Arrow - 'A Matter of Trust'

A man desperately in need of the Cisco Ramone magic.

The two lives of Oliver Queen collide again, as the Mayor and the Green Arrow both attempt to tackle another new drug hitting the streets. This one is called Stardust(1), but it's no magic potion. It... Okay, actually I'm not sure what it does, but I'm happy to get on board with designer street drugs being bad, especially in Arrow where the latest high is usually objectively evil in some way. Kids are getting high and kids are getting hurt, and the new DA is pushing hard.

Do I have something on my face?

Rene/Wild Dog thinks he has a lead on the Stardust factory, since he knows the streets, but apparently we're not done with the trust thing (I guess the episode is called 'A Matter of Trust') and Olly blows him off. Thus Wild Dog and Evelyn do a little freelance recon, which becomes freelance face punching, and loses the DA the chance to flip Stardust distributor Derek Sampson when he is knocked into a vat of his own chemicals(2). Olly butts heads with Rene, and Felicity notes that Rene may be the only person she knows who is more stubborn than Oliver.

Meanwhile, Curtis continues to be adawkward, to a degree which could possibly get old, and Felicity is labouring under the weight of her guilt over dropping that missile on Rory/Ragman's hometown that one time. You can see how that would be awkward to bring up.

While she believes in his innocence, Lila is apparently unable to mobilise the terrifying might of ARGUS to prove it, so he's in custody, and finds himself sharing a cell with an old 'friend'; Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot, which is kind of a surprise given that we last saw him providing covering fire from an exploding building. Lawton plays on Diggle's conscience until he confesses to Andy's killing. When Lila visits, he decides that he is going to take the fall for stealing WMDs in order to atone for killing his brother. Wanting to be punished makes sense, although it seems a little out of character to let General Garry Chalk get away with murdering his entire unit for the sake of a little metaphorical flagellation.

Terrific.

In an incredible twist, dunking into a tank of boiling drugs doesn't kill Sampson, but instead turns him into a superhuman juggernaut who feels no pain and walks off bullet - and arrow - wounds. He busts out of the morgue, rounds up his crew, and in a stunning break from supercriminal protocols, decides to recreate the exact mix and dunk all of them in a vat of boiling drugs as well. Of course, Felicity jumps right onto the theft of a piece of chemical analysing tech and persuades Olly to take the team out on a fieldwork assignment.

Lots of pics this time, just to cover the new costumes.

The team perform well, although Curtis is a bit bumbling still and provides mostly tech support. They blow up the chemical experiments and Olly offers a little lesson in anatomy - even if you can't feel vital tendons being slashed, they still stop working, which to be fair is one of my bugbears about the whole 'feels no pain' bit - and leaves Sampson in an exploding drugs lab(3), because not being Batman means never having to say you're sorry(4).

Welcome to the Lair.

As a form of graduation, the team are formally welcomed into the lair, and get to marvel at the costumes of the dead and elsewhere. speaking of whom, Thea spends the episode firefighting over the appointment of Quentin Lance as Deputy Mayor, after a reporter flags his alcoholism and then uses her admission of culpability to suggest that Oliver isn't in control of his own office. At the end of the episode, Oliver brings the lessons of vigilante justice to the Mayor's office by owning responsibility for all that his team does, because he trusts those he appoints, including both Thea and Quentin.

Oo. Flashback screenshot.

These lessons also come from his flashbacks, of course, because we're getting well into the whole relevance thing again. Analtoly teaches him that he must trust the Bratva, revealing that the guys who died during his initiation weren't real candidates, but those targeted by the Bratva for wronging their people. Then he has Olly stand and get slashed across the back by his future brothers.

Arrow season 5 continues to feel a bit like a sort of greatest hits compilation of the past five seasons, with its renewed focus on daytime Star City and the the more direct parallels in the flashbacks, the building of a team and the mixing up of regular criminals, mutants and magic; even the presence of a dark archer in Prometheus. It makes me wonder if they're planning a sixth season, and if so how much they're going to shake things up. 'A Matter of Trust' isn't Arrow at its best, but it's definitely better than Season 4's busywork episodes.

(1) So, this ties in with Stephen Amell's kayfabe beef with Stardust, the wrestling persona of guest star Cody Rhodes, which together with Curtis referencing wrestler Terry Sloane (the name of the first Mr Terrific) as his idol and linking Wild Dog's hockey mask to Amell's role as Casey in TMNT: Out of the Shadows, makes this one hella meta episode.
(2) Points off for not having Olly ask: "Do you want supervillains? Because that's how you get supervillains."
(3) Do you want double supervillains? Because that's how you get double supervillains!
(4) About killing supervillains, that is. Not being Batman isn't a blanket excuse for being a colossal dickbag.