Arrow Recap: Three Ghosts

Last night’s mid-season finale hit me like a bolt of lightning. Anyone else? 

“I usually only work on dead people,” says Barry, instilling hope in the Arrow team as he’s the only one who can save Oliver from the injections he received last week. He tells them Oliver’s blood is unnaturally clotting and that rat poison will thin it. Ok then, we’ll go with that. Oliver hallucinates seeing Shado then wakes up in a rage, choking Barry. He’s seriously pissed at Felicity for revealing his identity to someone he hasn’t done a full background check on but Barry stands up for her. He also says he might be able to recreate the thief’s fingerprint from where he grabbed Oliver’s neck. Ok, we’ll let you live. For now.

The Queen household is setting up for Christmas, which Oliver totally forgot about. Moira informs him Thea has locked herself in her room and won’t talk to her. Oliver gets her to let him in an finds Roy hiding out there with the arrow he shot him with still in his leg. Sin is there, helping with booze. Oliver pulls out the arrow, then calls Diggle for help with first aid. “Maybe the vigilante was trying to keep you safe?” he suggests. “By shooting Roy?!” Thea replies. That’s obviously idiotic reasoning. You can see Oliver’s “well it seemed like a good idea at the time face.” Our secondary hero team isn’t going to let this go. On the way out, Oliver sees Shado again. She tells him, “You can’t fight what’s coming” and “Stop fighting and live.”

At the Arrow lair, Barry is admiring Oliver’s gear. Diggle mentions “The Vigilante” likes to be called “The Arrow” now as Oliver enters asking about the side effects of rat poison. Those would be hallucinations and sweating, says Barry and for once, Oliver admits what’s going on with him immediately rather than keeping it a secret from the team until the last minute. It’s a miracle!!

Since Oliver mentions yet another woman from his island adventures, Felicity wonders if he was actually on Fantasy Island the whole time and Barry is all “Ah ha! You were in a jungle!” Since he’s feeling so at ease now, he tells Oliver grease paint is a poor identity concealer.  THANK YOU! “Ok, then find me a mask that conforms perfectly to my face and doesn’t affect my ability to aim while I’m on the run,” replies Oliver. Oh, we’ll just make one out of compressible microfabric. Ok then, we’ll go with that. Felicity finds the thief, Cyrus Gold (the human name of Solomon Grundy in the comics), and Diggle volunteers to take this one. At an apartment he finds a book opened to the Solomon Grundy poem which makes little sense in the context of the plot or scene but Cyrus is still in the apartment and gives Diggle a major beat down before he can run off.

At her office, Laurel receives a bunch of flowers with a note that reads: “Need an Alderman to go X-mas shopping with?” And she smiled as she read it.

I don’t recall her being interested in him at all but whatever. Thea and Sin bring Max’s case to her to see if she can help. She doesn’t find anything expect that all the blood donor’s to Sebastian’s blood drive were given psychological evaluations. Meanwhile, Quentin meets The Arrow and thinks it’s about Sara. Instead he gives him info on the robbery and Cyrus Gold’s identity. He tries to accurately warn him about the super strenght but gets distracted by a Slade hallucination. And then he makes a most unnecessary dramatic exit off the roof.

At the Arrow Lair, Barry is messing around with chemicals again and decides to delve into Felicity’s feelings for Oliver once more. She insists she doesn’t like him like that but Barry says, “If you did, I could see why. BRO CRUSH. Instead of continuing with this awkward conversation, the two turn on the news (not channel 52 for a change) to listen to another story about the particle accelerator. They name STAR Labs’ founder as one Harrison Wells, who I don’t believe is a comic character already in existence. Barry asks Felicity what her plans are for Christmas to which she replies, “Lighting my menorah?” And then Oliver makes them leave, sees Slade again and has a one-man fight. I really wished they had pulled a Fight Club on this one.

Quentin convinces his superior to send a small team after Cyrus, even though he’s annoyed he’s still taking intel from the Vigilante. Sebastian’s bad cop on the force volunteers to go along and warns him about them heading for Gold. But he’s actually happy about that news and when the police find Gold, the first guy gets a circular saw in his back. It’s pretty much a slaughter with Quentin’s superior getting killed by his own gun. Meanwhile, Laurel took Sebastian up on his shopping suggestion but just as she’s asking him about the blood drive, she gets a call about her father in the ICU. And hee looks pretty good for the ICU but now has tons more guilt heaped onto him over the deaths of the officers. Sebastian shows up at the hospital to see if Laurel’s dad was ok. And her. Seriously, ew, where did this develop from?

We find out from Barry that Oliver’s blood is clean. So…psychological problems, not rat poison problems. Although I’m sure that didn’t help. Diggle suggests Oliver find out what his ghosts are trying to tell him and he visits Quentin, who doesn’t blame him for the massacre, and gives him a key he took off Gold.

Meanwhile, Roy is breaking into the blood drive psychologist’s office and sees the word “mirakuru” is stamped on the back of the donor’s pictures. Someone is there to burn the evidence and he tries to run but is stopped from getting away by Gold. He’s tied up and “Brother Blood” is there to give him an injection of the super serum. Surely Arrow will show up in time to save him. Nope. Roy gets injected and Arrow shows up just after. Blood says the mirakuru was a gift. Then there’s a BIG FIGHT. Oliver believes Roy is dead and then…Aww, Tommy hallucination! He says, “You fought to save me, Ollie, that’s what you always do. You are a hero. Fight back.” With new resolution, Oliver starts CPR on Roy. Only, he’s using the “Hulk Revival Method” of screaming into his face instead of breathing into his mouth. But it works. Gold is left with acid eating away at half his face and Oliver delivers Roy back to the Queen residence so Thea and Sin can find him back in bed.

As Blood announces his mayoral run we get our reveal of the new big bad, the man pulling Sebastian’s strings. It’s Slade! In a swank office! With an eye patch and grey streaks in his hair!! Turns out they were using samples of his blood to make the serum. He also apparently told Sebastian not to confront the vigilante because he has bigger plans to make him suffer. Oh man, oh man!!

At the Arrow Lair, they discuss needing to keep an eye on Roy, who had his leg healed by the serum and presumably now has the same super strenght as Gold. Oliver learns Barry already left for Central City to try and make the particle accelerator event. Unfortunately he just missed the cutoff line at STAR Labs and instead heads back to his office at a wet-floored police station.

And there sure are a lot of chemicals sitting around. He inspects the hidden evidence board of his mom’s case when he hears on the news that a storm caused a malfunction in the reactor. And all the power goes off. And he sees a huge explosion and a shock wave.

Barry decides to hold onto some chains connected to what seems like a sunroof. And all the chemicals in the office begin to float out of their open containers.

BOOM! Lightning strike!!!!!!!!

CHILLS! CHILLS I TELL YOU! I could watch that scene 10 more times. This was very special. As if that wasn’t exciting enough, Barry left a present for Oliver. A mask. “You look like a hero,” says Felicity.

Wow. Ok, so the flashbacks this week had Ivo making Oliver to choose between Sara and Shado, even though he apparently has some feelings for Sara. There’s no real reason to make Oliver do this but Ivo points his gun at Sara and Oliver jumps in front of it. Ivo is all, well I guess you made your choice, and kills Shado. Slade is revived miraculously and goes on a killing spree of the bad guys. Then he sees Shado. Smartly, Sara tries to cover up how it happened as Slade promises revenge, but I’m sure Oliver will feel bad and tell him.

Wow. Did I say wow? My only problem with this episode is how Shado’s death played out. Ivo could have just shot her since she was no longer of use but instead they use the damsel in danger trope to further Oliver’s story. It was unnecessary. But other than that, this episode was a joy to watch, mostly for the last 10 minutes or so. While I wasn’t keen on this alternate Green Arrow The CW decided to give us, I’ve grown to really like this version. But there is something to be said for staying truer to the comics and boy did my heart swell watching Barry turn into the Flash (huge credit to Grant Gustin and everyone involved in making Barry so likeable from the get-go). It was like seeing Superman fly for the first time. Even more so because I didn’t expect it to happen on Arrow and I wasn’t quite sure they’d go that route at all with his powers. It’s exciting to say the least, and we only have more to come both in the Flash spinoff and Arrow now that actual super powers have been established.

What did you think of the episode?

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