‘Arrow’ 1.14 Episode Recap and Review: Odyssey

Ollie’s on the island on this week’s episode of Arrow!

And now, it’s time for a breakdown (or a recap, as you will). I’m going to do this in two distinct parts, as the present-day story was important, but quite brief.

In present-day Starling City, continuing immediately after we left off last week, Ollie is swinging through the window of Moira’s office and trotting out his “you have failed this city” catchphrase. Mo pleads for her life on behalf of her children (take a second to feel that irony), and Oliver backs down. Mo sees her opportunity to defend herself and shoots Ollie in the shoulder. In the following fracas, Oliver manages to drag his bleeding carcass into Felicity’s car and ask her to take him to Digg at the Arrow-cave. Digg and Felicity save Ollie’s life, at which point Felicity decides to sign on, but only as a part-timer. She’s in until they find and rescue Walter, and then she’s putting this whole green, messy business behind her.

All of the rest of the action this week takes place back on the island. Slade has plans to get off the island on the next supply plane, but he only has ten days to get trained enough so that he won’t die as soon as they hit the airstrip. Cue Montage!! Ollie can hold his own now, but he and Slade still aren’t BFFs. Slade tells Ollie that there aren’t any “friends” on the island and relates the tale of his old partner, Billy Wintergreen, who now works as the Deathstroke lookalike who tortured Ollie a few episodes back.

Ollie and Slade manage to take the airstrip, but there’s one major issue: Slade’s planning on calling for an airstrike of the island as soon as they get back to civilization. Ollie’s good with leaving Fyres to burn, but not Yao Fei. He goes back to the other camp to fetch Yao Fei, but gets turned back over to Fyres, instead. Despite all of his protestations about looking out for Number One, Slade turns up at the camp to rescue Ollie. They escape and decide to find a way to survive on the island for another three months, when the next supply plane is due. Yao Fei stays firmly in Fyres’s clutches, as his daughter, who has the same red dragon tattoo that we’ve seen on Ollie’s present-day shoulder, is being held hostage by the mercenary to keep Yao Fei in line.

Okay, so the sneaky writers over at Arrow HQ seem to have caught on to my well-thought-out intention of skipping over the island flashbacks. Therefore, they gave us almost an entire episode set back on Purgatory. On the plus side, they did include the training montage I’ve been asking for, so I can’t complain overmuch.

The conspiracy theorist in me desperately wants Merlyn to be the one who hired Fyers’s crew. The voice on the other end of that phone call didn’t sound much like the dulcet tones of John Barrowman, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Regardless, with Fyers referencing his own Cause and Ollie firmly on his way to becoming the Hood, it looks to me like the island flashbacks are finally relevant again, rather than just a neat book-ending device. Well done, writers. I see what you did there.

Best Quotes:
Felicity: “You need a doctor, not a steelworker!”

Oliver: “I’m dropped on an island and my only friend is named Wilson.”

Things to Ponder:

• So Felicity is now a solid member of the Hood crew. I’m still thinking they’re going to make her the Starling City version of Oracle. Your thoughts?
• Mo’s still getting a pass this episode. Is Oliver going to take her down, or is she going to end up doing a Heel/Face Turn?
• Whose Deathstroke mask did we see in the first episode? Slade’s or Wintergreen’s?