Hello, friends! Even though we lost Sara last week, it looks like the storyline will revolve around the bisxual beauty for a bit, so while it does, we’ll be doing a few recaps. And by we I mean me. Hope I can do our sweet Canary justice!
Previously on Arrow, Flashback Oliver was taken to Hong Kong, present-day Felicity got Smoaked by a smooth-talking gentleman with this eyes on Queen Consolidated, and Sara Lance died in her sister’s arms.
Felicity, Oliver and Roy are chatting about nothing, hardly a care in the world, when they wander into Team Arrow Headquarters. There, they find Laurel standing over Sara’s body. The poor thing carried her dead sister all the way to the bar’s basement, arrow’s sticking out of her and all. Felicity’s heart breaks and tears spill down her face. Laurel collapses into Oliver’s arms says, “It’s not fair,” over and over. It’s not, Laurel. It’s really, really not. Present day Laurel is in that state of sad shock that comes immediately after losing a loved one. She remembers a stuffed shark Sara used to hold when she was sad or scared, and all Laurel can think of is finding that shark for her sister. It’s like Vada in My Girl: “He can’t see without his glasses!”
Oliver promises he’s going to find who did this, and Laurel tells him that she’s going to help, whether he likes it or not. She’s also not going to tell her father Sara’s dead until they find whoever did this, because she knows he’ll burn down all of Starling City if he had to.
Oliver, thinking of his own sister, calls Thea, but gets no response.
A despondent Felicity tells Oliver that the cameras from the night and location of Sara’s murder have nothing useful on them, so Oliver goes to the scene of the crime, trying to work out what happened. Diggle joins him on the roof and says Sara was a friend, not just to Oliver, but to all of them, so he’s coming back from paternity leave early to help out.
Felicity calls and says Detective Lance (Inspector Lance? Where’s he up to now?) called the Arrow, so Oliver goes to him all hooded up. Lance asks if he’s OK, since apparently he can see enough of his face to see when he’s brooding, yet not enough to see Oliver’s impeccable and very distinct jaw line. Someone else turned up dead with a black arrow in him, so Lance puts Arrow on the job. Moments after, another man is hit with a black arrow, similar to the one that took down the Canary.
At Team Arrow HQ, Felicity is holding Sara’s hand, musing about how strong and brave Sara was, how it was easy to forget that under that big personality was just a small girl. Her job at the tech store calls her because she’s missing a shift, but she tells them she’s not coming in because there has been a death in the family. Oliver doesn’t think Sara was killed by the League of Assassins, and asks Diggle to ask Lyla for help using ARGUS. And while all this chaos is going on, Thea is still not answering Oliver’s calls. After Oliver runs off to do more investigating, Felicity catches Roy using her super-fancy triple computer system to look up Thea on an FBI database. Busted, he confesses that Thea gave him a note that essentially says, “goodbye forever,” that she gave him the night of the season finale. Felicity tells Roy that Oliver needs to know this, but before she can lecture him further, her phone goes off and she storms off, fuming mad, saying there’s someone she needs to kill.
Felicity goes up to the Queens Consolidated offices and stomps up to Ray “McSkeevy” Palmer, and yells at him for buying the chain of tech stores she worked in, since she specifically told him she wasn’t interested in working for him. He says most girls would have been flattered by the dramatics, but she quite rightly points out that she is not most girls, and quits her job(s). As she waits for the elevator, the anger bubbles up inside her and causes some tears to fill her eyes. He tells her she can talk to him if she wants and she tells him she’s leaving. He says, “It gets better,” because somehow he must sense it’s her girlfriend she’s mourning. Using some…resourceful interrogation techniques, Oliver as the Arrow finds out that the archer who has been killing businessmen wore a black facemask, and Diggle says that’s probably a man named Simon Lacroix aka Komodo. Laurel watches eagerly as Felicity works to track Komodo down and sends his coordinates to Oliver. Felicity pulls up street camera feeds for Laurel and they watch Oliver get his ass handed to him during a fight that looks almost like jousting but with motorcycles and arrows instead of horses and lances.
Laurel is angrier than a football fan whose team just lost the superbowl, but she has an idea of her own. She heads to the hospital and uses her badge and her “my dad is your boss” card to go in to visit Komodo’s latest victim.
At Team Arrow HQ, a still-despondent Felicity tells Oliver about an algorithm that’s running but Oliver is impatient, saying he needs her A-Game. Felicity looks at him in disbelief; how could she possibly be at the top of her game right now? Her heart is shattered all over the place and the pain inside her is clouding her vision. He tells her he doesn’t have the luxury of mourning because he has to be the leader. He also says that he realized that someday, that will be him, implying this is more reason why he can’t love her the way she wants him to. She says she learned the opposite lesson; don’t avoid loving because it will end someday, love all you can now because life is short. She wants more from life, to live it while she can, not less to avoid potential heartache. Laurel uses the Arrow Method of Interrogation and physically and verbally harasses the latest victim in the hospital to get answers. It works, and she finds out that the men who have been targeted were all working on a secret pipeline for Ameritek, but before he can give her any more details, a black arrow sails through the window and kills him dead.
Diggle goes to HQ and Oliver says Felicity went out for some air, and also Thea still isn’t calling him back. With Sara dead and Laurel rapidly derailing, all the women in his life are slipping through his fingers, slipping away from him. Roy realizes he needs to give Oliver the letter now and apologizes for keeping it from him for so long. Instead of handing him his ass, like surely Roy anticipated, Oliver just says, “OK.”
Laurel calls Felicity and leaves her a message on the way out of the hospital, where she’s intercepted by her father, who knows she lied to see the victim and of course mentions Sara because there’s no way he’d make this easy on Laurel. She doesn’t have time to lose it though, because Felicity calls her back and she has new info for her. Felicity looks up the Ameritek stuff and figure out who Komodo’s next target will be. Oliver starts off, and Laurel grabs a gun and starts to follow, but Oliver absolutely will not allow that to happen. Sara was a trained assassin, and look how dead she is. He can’t lose Laurel, too.
The next target is going to be at Ray McSkeevy’s event, where he’s speaking to the affluent residents of Starling City and offering to donate half his net worth to the cause. He’s being all inspiring and kind-spoken and I don’t know why but I don’t trust him even a little bit. Zero part of me is like, “Aw, look at these nice things he’s doing, maybe I misjudged him at at first.” Every warning sensor in my body is pinged by this guy. But maybe that’s just because he has his McSkeevy eyes on my girl Felicity. Anyway, Komodo crashes McSkeevy’s party, followed soon after by the Arrows, both Red and Green. Oliver follows Komodo to another floor, where they tussle a bit, but Komodo won’t say who hired him to kill the businessmen. Just then, Laurel appears, gun in hand. Komodo says he’s proud of his kills, but that he didn’t kill anyone, let alone Sara, two nights ago. Just the businessmen. Oliver tells Laurel that revenge won’t make her feel better, just ask Helena, but she pulls the trigger anyway. Luckily for her, Oliver had taken the bullets out of the gun he knew she’d take anyway. He grabs her arm and drags her out, leaving Komodo to lick his wounds.
Laurel has a bit of an internal freakout about the fact that she almost killed an innocent man (well, innocent of the one specific crime she was going to kill him for) and Oliver tells her that Komodo was their only lead, so now she should probably go tell her father that Sara is dead, for real this time. Laurel goes to her father’s office and she tries to tell him but his heart pill alert goes off and she chickens out, apologizing for lying instead.
Oh by the way, here’s what Flashback Oliver has been up to in Hong Kong: He’s given a sniper and told Amanda, his kidnapper, needs him to take care of a target for her. He’s all ready to do it when he sees Tommy in his crosshairs; his stunt with the computer pinged Tommy’s radar and he’s in Hong Kong looking for his best friend. Oliver can’t pull the trigger and his host dad tells him he failed a very important test. Since he refuses to kill Tommy, but knows Tommy needs to be taken out of the way, instead Oliver drugs and kidnaps him and tells Tommy that Oliver Queen is definitely very dead, and to never look for him ever again.
Present-day Oliver decides to bury Sara under the headstone she already had. The date of death is a few years off, but it still has her name carved into it, so it’ll do. Felicity takes a handful of dirt and tosses it onto the makeshift coffin, a final goodbye. Oliver follows suit, and looks to Laurel to do the same. Instead she breaks down, declaring it’s not fair again, because none of it is fair. Oliver holds her and Diggle tells her that they decided to name the baby Sara, because such a strong spirit should never be forgotten. He also vows to stick with Team Arrow until they find who did this to their friend. Oliver has something to do before he can resume his Avenge Sara mission: He’s going to get Thea and bring her home.
As a song croons “Man wasn’t made to live alone” in the background, we cut to all our friends: Oliver says he doesn’t want to die underground; Laurel cuddles with Sara’s shark and looks at her Canary jacket; Diggle looks upon little baby Sara, Roy scrolls through pictures of him and Thea. Everyone has lost so much, everyone has so much more to lose. Felicity goes up to Queen Consolidated and tells McSkeevy that she wants more out of life, so she’s ready to work for him.
Cut to Corto Maltese, where someone in robes kicks the ass of a few other people in robes using a very large stick. I’m sure there’s a beautiful name for this type of martial art, but I am not familiar with it, presently. Merlin comes out of the shadows and applauds the fighter for a job well done. The robes come off and none other than Thea Queen smiles proudly and says, “Thanks, Dad.” What did you think of “Sara”? What do you think Nyssa will do when she finds out? Who do you think killed our sweet Canary?
