Last week, in “Suicide Squad,” we had a Diggle-centric episode that had the added bonus of another Ben Browder flashback, and a backstory on how Diggle and Lyla met.
After the near-miss with Slade at Casa Queen, when Diggle was swooped up, we pick up at ARGUS, where Diggle’s been brought in to help the team get an in with an arms dealer who thinks highly of him because he saved the man’s life way back there during the war.
Diggle goes along with it, is paired up with Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, and Lyla and off they go to Europe to reacquaint Diggle with their target and get inside a swanky party at his home. Once inside, a decked-out Lyla and Diggle mingle with the guests (and dance!) and Deadshot heads down to the basement where he finds the arms dealer is seriously up to something mega bad as there are vats and vats of the nerve agent they’re after. Turns out Amanda at ARGUS just planted Deadshot on the scene to get a visual.
Then she dispatches a kill team to bomb the house. That doesn’t sit well with Diggle and he evacuates the party and gets Deadshot out. Lyla helps remove his killswitch/target so they all get home free. Afterward, Diggle calls Amanda out, and Lyla too, on their sacrificial lamb shenanigans and then he agrees to disagree with Lyla to preserve their relationship.
Deadshot is condemned to the next mission (and a new, nonremovable kill switch). We also learn he has a daughter who he sends all his money to, humanizing him a little bit for Diggle (and the audience). We still don’t get into why Diggle’s brother was targeted.
In Starling City, Oliver is on a one-man mission to get to the bottom of things. He goes to see the Russians for help tracking down Slade’s lair and that only gets the top Russian, Leonov, killed. He also pushes Sara away and after a now-sober Laurel steps in and tells him to behave, they work it out and Sara essentially tells him they have to live and can’t be afraid–and she’s not that easy to kill.
Before Diggle is dispatched for his super-secret duty, he has one cute scene with Felicity outside her apartment when she pads out in PJs with cocoa in hand and tells him to stop keeping watch and go home, because if Slade wants her dead, she’s dead. She also works in an “I love you,” which was super sweet.
We finish with Oliver as Arrow going to see Amanda and asking for help with locating Slade and she tells him they’ve been tracking a new villain, who they call Deathstroke. So there’s a bit of retcon going on there. I’m 99% sure that’s a relationship we didn’t know about but I could be wrong. There’s also an earlier line where Amanda baits Diggle about what he and his boss do at night, which I think we can also file under retcon.
I loved that we got more Diggle time, and I’ve said this about other shows, and Arrow‘s in the same club, that it sort of stealthily became an ensemble show, and I think it’s stronger for it. I like when we get a chance to see stories that focus on everybody. Next up, I want to know how Felicity got to be the nerd we know and love.
Photo courtesy of Cate Cameron/The CW