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“Arrow” recap (3.8): Flash, bang, boom(erang)

Well hello there. This week was a very special week for Arrow, because it had a two-day, two-hour crossover event with The Flash. So before we get into this week’s Arrow episode, I’ll give you a mini-recap of The Flash, as it pertains to Team Arrow.

The reason for this crossover event is that Team Arrow’s investigation into the Boomerang killer that appeared in Starling City last week lead them to Central City. Barry is excited to see them, and could use a little help on on his team, too. Oliver is reluctant to mix the two teams; partly because he’s a big grump sometimes, but partly because he doesn’t want more people knowing his secret identity. Felicity wins, though, and Barry picks her up and flashes her to Star Labs. However, when they get there, Felicity’s shirt burns right off.

The Star Labs crew give Felicity a shirt and she hands over the boomerang to be examined.

Oliver, finally relenting to this whole helping thing, tells Barry he’s going to train him. He starts off by scoffing at the goofy nicknames they give their enemies, but Barry points out that Deathstroke and The Huntress aren’t exactly found in a book of baby names. Their training session gets off to a rocky start, since Barry is cocksure and over-reliant on his powers and Oliver is cocksure and over-reliant on his experience.

Back at the labs, Caitlin and Felicity nerd out together and Caitlin muses how nice it is to have another woman to talk to. Felicity agrees, but if you listen closely you can hear one of her still-healing wounds split open as her mind surely flickered to days spent in the Arrow Cave with Sara nearby.

With the two teams working together, they find the metahuman terrorizing the city and stop him, though not before Barry gets infected with meta-rage and there is an extremely cool Flash vs. Arrow battle. Eventually everything works out and they lock the metahuman in their superjail. Oliver says his serious goodbyes and Felicity translates that this means they were happy to work together and would love to do it again soon. Before they leave, Felicity asks Caitlin if she would be able to isolate DNA from a sample, and Caitlin says she is willing and able, officially making her part of Operation Justice for Sara.

After Felicity and Oliver say their goodbyes to Barry and Iris at the Central City coffee shop, they run into a woman who Oliver seems to know. And from their slightly awkward interaction, surely even Felicity can tell that it wasn’t Arrow Oliver that knew her, but spoiled rich boy Oliver Queen who did. Now, you, like Oliver, might recognize this woman. Perhaps you recognize her as Berlin from Defiance, but more importantly you should recognize her as the unnamed woman that Flashback Oliver got pregnant while he was dating Laurel; the same woman who Moira paid off to tell Oliver she had a miscarriage then never talk to Oliver ever again. After Oliver and this woman (who is named Sandra based on Anna Hopkins‘ IMDb page, but not yet named in the show, I don’t think) part ways, she calls a child and promises them hot chocolate, meaning she is raising Oliver Queen’s secret illegitimate child.

OK! That’s all you need to know about what happened on The Flash. If you’re not watching that show, start. It’s cute and fun and hopefully there will be more Arrow crossovers in the future.

On to Arrow!

We open mid-crime bust. They tracked the boomerang man to a house, but when they peek inside, it’s rigged to explode. They manage to make their way inside, but the perp is long gone. Instead, they find themselves bow-to-barrel with ARGUS agents, who tell them that this is their case, and the vigilantes should leave it alone. Which is as good as giving Oliver an embossed invitation to be lead on the case.

In the building newly-dubbed Palmer Industries, Felicity is talking to who she thinks is a coworker, but when she looks up she sees Caitlin and Cisco from Star Labs standing in her office. They had a few vacation days and a lot of curiosity so they thought they’d pay Starling City a visit. They want to see the Arrow Cave, which Felicity informs them is not the official name for Arrow HQ.

Oliver is predictably grumpy as he watches the duo poke around his lair. Cisco touches just about every arrow he can reach, and Caitlin points to a contraption and asks what it is, because apparently the bar-jump workout fad hasn’t spread from Starling to Central City yet. Felicity says it’s for distracting her from work, and I’d like to think she’s recalling the time Sara owned that workout like a boss.

Meanwhile, across town, Boomerang and his boomerangs swoops into ARGUS with a bogus ID, knocking people over and saying cheesy things like, “What goes around comes around.” Which I know I said in my recap last week but it sounded EXTRA cheesy when he said it. At least I was just quoting Intruders.

Team Arrow gets the call about the ruckus Booms is causing, and Caitlin gets concerned that they will never get their in time. She’s used to instant gratification. But they do get there, and Booms is still throwing things when they do, so the Arrows, red and green, fight him. Almost immediately, Roy gets his bow knocked out of his hands, but luckily he keeps sticks on his person that reminded me of the sticks Mockingbird from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. uses (but slightly less cool because, as far as I can tell, they don’t hold an electric current).

Just when things look like they might take a turn for the dead, Barry shows up and saves Oliver from two boomerangs heading straight for him.

Diggle’s not-wife Lyla identifies the man as Harkness, a man who was on the Suicide Squad. Specifically, part of a team that was supposed to have been eliminated, but his neck bomb malfunctioned and now he’s loose in the world. Oops.

Meanwhile, in the lair definitely not called the Arrow Cave, Felicity and Caitlin are being adorable while the boys play with Oliver’s workout equipment.

Barry decides he’s hungry and swooshes out to get sushi, causing Felicity’s papers to go flying and Caitlin to apologize for not warning her about that. They worry that Oliver won’t exactly be the most thrilled that his newest protege popped in for a visit, and that worry proves founded when Oliver, Diggle and Lyla come back and then Barry swooshes back in with sushi like it was no big deal. Lyla’s head starts spinning and Barry realizes he made an oopsie. Barry tells Oliver that he’s been practicing, that he just wants to help, and Oliver relents on the condition that they do things his way.

Barry proves his helpfulness immediately by reassembling boomerangs from the bag of metal shards Diggle swiped from ARGUS so that Cisco can try to find any signatures on them. As luck would have it, he does find one, and knows they were made by a man named Marcos. Felicity does her magic and finds some information about him, but not a location.

Oliver takes Barry to the police precinct and uses Barry’s job as an excuse to ask about Marcos; what he was arrested for, for starters. The information Captain Lance gives them is enough to go have a chat with Oliver’s ex-buddies at the Russian mob. When they find Marcos, Oliver interrogates him, Arrow-style, and gets an encrypted phone out of it. Barry stands by and watches, a little horrified, because he’s never seen torture in action before. It’s only in this moment that the difference in tone between the two shows becomes abundantly clear. Sure, people die on The Flash, but Arrow is dark. Barry being in the room while Oliver wiggles an arrow around in someone to get information seemed wrong. And he is quick to say so. He delivers the bad guy to Captain Lance’s office speedy-quick and comes back to scold Oliver for his cruelty.

Oliver does his standard, “I’ve seen things” spiel and tells Barry that he plays by his own rules and that Barry is more than welcome to GTFO if he doesn’t approve.

Back at Arrow HQ, Felicity and Caitlin sit nice and close to each other while they research.

Felicity finds Harkness on her computer in a building where heat trackers are showing at least ten more people with him, but when Oliver gets there, Harkness is nowhere to be found. Instead, a man hands him a cell phone, and was paid handsomely to do so.

In the lair, the first phone they got off Marcos turns on, even though Felicity had shut it down.

Felicity knows this means they’re in danger and tells them all to scoot, but it’s too late. Booms comes in and finds Lyla, his main target, and intends on thanking her for the bomb in his neck with the pointy end of his boomerang. Lyla fights back with throwing stars and shouts out asking where the guns are, and when Felicity tells her, she immediately gets to work shooting.

Felicity grabs a little bomb like the ones we sometimes see strapped to Oliver’s arrows and throws it at Booms, but it’s too late. Lyla has a boomerang wedged in her torso pretty good. Caitlyn and Felicity try to save her with science, but she’s not breathing.

When the boys come back, Barry zips her to the hospital in a flash.

Felicity, Cisco and Roy go to Thea’s club to try to play it cool while they wait for news about Lyla, but Thea tells them they look like they’re on death row. Cisco perks up a little at the sight of her and asks who she is, but Roy says she’s his ex-girlfriend at the same time Felicity says she’s Oliver’s sister so Cisco uses his genius IQ to conclude that Thea’s off-limits.

Caitlin comes back to the table and tells them that Lyla’s in surgery, and that she thinks she’ll pull through because she’s a strong woman, forgetting that Sara Lance was the strongest of them all and was knocked from her perch just a few weeks ago.

Oliver and Barry have a heart to heart about whether you can keep your humanity when the vigilante inside takes over. Barry sweetly tells him that there’s a light inside him, and Oliver surprisingly doesn’t yell at him. Felicity comes back and says she got a hit on Harkness’s location, so they head to the train station. Barry empties it of everyone except Harkness and Oliver points his arrow at ol’ Booms. The Boomerang laughs and holds up a trigger; he has planted five bombs throughout the city, so he has to choose; stop the Booms or stop the booms.

Oliver sends Barry to find the bombs and Felicity and Cisco work together to give him directions. When Barry finds the first bomb, Cisco realizes they have a problem; the bombs are all linked, so in order to diffuse them, he has to do them all at once. Barry gets nervous; even he’s not THAT fast. But luckily he’s a quick thinker, because he starts to drop Team Arrow and Team Flash members at the various bombs.

They all snip the wires at the same time and Barry gets back to Oliver and Harkness in time to see the Boomerang’s face drop when the bombs don’t go off.

In the hospital, Lyla wakes up because she’s as strong as Caitlin said, and Diggle asks her to marry him since everyone assumes they’re married anyway.

At the Arrow Cave, Felicity gives Caitlin the samples from the arrows that killed Sara and Caitlin promises to call in the results instead of showing up again, but everyone hopes they’ll come back soon (including me). To prove it, Oliver shows Barry a person-shaped suit holder he had put in for him, so he can hang up his Flash gear whenever he’s in town. In return, Cisco gives Arrow a new and improved suit, with the same old hood, because Felicity knows him and knows the hood is important to him.

But before this mashup can come to an end, Oliver and Barry have unfinished business. They go to an abandoned place and decide to have one more Flash vs. Arrow battle, this time just for fun. They share a few inspiring words before arrows and Barry start flying.

Are you loving The Flash crossovers? I do love them so. The only problem with them is that it leaves less time for Thea and Laurel to be their kickass selves, but overall we’ve got a nice cast of characters going on. It’s too bad Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t on the same network, or we could look forward to some Smoak in the Skye hacker action.

Next week, it looks like Nyssa is back in Starling City, bringing her daddy issues with her. (And by daddy issues I mean her father, whose issue is being the head of the League of Assassins.)

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