Arrow - 'Sara' and 'Corto Maltese'

Emily Bett Rickards goes for the... whatever the American equivalent of a
BAFTA is.

Team Arrow has lost a friend, and so they spring into action determined to find the one responsible, an expert with a bow and arrows. "There aren't that many of us," Oliver insists. You kidder, Olly.

This particular archer appears to be assassin Simon Lacroix who... just uses a bow because... he's Canadian? The Kool Aid Man is red? He escapes from the Arrow and Laurel insists that next time she's coming along with her law degree and crackerjack blackmail skills, because she hasn't been a complete idiot for a while. Meanwhile, Felicity has a bit of a meltdown and confronts Olly for his apparent coolness; he explains that he has to keep it together so that everyone else gets to grieve, which is in its way fair but also part of his martyr complex. Ray Palmer is more sensitive, spotting that Felicity's anger is not really directed at his full court press to get her to work for him at Queen Consolidated.

Eventually, the Arrow captures Lacroix and Laurel tries to execute him before being talked down. I suspect that this is, like, important, not least because it so directly mirrors her talking Sara down from killing Helena Bertinelli last season.

"You're not weak, Thea; you've just been underwritten."

Grieving inside, Olly tries to get in touch with Thea and Roy finally admits that she didn't just leave, but ran away from all of them and their lies, which leads us into 'Corto Maltese' and Olly, Roy and Diggle's field trip to retrieve Thea from the titular fictional island (DC's go to South American trouble spot,) not knowing that she is there to train with her father, Malcolm 'Mr Honesty' Merlin.

While they are there, Lyla asks Diggle to contact an ARGUS asset who has gone dark and check everything is okay. The agent asks Diggle to help out with preventing the sale of an ARGUS agent database, but turns out to be selling it and just wants the code key Lyla gave Diggle to prove his identity which can unlock the database (worst electronic security solution ever.) Roy and Olly help out, using homemade bows. Olly also uses a handgun, to Roy's astonishment.

The hotel bed bow; as cool as it is unlikely.

They stop the sale and the rogue agent explains he wanted a way out of ARGUS after the terrible things Waller had him do. This fits not only with last season's ARGUS adventures, but with a flashback in 'Sara', during which Olly is ordered to assassinate Tommy Merlin to stop him tracking Olly down, instead engineering a fake kidnapping to make him believe that Oliver accessing his email was just bait for a trap.

The team are rather less successful, at first, in persuading Thea to come home, but Olly tries a unique approach and tells the truth, beginning with how Robert Queen really died. This moves Thea enough to take a leap of faith, and Merlin lets her go, either for some nefarious reason of his own or just because he believes that Oliver will eventually drive her away again; or both.

For an action series, Arrow has quite a substantial female
following. I'm not sure why... Oh, right.

Back in Starling, Laurel is getting the vigilante buzz, which her father can't understand because she still hasn't told him Sara is dead. How is she not getting this? She was on the other side of the lie train for so long, you'd think she'd have sussed out the series' thesis that lies are bad, yo! This leads her to ask Oliver to train her, but he refuses because plot needs to happen and so instead she turns to Ted Grant. Grant is a boxing trainer she tried to strong arm over a suspected false testimony he claims was to keep a good kid from getting chewed up by the system. He also offered to train her as an outlet for her anger, an offer she accepts.

And finally, Felicity agrees to work for Ray Palmer, as long as she doesn't have to make coffee, ever, and is surprised to be given her own PA and Oliver's old office in which to work. Her first job is recovering a hard drive from the destroyed QC Applied Sciences Division (which you may recall someone blew up last season.) Palmer is impressed, but seems worryingly interested in the experimental weapons part of the database.

'Sara' is a pretty good grieving episode, but loses some traction from the simple fact that the world is now ludicrously full of mad skilled archers. Also, points off for not having Roy breaking the news to Sin. 'Corto Maltese' is very much about driving the arc plot forward and heavy on the action. With no other prospects, I'm wondering if Amanda Waller is going to be the arc villain this time out, or just a recurring dubious ally.

Oh, and Nyssa al Gul shows up at the end demanding to know where Sara is.