‘Arrow’ 3.19 Episode Recap and Review: Broken Arrow

On the heels of Arrow‘s previous episode, Roy is in custody and Laurel comes to the precinct to pick up Oliver. She tells Lance that the DA wants Oliver released, since Roy has signed a full confession. Lance, of course, isn’t buying it even a little, but he really doesn’t have an option here.  Laurel is able to get Oliver a few minutes alone with Roy. Roy tells him that on top of making sure that the real Arrow is still free to protect the city, this is how he wants to atone for the death of the officer last year.

Lance is still looking for a way to pin the hood on Oliver, so he shows up at Verdant with a warrant to search the basement. There’s next to no warning, so everything is still there when the cops break down the door. Fortunately for Oliver, Felicity and Diggle are hella prepared, so they’ve already removed Oliver’s personal items and wiped all but Roy’s prints from everything in the lair. (Yes, that seems incredibly unlikely, but this is a show with metahumans and supersuits. I’m going to let it ride.)

Speaking of metahumans, there’s a new Villain of the Week in town. He’s pretty obviously a resident of Central City. A creepy guy who shoots lasers out of his eyes a la Superman is doing some hefty bank robbing and taking no prisoners. Of course, with Lance’s plainclothes cops still tailing Oliver, there’s no way that the Arrow can be on this case, either in the suit or out of it. Felicity has a suggestion that Oliver isn’t going to like; they’re going to have to bring in Ray.

With the rest of the team on comms, Ray goes after the bad guy, one Jake Simmons. Ray’s not bad, but he doesn’t have the hero chops just yet and Simmons beats the ever-loving crap out of him, despite the supersuit.

Back at Iron Heights, things are not looking great for Roy. The Arrow put a lot of people behind bars, and now he’s in there with them. He gets attacked by a group of thugs and manages to fend them all off by being, y’know, Arsenal and a badass. The attack gives Quentin some ammunition to throw at the Queen family, though. He goes to the loft to tell Thea about the attack, which leads to Oliver becoming even more determined to break Roy out of prison. Diggle and Felicity talk him out of it, but emotions are running high.

Of course, Simmons isn’t involved in any of this behind the scenes drama, so he’s still out doing his thing in Starling City. The team figures out that he’s drawing energy from the power grid, so Felicity heads to the plant to shut off his access. Simmons takes her hostage and lets the boys know what’s going on when they call to check in. Oliver doesn’t have the freedom of movement, and Ray doesn’t have the fighting skills, but what Ray does have is a device that will allow someone to control the suit mentally. Oliver hooks in and plays the best Kinect game EVER by steering Ray through the fight with Simmons. In the course of the fight, the connection gets severed, so Ray has to take over on his own. He wins by virtue of Oliver’s Epic Hero Speech and the day is saved.

Okay, Starling City’s day is temporarily saved. Not so much over in Iron Heights. One of the guards is on the take and kills Roy by stabbing him in the side. Quentin brings the news to Oliver and Thea at the loft, sending Oliver into one of his patented Arrow Guilt Spirals. Diggle and Felicity find him brooding in the lair and tell him that they have news that’s going to make him very, very angry. Roy is totally alive and staging his death was his own idea! The guard was one of Lyla’s friends. Roy was stabbed (very carefully) by a blade laced with a magic, death-simulating drug. Now the Arrow is seemingly dead and the heat will be off of Oliver. The only real problem, now Roy has to leave Starling City (and the show) for good. There’s a long and emotional goodbye scene before he drives off into the night.

Ray takes Simmons to the Flash’s metahuman prison in STAR Labs. The interesting thing? Simmons wasn’t in Central City during the metahuman-creating explosion. What the what??

The plot twists for this episode aren’t over yet. Thea’s home and moping over her absent boyfriend when she realizes that she isn’t alone in the loft. Ra’s al Ghul is there. She tries to defend herself, but it’s only a short time before Ra’s puts her through the glass coffee table and stabs her in the chest. Is this the end of Thea Queen??

The hits just keep coming in the tail end of season three. I loved the vast majority of this episode, though I’m still trying to figure out what the point of the metahuman villain was. There has to be a bigger reason for him to have been a part of the Arrow plot and not just another reveal on The Flash, but I’m at a loss as to what that reason is. That will be a reveal that I’ll be anticipating. I’m just hoping it happens this season and not sometime next year.

You guys, I seriously cannot wait for Quentin to stop going all Captain Ahab on Oliver. He’s been a serious jerk for a few episodes now, and I’m just about over it. On a related note, let’s talk about the other “death” in this episode. So I was shocked when Moira died. I cried when Tommy and Sara died. But y’all, no other TV death has caused the inexplicable and instant rage that I felt when that fern hit the ground. Not okay, SCPD. Not. Okay.

Best Quote:

Oliver: “There’s a decent chance that you and Palmer are related.”

Things to Ponder:

  • Well, now we know how Ra’s is going to convince Oliver to take his place. I wonder how quickly someone has to be submersed in the Lazarus Pit for it to work. I mean, we already know that [SPOILER ALERT] Caity Lotz will be returning to the Arrow-verse in the new spinoff. I’m still hoping to see Colin Donnell back one fine, fine day.

Photo Credit: Cate Cameron/The CW

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