Arrow - 'Monument Point'

"Ladies and gents, Mr Vinnie Jones."

It's all go in the antepenultimate episode of Season 4, as Damien Darhk aims to set off a global thermonuclear holocaust, and the only man who can stop him is Felicity's dad, Noah Kuttler.

HIVE dispatches Brick (Vinnie Jones) to kill the Calculator, whose work forms the basis of the Rubicon's code. Team Arrow rescue him and set him the task of preventing the end of the world - as we will later see on The Flash, just one of this month's armageddons - but for that he needs top-drawer PalmerTech tech, and wouldn't you know it, Felicity has just been fired by the Board for trying to introduce altruism into the mission statement and neglecting her CEO duties on account of secret apocalypse.

It's that man again! (Now you know why I didn't use the ITMA
caption for Brick.)

Meanwhile, Malcolm Merlin tries to reconcile Thea to her place on spaceship HIVE - with the loss of his power over the League of Assassins he's bought entirely into HIVE's new scorched earth interpretation of the mission - but this particular edition of Malcolm and Thea's awkward reunions is interrupted by the arrival in the Genesis Vault of Lonnie Machin, still intent on rewenge against Darhk. Given her past experience with the man and that whole thing where she sort of lit him on fire and created the scarred and twisted ball of rage that is Anarky, Thea is roped into catching him.

Felicity and her dad bust into PalmerTech and steal most of what they need, but the race to stop Rubicon is just piling up complications. The latest is that even once the code is compiled, they need to run the anti-programme from a massive server farm, and defend it against HIVE's troops once they get things running.

"...and also the Green Arrow."

Lyla calls in all the ARGUS dudes at her disposal. Our heroes set up a perimeter around the server farm and a massive battle ensues as HIVE's finest attempt to storm the facility and kill Noah Kuttler. Given the practical limits on mass fights scenes on a television budget, the show does pretty well here, with doubtless some significant doubling up of masked HIVE and ARGUS goons to pad the numbers. It's not quite Season 2's tunnel fight, but then that was in a finale and we still have two episodes to go on this one.

I'm pretty sure that three section staff expanded from Lonnie's
regular cattle prod, much like Oliver's bow folds up and goes in
his pocket.

Meanwhile, underground, Thea tries to talk Lonnie down and Malcolm shoots him to prevent him blowing up the dome's air processor. With that vengeance thwarted, Lonnie turns to his 'mother', Thea, despite not recognising her at first without the mask. He comes after her in person, and although she ultimately defeats him the cost is high.

Well, Alex is apparently dead. I feel kind of bad not caring about a character's death, but Alex barely qualified as a character even before he became a brainwashed Stepford husband. I figure Malcolm will have him stuffed and propped up in the kitchen and no one will notice the difference.

Fathers and daughters. You know how that works with me,
yeah?

The Kuttler/Smoak double act does the business. Noah takes a bullet for his daughter, establishing his 'not a complete tool' credentials, but they manage to prevent the launch of all but one missile, targeted at the city of Monument Point. Unable to stop or destroy it, and with Supergirl on a different Earth for the time being, Felicity can only try to divert the missile by disrupting its GPS. She is successful, but is only able to divert it a short distance, destroying the town of Havenrock.

All told, it's not a bad result, but it's devastating for Felicity, and moreover means that a part of Darhk's plan is completed. While atomic devastation was its own point in HIVE's Genesis programme, the death toll was also intended to feed Darhk's power through the idol. Having been tracking leylines in the background throughout the episode, Oliver and Diggle eventually arrive in the nexus chamber beneath City Hall, to find Darhk surrounded by a field of energy.

After a slightly up and down season, much of it spent dealing with the fact that, hey, there's magic, yo!, Arrow hits one out of the park with 'Monument Point', pulling together the disparate plot threads and delivering a mega-stakes pre-finale. We love Felicity in our house, and this is a very Felicity story without calling on non-family relationship drama, providing a chance for Emily Bett Rickards to exercise her look of desolate horror. The only real bum note remains the flashbacks, which continue to parallel the real action instead of connecting to it, as in previous seasons.

We follow this with... Oh, wait. We're actually up to date for once, so no binge watching for us this week.