredibly sweet and young looking Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramone in the process (what a difference a year makes.) This is bad, but based on something Ivo told him on the island, Oliver knows there is a cure for Mirakuru, and Felicity asks Caitlin and Cisco to work on it.
Oliver tries to assassinate Slade while he is weak from the transfusion, but finds he is using Roy, and while he and Diggle rescue Roy and Diggle kills Isabel, Slade has his army and uses his own blood to revive Isabel.
 |
| There's actually a name for this move, it gets used so much in comics. These days it's more often girl lifts guy, but crazy Roy rocks the classics; even the unfortunate ones. |
Laurel, having learned the Arrow's identity from Slade, tries to give her father the leverage he needs to get out of jail, but he refuses, as the Arrow matters more to Starling than who he is under the hood. Instead, Laurel just blackmails him out, because she's getting good at this.
In 'Seeing Red' Roy recovers from his 'surgery' in the full grip of Mirakuru madness. As Slade sees and hear Shado telling him to kill Oliver, so Roy hallucinates Thea telling him this is all her fault and she needs to be murdered, because Mirakuru is a dick. Eventually, Roy is brought down and Sin - Sara and Roy's friend who has been popping up again lately - stops Sara killing him, instead putting him in a serious coma until a cure can be made.
 |
| "Is this just a Mirakuru thing?" |
Back on the island, Roy and Anatoly get the old Japanese sub working and one of the other prisoners sacrifices himself to pilot a kamikaze torpedo and blast it free of the rocks. He gives Sara a picture of his daughter before he goes; it's a picture of Sin.
And then Slade captures the Queen family. Oliver refuses to choose between his mother and his sister, so Moira - who in another flashback turns out to have bought off a girl Oliver knocked up - makes the choice for him and is run through the heart to save her daughter.
 |
| "Well; sure glad we don't look stupid in this..." |
Unfortunately, an attempt to bury the Mirakuru army under an overpass is thwarted by the appearance of Isabel, wearing a part-face version of the Deathstroke mask (leaving her mouth exposed and sadly making her look a bit more like a fetish hooker than a super assassin, although the rest of her costume is basically practical,) determined to even the score with Diggle. Meanwhile a Mirakuru thug attacks Police HQ, and we end with basically everyone fucked and the Army of Blood (so many possible names) marching into town like the cosplay parade at a Jason Vorhees convention.
* Interestingly, Hanna assumes this to be a romantic past, presumably because Waller looks like she would have been about twenty if she met him on the island.
** The arch villain of this series is called 'Mr Wilson'. That's a bit awesome.
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