Previously on Arrow, Merlyn hypnotized Thea and got her to kill Sara, Laurel finally told her dad that Sara was dead, and Flashback Oliver was getting into all kinds of shenanigans involving a bio-weapon in two parts called Alpha and Omega.
We begin with Oliver and Thea training on Lian Yu with sticks, the way Oliver learned. Oliver is surprised to find that when you don’t resist training and whine for a year, you learn to fight quicker, so Thea is pretty matched to his skill in just nine months. She credits Merlyn, though, for both the skills and the ruthlessness. Thea likes that she’s on the island with Oliver, she feels like she’s learning more about him.
Thea asks if, when he was on the island, he ever thought he’d make it back to Starling City, but we learn through flashbacks that Oliver was in Starling City for a spell while he was “dead.” His captors took him there to follow the White-Haired Woman, who was looking for a buyer for the Omega virus. One leading buyer is named Peter Kang, and Oliver knows him, which is why Amanda brought him back to Starling City in the first place. This is no time for a homecoming, though. She warns him that she will kill him and anyone he reveals himself to if he causes a fuss.
Flashback Laurel finds her father drinking in a bar. She’s sad, but she’s not surprised. He introduces her to the bartender as The Daughter Who Lived, but she is not amused, and offers to drive her drunk dad home. Lance ignores her and orders another drink, but the bartender takes one look at Laurel’s stern face and decides against serving the cop.
On Lian Yu, Thea hears Oliver calling for Sara in his sleep and wakes him up. She asks him why he didn’t tell her Sara died, why Laurel had to tell her, but Oliver says it was Laurel’s news to tell, that Sara went back to the League and had secrets even he didn’t know about. Thea asks Oliver if the League killed Sara, but due to their new no-lying policy, he gets up and says he wants to take a walk in lieu of answering her. He wanders until he finds the A.R.G.U.S. Hatch, and calls out for Slade, talking all cocky to the jail cell until he realizes the cell door is ajar. There’s a dead guard in the bed where Slade should be, so Oliver high-tails it back to his baby sister.
Thea is collecting firewood when she runs into her frantic brother, insisting they run. Thea asks what exactly brought them to the point of running from Slade, and Oliver says this is where he was being kept prisoner, but now he’s free. Merlyn, he of impeccable timing, calls Oliver just then and says, “Wanna play a game?” Merlyn set up this death trap, with Thea as incentive, to try to give Oliver back his killer instinct. Because Malcolm Merlyn is an actual sociopath.
Flashback to Oliver, who spots his sister during his stakeout of Queen Consolidated. He’s wigging out over her being a teenager—I don’t remember how far into his disappearance this is, but the years between 12 and 15 are huge years to miss in a girl’s life; she’s bound to have grown and changed a lot especially if she’s experienced trauma.
Oliver watches her visit his grave, and that of his father, but it was really just a rendezvous point for meeting her drug dealer. Tommy Merlyn interrupts this transaction and scolds her, scaring the dealer off. Thea scoffs and says he’s not her brother (being years away from finding out that actually he is) and says if Oliver could see her now, his heart would be broken. Thea rolls her eyes and says it seems like Ollie cares more about her now than he did when he was alive.
Present-day Oliver digs up his dad’s actual burial site to get a gun for Thea. Almost as soon as she has it in hand, Slade shows up. The Queen siblings try to fight him, but Slade had the element of surprise on his side, and ends up knocking them both out.
When Oliver wakes up, he and Thea are in the cell Slade was supposed to be. Slade says he doesn’t want to kill them, but he intends on sending burned bodies with evidence back to Starling City so no one will come looking for him, so they can rot like he was meant to. Oliver asks him to let Thea go but Thea’s part of the plan. Slade asks Oliver if she knows all his secrets, and Oliver flinches. Slade asks Thea if he knows about Shado, but Thea isn’t afraid of this giant, one-eyed man. She calls him a “sick son of a bitch” and says she doesn’t care what he has to say about her brother.
Slade says if Oliver had told him the truth about Shado from the start, maybe Mama Queen would be alive, and then says, “Welcome home,” before leaving the Queens to die.
Flashback Oliver is hacking a computer in Queen Consolidated when he hears heels click clacking down the hall and has to hide. He watches while Felicity leaves a folder on the desk and flirts with a really terrifying picture of the billionaire playboy she thinks is dead. Her rambling is cute but post-Team Arrow Felicity is way more badass.
Though the same old Felicity is still in there, and she scolds herself for talking to herself before click-clacking away.
In case you were wondering what Diggle was up to during this time (because they were all around, destined to be brought together by fate eventually), he was working the door at Tommy’s party. The party Thea was told he wasn’t allowed to go to but Oliver knew she’d go to anyway, which is why he donned a hoodie and snuck in. He watches Laurel and Tommy flirt with each other until Thea struts in, flashing her fake ID at a disapproving Tommy.
Thea leaves her brother’s old friends to buy more drugs, but this time it’s Oliver who threatens her dealer, telling him to stay away from Thea. The dealer recognizes Oliver, then threatens to make him dead for real, so Oliver kills him dead, throwing him over the balcony.
Present-day Oliver and Thea are trying to figure out how to get out of the cell. Well, Thea is, Oliver is just pointing out all the ways they’re trapped. Thea figures this is a good time to get things off her mind and asks Oliver what he’s hiding, why he flinched when Slade mentioned secrets. When he tries to be like, “I’m busy!” she points out they’re probably trapped forever so might as well spill. She gets more specific, starting with the most pressing question: What happened to Sara? When he hesitates answering again, she throws her arms up and says she wishes he would stop treating her like a teeny tiny scrawny gap-in-cell-bar-sized baby girl already and just tell her! This gives Oliver an idea—the cells were designed for full-grown men, she can probably reach the release button. When she can’t quite, just needing her arm to be a few inches longer, Oliver says he knows how they can make that happen. Thea holds out her arm defeatedly, knowing what needs to be done, knowing she’s been trained to handle the pain. Oliver dislocates her arm and she reaches the button. She presses it and they’re free.
Flash back to the night of the party, where Detective Lance is talking to Thea, Tommy, and Laurel about the party and the murder and is obviously drunk because he goes off on them, shouting about millionaire playboys and dead daughters. Laurel drags him into the house and tells him he’s being an idiot and he makes a comment about her douchey lawyer job offer, about how she once said she was going to help people, and being a hoity toity lawyer was not the answer. Laurel is in no mood for any of this.
Maseo finds Oliver and drags him away from the crime scene, wondering what he was thinking. Oliver says he had a really clever disguise on aka his hood was pulled over his eyes, and Maseo literally tells him that said disguise wouldn’t work even if he smeared greasepaint on his face. He literally said that. To Oliver. And I died laughing because I love when shows get just a tad meta (a TAD, Glee…just a tad) and can make fun of themselves. Oliver tells Maseo he wants to fix what he broke, but Maseo says first they should probably stop the Alpha Omega Apocalypse.
Present day Oliver and Thea are running across Lian Yu when Thea finds a path to follow. Oliver remembers, almost too late, that said path was a really intricate, Indiana Jones-style booby trap he set up long ago, and gets her out of the way in time with only a knick on his shoulder. They sit to rest for a second to make sure Ollie isn’t about to pass out and Thea takes this opportunity to ask again about Sara, and why Oliver keeps avoiding answering her questions about her. Oliver says they have better things to focus on but Thea says she can’t focus, not with thoughts of Sara running through her head (and who can blame her). Oliver relents, and starts out by explaining that Merlyn used a drug to influence a person into killing Sara and before he finishes explaining, she knows. But she makes him say it: “You killed Sara.”
Thea starts to (understandably) freak out. Sara was her friend, she would never even hurt a hair on that pretty blonde head on purpose. Thea asks why Oliver kept this from her and Oliver said he didn’t see the point, it wasn’t like Thea did it on purpose. Thea knows now, truly knows, that Merlyn doesn’t love her—probably isn’t capable of love at all. Slade interrupts this existential crisis and grabs Thea, trying to be clever and ominous. But Thea is full of murderous rage now so she breaks loose with a few well-placed punches. The Queen siblings work together and start to rumble and tumble with Slade.
Flashback Oliver watches a video he stole from his father’s old office that was labeled “For Oliver.” In it, his father admits that he wasn’t always a good man, though he always had good intentions. He says there is a list of men who have failed the city, and that someday Oliver can right his wrongs. He tells his son that he can save the city, and Oliver knows that’s exactly what he must do. So he finds Maseo and takes out the White-Haired Woman, getting the Omega back into safe hands.
On present-day Lian Yu, the Queens best Slade and he ends up looking into the barrel of Thea’s gun. Oliver tries to tell her that she’s not a killer, but Thea says Sara would probably beg to differ. But Oliver points out that this is exactly what Merlyn wanted, to make her a killer, a real killer, just like him.
Thea shoots Slade, but only in the arm. Slade is bored with the very concept, and says as much as Oliver and Thea lock him back into his old cell. When Thea storms out for some air, Slade tells Oliver that he sees a new darkness in her, and that Malcolm Merlyn put it there. Slade mocks Oliver, saying he’s lost his whole family, who’s next? He then mentions Felicity by name and it’s a miracle Oliver didn’t kill him dead right there (and a damn shame). He then poses a final question: How many people can Oliver Queen lose before there is no Oliver Queen?
Bad guys can be so smart sometimes. It’s a shame they don’t use their powers of intellect for good.
Flashback Oliver is ready to say goodbye to Amanda and A.R.G.U.S. and the whole shebang, but he can’t exactly stay in Starling City. General Shrieve of the US Army appears and tells Oliver that he needs to go back to China for a debriefing, but after that Oliver can go wherever his little heart desires. Pinky swear.
Flashback Laurel runs into Tommy and for a second I thought it was present-day Laurel (unlike most of our friends, Laurel’s unicorn hair hasn’t changed much over the years) and thought Tommy was secretly alive. Alas, he is not, and it is just two young’uns, flirting away before their imploded worlds exploded around them.
Present-day Laurel goes to Sara’s grave and finds her father there, paper bag in hand. He tells Laurel he’s trying to figure out how to tell her mom when she gets back from traveling the space/time continuum, but Laurel tells him that she already knows. This does not cheer him up. Laurel reminds him of when he pushed her to help people, like he knew she was destined to grow up to be a vigilante. Lance shakes his head; he’s not upset that she’s the new Black Canary. He’s upset that she lied. Sara and her mother were alike, they were free-spirits, saving lives by jumping in front of moving trains, acting first and thinking second, if at all. But him and Laurel, they were the logical ones, the ones who used their brain before their heart, who saved lives through rules. They were Law and Order, and she added chaos to the mix. She lied. Lance says he’ll move past Sara’s death, he’ll survive it; he did once before. But he doesn’t think he will ever be able to get over Laurel’s betrayal. He says he’s going to an AA meeting and implores her not to follow, handing her his paper bag booze. When he’s gone, she opens it, and looks at it like one might look at an ex while considering whether just one kiss would be enough, or if it would lead to a downward spiral. Thankfully, she doesn’t consider it long, and she dumps out the bottle.
When Oliver and Thea get back to Thea’s apartment, Oliver asks her not to tell Laurel about the whole killing Sara thing. Laurel loves Thea like a sister, and there’s no need to cause everyone more pain. Even if Laurel could conceptually understand with her mind that Thea was not at fault for Sara’s death, some part of Laurel’s heart would always remember that Thea was the one who loosed the arrows, and there’s no need to poison Laurel against her like that. Merlyn appears from the darkness like the uber-creep he is and Thea. is. FURIOUS. At first he thinks it’s about the whole Slade/murder-trap thing, but it’s about Sara, which he’s not pleased she knows about. Thea’s devastated; she trusted him.
Merlyn tries to tell Thea he only did it because he loves her, which maybe he believes because he’s a sociopath, but probably he’s trying to find those words he once could use to manipulate her. But Thea isn’t having it. She gives it to him straight: She will work with him, she will train with him, she will be his student, his partner, his soldier. But she will not trust him, she will not love him, and she will NEVER be his daughter.
What did you think of “The Return” besides the devastating lack of Felicity? Nyssa is back next week! Who’s excited?!
