Apologies. kids. I had to press pause on my weekly Arrow recaps, because I frankly wasn’t feeling it this season — like, watching it at the weekend malaise.
My biggest ragey nit is still that nobody’s overridden Laurel’s decision not to tell Quentin about Laurel. I still hate that.
While that’s still front and center and KILLING me, thankfully, I think we might be veering out of the rest of spin. Let’s catch up on where find everyone.
Oliver and Thea
Oliver fetches Thea from Corto Maltese with promises of an air clearing between them and total truth sharing, but they continue to lie to each other. He hasn’t told her he’s the Arrow, or that Sara is dead. She hasn’t told him that Malcolm is alive, although when he learns it separately, he does tell her that, and she’s not terribly surprised to hear that piece of news. Once back in Starling City, she takes over Verdant again but she’s oblivious to what’s going on in her basement. She rents a swank apartment with Malcolm’s money, which she does come clean about. Oliver isn’t thrilled because it’s blood money but she promises to start paying out of the club once she’s in the black. And she offers him the spare room.
Diggle and Lyla
She’s back at ARGUS and she wrangles John into a job that goes south on Corto Maltese, and he lets the target/agent/operative (David Cubitt) go so I think we’ll see him again. He’s also super cute carrying baby Sara around.
Laurel
Laurel decides to take her rage out on the scumbag husband of a gal in AA and gets her ass handed to her. She asks Oliver to train her and he says no, so she finds her way to a gym, where she first went in as a prosecutor looking for a witness and instead found a sympathetic boxer who agreed to take her on. When Nyssa arrives looking for Sara and learns the truth, she throws some shade at Laurel for not telling Quentin and wearing a jacket she hasn’t earned. But when she sees she’s actually trying to change, she encourages her.
Felicity
Spiraling a bit after Sara’s death and Oliver’s pin in their relationship, Felicity takes a job with Ray Palmer and goes to visit Barry, who very sweetly tells her that while they’re perfect for each other, she wants Oliver and he wants Iris. When she comes home, she falls into her past with the resurgence of a virus she wrote in college. Her mom also lands on her, opening up a bunch of old wounds but they reconcile before her mom leaves town. There’s a whole discussion in there that Felicity got nothing from her mom (a terrific Charlotte Ross) but it’s clear to everybody that when she abandoned her Goth look for a dress and heels, and a blonde ‘do, she was channeling her. Nobody actually says that though. We also don’t have a bead on Palmer, who at this point is a super gee whiz nice guy, so I’m sure he’s evil. Right?
Roy
Roy goes with Oliver to get Thea back and they make nice. She hires him back at Verdant and they make a go of being friends. He also has a nightmare that he killed Sara by piecing her with arrows he threw at her bare handed, so there’s that to sort out.
Malcolm
Malcolm follows Thea back to town and is confronted by Oliver when it looks likely that he killed Sara. Malcolm denies it, Oliver believes him, and much to Nyssa’s dismay, lets Malcolm go. So he and Thea go back to training on the DL and settle into a weird secret dad/daughter dynamic.
Quentin
Speaking of weird dynamics, Quentin knows something is up with Laurel, but he doesn’t confront her to the point that she comes clean, so that still has yet to be revealed. We see him make a call to Sara’s voicemail (ragey) and have a chat with Nyssa about Sara (ragey) but still nobody tells him. I really, really, really hope that Band-Aid comes off before the winter hiatus.
And that’s where we find everybody. I’m still in, I’m just not as in as I was, and I very specifically want Quentin looped on the truth, and Oliver and Thea to stop bullshitting each other. Otherwise, we’re good. I’ve also noticed a new affectation from Amell — a couple of times this season when Oliver’s been told something bad, he’s put his hands on either side of his neck and dipped his head a bit. Not sure if that’s Oliver allowing himself to feel things more vs. being so stoic around his loved ones, but it’s interesting to see where it pops up.
Here are a couple of peeks at Tuesday’s new episode.
Photo and Video Courtesy of The CW.