Poor, dumb Sebastian. I mean, really. Kudos to Kevin Alejandro, though for making Blood equal parts charming, terrifying, and gullible. You just knew he couldn’t possibly live.
So, The Undertaking 2 is in full swing when we pick up with Arrow‘s “Streets of Fire,” and Laurel shoots her way out of the rubble with some archery coaching from Oliver. Separately, Felicity plows a car into Isabel to get her off of Diggle, and Sarah resurfaces long enough to find her inner hero.
At the police station, the captain finally hears Quentin’s pleas that they need a very specific kind of help. He agrees, and reinstates Quentin’s gold shield and tells him to get on it.
Over at City Hall, a weirdly calm Sebastian watches his city burn while the DA is fairly hysterical that this is capital BAD. Pretty soon, she’s relieved of her anxiety when one of the Mirakuru Army bursts in and snaps her neck, and takes out all of the Mayoral staff, leaving Blood to finally realize what he set in motion.
Diggle gets Roy to Sarah’s lair and they wait for the delivery of the STAR Labs cure, which is interrupted in transport and taken to Slade. Sebastian seals his fate when he steals it and hands it off to Oliver, still believing it’ll be a brand new day, and Oliver can only shake his head. Isabel arrives and runs Sebastian through with a sword while Slade tells him goodbye over a speaker phone.
At the train station, Thea is saved by Malcolm but she’s adamant that she wants nothing to do with him, which is kind of silly and hilarious. Get out of the train station alive, and then make your case that he’s a bad dad.
Oliver and team get a heads up from Quentin (who’s been joined by Laurel and Sarah) that troops are moving into Starling City, which is starting to resemble the future scenes from Terminator, and Oliver snaps to that they’re ARGUS troops and not the US Army. He calls Amanda and makes the case that they have the cure and she tells him they have a small window until Starling City is leveled by her missiles. Driven to do something, anything, he shoots up Roy with the cure.
In flashback land, Oliver has Anatoly get him back to the freighter because Sarah was recaptured. Once on board, he finds her and rather than make a break for it, Oliver wants to make one last attempt to save Slade. They head to Ivo’s lab and are cut off by Slade and the goon squad, and Slade is holding the cure.
And that’s our setup.
Key takeaways:
There’s a moment where Slade talks about Shado and Isabel asks who that is. I’m surprised that part of her reprogramming wasn’t the vilification of Oliver for what happened to Shado. So that was interesting.
Also curious about the essential burning down of all the key sets. When we come back in the fall, what will Startling City look like.
I was wrong about the Flash pilot. I hadn’t seen the later news that it would not be a tacked-on episode of Arrow. It was shot as a standalone pilot by master director David Nutter, and it was picked up to series last week, so we will see Barry on deck in his own show in the fall. The question is just where on the schedule–lots of options although post-Arrow is unlikely since The 100 has done well in that slot.
I like that Laurel finally gets it that Sarah was on the island, and she’s sorted out her own demons about being left out of that bond. I do hope she makes it to season three.
Here’s a sneak peek of tomorrow’s season finale, “Unthinkable,” which sadly, is only one hour. Commence pearl-clutching now, because you know we’re getting a cliffhanger.
Photo courtesy of Jack Rowand /The CW.