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“Arrow” recap (4.7): O Brother Who Art Thou

Previously on Arrow, Sara came back from the dead only to abandon us yet again, Ray was saved from Darhk and embiggened, Lance tried to leverage his insider connection with Darhk whose Ghosts still terrorize the city.

We begin with a familiar scene: An armored car being attacked by Ghosts. But never fear, Team Arrow is here.

The Team gets crackin and they’re doing great but Thea almost loses her temper. Luckily, she manages to control her bloodlust before she ghosts the Ghost. Just when it looks like they might be winning, a Ghost throws a bomb inside the truck and the last few Ghosts get away. Turns out they weren’t trying to steal the money, they were just trying to prevent it from getting to the bank. They want to see Star City fall.

Oliver thinks Darhk wants to let Star City die so they can use it as a home base. A Gotham of sorts. He sends Felicity to ask Ray for help using the tooth they stole from that one Ghost to try to learn more about them and off they go. Diggle pulls Oliver aside and gives him the file Lance gave him on his brother; Oliver shares his disbelief that Andy Diggle was such a badass criminal that Darhk had to have him killed. But Oliver is determined they’ll figure it out.

Ray visits Felicity in the Loft and is glad to have a task. Felicity suggests maybe coming back from the dead, but he’s not quite ready for that yet. He’s super excited about the science though, and tells her that the DNA of the tooth has been degraded in a specific way that points him to a company called Wolfman that has a patent.

At the Queen campaign office, Alex tells Oliver that he’ll have to go to the SCPD gala and give a speech, and also makes fun of the project Oliver wanted to build his campaign around, restoring the bay. While poor Alex tries to hold the Queen siblings’ attention, Thea is distracted by a call from Merlyn that she ignores and Oliver gets a call from Felicity, but he takes his.

When Oliver steps out, Alex jokes that he’s nervous that Oliver knows about him and Thea, but before they can start full-on making out, Oliver pokes his head back in and says he needs his Speedy-er, his sister for a…dental issue.

Team Arrow heads to Wolfman, Felicity at home base, watching over everyone as usual.

They poke around a bit and Laurel eventually finds the substance they’re looking for, unmarked, lying around just waiting for them. There’s a hundred tubes of it but she just grabs one and scoots out. Diggle hangs back to unmask one of the fallen Ghosts, and LO AND BEHOLD it just happens to be his brother. Who immediately gets up and runs away.

Diggle freaks out all the way back to Arrow HQ and Oliver tries to quell his panic by suggesting they get Diggle’s brother out of HIVE. Diggle is in full denial, though, and won’t hear it.

Captain Lance is called in to see Darhk, who is grumpy about the timing between the meeting Lance called with him last week and the Team Arrow attack that liberated his paperweight. He weaves some dark metaphors, as any good supervillain would, and tells Lance that since death doesn’t seem to be an obstacle for his daughters, there are other things Darhk can threaten him with.

Are you bored yet? I was pretty bored by this point. But don’t worry-we have some eye candy coming up to get us through.

Thea is getting ready for the gala when Merlyn calls again. This time she answers, mostly to tell him to stop calling, when he strolls right into the apartment her and Laurel share. Merlyn says he knows Thea’s bloodlust will be returning soon, based on the angle of the moon and time elapsed since her last kill. He gives her the name and information of a pedophile, saying it’s a win/win if Thea axes him. But Thea isn’t interested in playing God and tells him to take his pedophile and shove it.

At the gala, Oliver gives a speech about how important the SCPD is and how hard their job is, now more than ever. He doesn’t really say anything at all but he says it well so everyone claps; he’s gonna make a great politician. When Lance thanks him for his support, Oliver asks for his help, but Lance says he might have been made by Darhk so he wants to lay low for a bit. But he says he did see something about Slip 52 on Darhk’s desk and surely it wasn’t planted evidence or anything so he should definitely check it out.

Meanwhile, at the mocktail table, Laurel and Diggle bond over having siblings that came back to life and joined an evil, murderous organization.

Diggle just can’t understand why his brother would do the. Diggle had to tell his nephew his daddy died, and he used to think he would give anything to see his brother again, but now his brother seems more like a stranger.

Darhk comes to the Gala and shakes Oliver’s hand, and Oliver coyly pretends not to know who he is. They chat privately about Oliver’s ideas for mayorship and Darhk tells him that he should nix his plans to save the bay. And if he doesn’t, Oliver Queen will no longer be running unopposed.

Back at Arrow HQ, Felicity starts listing out all of Oliver’s terrible ideas as a way to prove to him that he shouldn’t be making decisions like “let’s play along with Damien Darhk” in a vacuum. Felicity would prefer he stay alive, though. Oliver says taking down Darhk is more important than his mayorship, but Felicity says that the hope he could offer Star City is the most important thing, despite his desperate mission to win back Diggle’s trust.

Meanwhile, Thea goes on a date with Alex. Alex steps out to take a call and an uber-creep slithers up to Thea and starts hitting on her. Probably used to such attention, being a rich socialite and a stunner, she starts off with a polite mention of her date who will be back any second. But the man literally tells her he thinks she’s the kind of girl where no means yes and she goes full vigilante on his ass. Her bloodlust swells and for once I’m rooting for her to just do it. But Alex comes in and interrupts her, finding her growly and wild.

Diggle and Lyla are at home talking about Andy more, and Diggle repeats the same bit about how he can’t believe he’s brother’s back and he can’t believe what he doesn’t know about him, etc. Oliver stops by and tells Diggle about Slip 52, and Diggle agrees to let Oliver take him there to check it out, but says he doesn’t want to involve Thea and Laurel. Which is BS because Thea is faster and stronger and more skilled in weaponry than he is, and Laurel can Canary Cry, so he’s just being a douchecanoe. Actually, he’s being an early-season Oliver.

At Slip 52, Darhk is having a seance. (A meeting with his Ghosts-get it? I’ll be here all night.) Darhk gives them all yellow pills and says they’re special. He demonstrates by telling them all to kneel. They all do, automatically. He says the city has no idea how accurate their nickname of “Ghosts” really is.

Ghosts spot Diggle and Oliver spying them and attack, Diggle’s brother barking the order to “kill the green one.”

They eventually escape, but Oliver got a booboo, which Felicity patches up at HQ. Diggle asks for privacy and Felicity is absolutely not about to let these two idiots make secret plans again

But Oliver insists, so she leaves. Diggle asks Oliver to drop it but Oliver can’t. He needs to believe that people can come back for anything, be forgiven no matter what. Diggle says there’s no excuse for letting people think you’re dead for years and years and Oliver looks at him like, “Sara, Ray, and I have all done exactly that but there were REASONS” Diggle tells him how stupid his idea to work with Darhk is and that just like Oliver wants to protect the city night and day he should fight Darhk in the daylight too. And despite it being literally what Felicity said earlier, it seems to click with Oliver this time.

When Felicity goes back to the Loft, Ray is still there working. Ray is having an identity crisis and wants to figure out his purpose before he comes back to life. He needs a reason to live.

But until then, he’ll focus on science. He says he couldn’t get an ID from the tooth, but based on the sodium chloride, he knows the Ghosts are haunting an abandoned mental hospital.

Felicity calls the Team together, and says they don’t have the manpower to take down all the Ghosts, but they can get Andy out. Diggle says he doesn’t want the Team to risk their lives for his brother who might not deserve it but Thea says too bad they’re coming.

Team Arrow wonders how they’ll figure out which one of the masked figures is Andy and never fear, Felicity thought of that. Their new cameras will help read facial structure and such and help them find Andy. Laurel is pumped because being a vigilante gives her a better high than the whiskey ever did.

They split up but are spotted almost immediately. Thea found Andy first and eventually Thea knocks him down, but she can’t carry his unconscious body alone, so Laurel says she’ll come help. Damien Darhk finds Thea first though, calling her Merida and asking about Malcolm. Thea tries to fight back, but Darhk grabs her by the throat and tries to magic her to death. But his magic goes through her and back into him, causing him to jump back like the touch of her burned him, giving her enough time to get away.

Eventually they get Andy and take him back to HQ, where Diggle thanks the Team for saving his brother even though he explicitly asked them not to. He goes to try to talk to Andy, and Oliver tells the Team he has an idea for how to fight Darhk out in the open.

Merlyn comes to Thea’s apartment again, this time because she asked him to. She has an idea, and it it doesn’t involve pedophiles at all. She says when Darhk zapped her with his magic, her bloodlust was assuaged for a minute. She thinks she can harness that to make that feeling permanent, but she needs Merlyn’s help.

Diggle goes to talk to Andy, who is standing, dead-eyed, in his cell. Diggle asks him about the file and Andy says everything in it is true, and turns away from his brother.

Across town, Oliver gets ready to unveil his original plan to restore the bay. Alex admits he was wrong, that this was a good idea. Thea asks Alex if he’ll be patient with her but he can’t get the growling out of his head and isn’t so sure he’s down with that. Oliver takes to a podium and says that even though he’s not blind to bigger problems in the city, he thinks restoring the bay, the heart of the city, will be a great first step. He uses Diggle’s light/dark analogy, and makes eye contact with Darhk, who is lurking in the audience, ending with, “I will never stop fighting to save this city.”

And Darhk is hella mad about it.

What did you think of “Brotherhood?” Am I the only one who thought it was a little blah? Especially following a Felicity-centric episode that had Sara Lance back in her Canary getup. Arrow is taking a time-out next week (to look at its life, look at its choices, hopefully) but when it returns, it returns with a bang. It’s a Flash/Arrow crossover extravaganza, and the episodes are called “Legends of Today” and “Legends of Yesterday” so I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s more setup for the upcoming spinoff Legends of Tomorrow.

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