Welcome back from winter hiatus! After a month-long break, Arrow returns tonight with a brand-new episode, and we pickup after Oliver’s world has gone sideways.
Let’s take a look back at what we found out:
After Oliver is revived by Barry, he realizes (similar to what’s going on over at Teen Wolf) that he didn’t come back alone. He’s soon plagued by ghostly visits from Shado–who’s loving, Slade–who’s violent, and finally, Tommy–who’s forgiving.
As we look back at the island, we learn that Oliver was given a choice of whether to let Shado or Sarah die and when he moved in front of Sarah to protect her, Shado was shot and killed. It’s awful and terrible and he and Sarah devolve into tears, but then it goes from bad to worse when Slade revives and rages, arriving after she’s dead.
This has repercussions back in the present when we find out Slade can’t be a ghost because he’s very much alive, very, very angry at Oliver, and pulling the strings on Brother Blood’s campaign.
Separately, Brother Blood woos Laurel at the same time he dispatches his death squad of one to take out the police. Her dad ends up in the hospital and Hilton is killed (freeing Roger Cross up for Motive and Continuum).
Felicity works with Barry to identify the poison that Blood is shooting into his victims and Oliver twigs that it’s the same stuff that killed (or didn’t) Slade and says he destroyed it before he left the island, so now he’s realizing the island followed him home.
Finally, Oliver comes face to face with Blood’s assassin when he goes to rescue Roy (who takes a hit of the serum and lives to tell about it). After he’s been knocked to the ground over and over again, Tommy appears in front of him and tells him to get up. Oliver tells Tommy he’s sorry he got him killed and Tommy essentially tells him that everything isn’t always his fault. Then he reaches out his hand and pulls Oliver up. It’s less than two minutes of screen time but it’s pretty damn effective, and I burst into tears as soon as we saw him. (I REALLY hope they shot a lot of B roll while Colin Donnell was in Vancouver and that we’ll see Tommy again).
Barry wisely realizes Felicity’s hung up on Oliver even if she doesn’t and he gracefully bows out as he tells Felicity he’s not going anywhere but her interests are elsewhere. Then he goes home and gets zapped, setting up the Flash.
Before that, we close with Slade rattling off all the ways he’s going to hurt Oliver and those close to him. It’s fairly heavy handed and mwa ha ha, and part of me wants to sit out the arc until we get to the episode where Oliver kics his ass, but we’ll just see how it plays out.
Here’s a sneak peek of “Blast Radius,” which airs tonight on The CW and CTV at 8 pm E/7 C.
Photo courtesy of Diyah Pera/The CW