Praise first for Emily Bett Rickards, for portraying the recovering Felicity with humility, fear and ultimately, resolve. Her story this week was like a balm to soothe the pain from last week’s Felicity-is-SO-strong love in. Pointing out that though her greatest asset to Team Arrow is her mind, it has been compromised by the trauma she has suffered, giving us a reason to root for her. We even get to see Felicity battle her inner demons, personified by a vision of her college age self, Goth get up and all, thanks to hallucinations from some pretty strong pain medication.
Oliver, being his angst-ridden self as usual, blames himself for Felicity’s condition. Thankfully, during a heart to heart whilst sparring with Laurel (During which he causally drops the fact Barry/Flash can travel in time. Just look at Laurel’s face.) and a final talk with Felicity, they both get past the idea of being bogged down with regrets and that they made the choice to fight the people who are truly to blame, like Damien Darhk.
The other personal story told this week, was John trying to reclaim Andy’s soul. David Ramsey has consistently been my favourite actor on the show and when given a decent script, has even been able to move me to tears, the only actor on the show to have done so.
Once again Lyla and by extension John, are pulled back into her old spy life after an ARGUS agent ends up dead after reaching out to her because his cover had been blown. It turns out the shady war profiteering unit Shadowspire is behind it, a group that Andy had dealings with back when the Diggle brothers were stationed in Afghanistan, which leads us to the flashbacks.
Not flashing back to the island, this week we instead see the Diggle brothers in the army back in 2005. John is proud of Andy for going straight but is ultimately in denial about Andy’s back hand deals over a few bricks of confiscated opium with the head of the Shadowspire unit. It was refreshing to see the flashbacks serve a larger purpose, fleshing out what John has told us again and again over the last few weeks, that Andy was a good man and deserved saving. It was also cool to see their twist ending, as Shadowspire’s true leader is revealed to be Baron Reiter, tying this flashback into Oliver’s on the island.
Bringing Andy into ARGUS’s HQ, they learn all too late that the shipment of rail guns Shadowspire were after was a diversion to keep ARGUS’s eyes and Star City’s vigilantes off their back whilst they went after their real target, the McGuffin known as “Rubicon” in ARGUS’s vault. It’s here we get to see a scene both shocking and sadly inevitable.
With this summer’s Suicide Squad coming out, it’s no secret that DC TV and the CW are slowly writing the Squad characters out of the show and tying off loose ends to avoid confusion between the distinct and separate TV and movie universes. Threatening Amanda Waller with the execution of her personnel in 20 minutes if she doesn’t give up the access codes to the vault, Lyla confirms to Shadowspire’s Lieutenant Joyner what Waller has already stated, she doesn’t make decisions based on the value of human life. So Waller gets a bullet to the head, with the clock resetting on Lyla as she’s now commended to open the vault. Others may have seen it coming, but I didn’t and even in a world where people have literally been brought back to from the dead, a bullet to the brain is as far from a “comic book death” as you can get. At least the TV version of Deadshot got blown up on a rooftop. It was quick, brutal and as an antagonist to our heroes, Amanda Waller will be missed.
Working together to save the day, the brothers Diggle save Lyla and with Team Arrow’s help, capturing the Shadowspire members without further loss of life. Felicity too overcame her demons, getting the codename Overwatch (with a sly nod to the fact the codename Oracle was already taken), cementing herself as a crucial part of the team even if she isn’t in the field. In the end we see the heroes back at their base reaffirming their commitment to each other as a team, even, in a bittersweet moment of what I’m sure was meta-fiction, raising a glass to the fallen Waller; The victim of inter-studio politics. Oliver swears to Felicity that though he doesn’t think it’s healthy to be in denial about the permanence of her condition, he will never stop looking for a way to make her walk again in this world of wonders they now live in.
John and Lyla agree to let Andy out of his cell, albeit under escort by an ARGUS agent, having regained their trust enough to meet their daughter, his niece, Sara. Remarking that she has their mother’s eyes we are left with a touching moment of bonding that now makes me even more afraid of the question, who from this extended superhero family only has four months to live?
Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer
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