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“Arrow” recap (3.5): Seeing through the Smoak

Previously on Arrow, Sara was viciously taken from us by someone wielding black arrows, Laurel signed up for boxing lessons to work out her anger about it, and Felicity mentioned once that her mother was a cocktail waitress.

As the sun rises on Starling City, we check in on our heros. Laurel is boxing with her new trainer, Thea is training with Merlyn, and Oliver is sparring with Roy. In between jousts, Thea asks Merlyn how normal people spend their mornings, and we cut to Felicity, applauding herself for finishing a handful of situps with her exercise video. But what we’re about to learn about Felicity is something most of us already knew: She’s anything but normal. And so far from boring.

Felicity hears a knock and opens her door to find her boss, Ray McSkeevy. He walks into the apartment, rattling on about cogeneration and what they can do with Queen Consolidated, but she just stares blankly at him and says her caffeine stores are depleted so maybe can he not? He starts to clarify as though she hadn’t understood, but she quickly proves it wasn’t that she didn’t follow his rambling, she just didn’t want to. Someone else knocks, and an already-overwhelmed-and-confused Felicity opens it to find a blonde woman who squeals upon seeing Felicity. Mama Smoak has arrived. Felicity goes into overload and her eyes are wide with terror as she asks her mother what she’s doing here, and Mama says she sent a text, but it turns out the text was never sent. The mother of the tech genius can barely use her cell phone. When Mama Smoak shrugs and sends the text anyway, even though she’s now standing in front of her daughter, Ray asks the question that came to all of our minds: “Are you adopted?”

Felicity introduces her mother to her boss, but Mama Smoak already knows Ray Palmer; in fact, she’s wearing one of his smart-watches now. Ray gives her the prototype of the next generation smart watch and says he hopes to see her again, but the still-horrified Felicity says that will almost definitely not happen.

And then, a miraculous thing happens. Instead of an Oliver flashback, we delve into Felicity’s secret past. She’s in college, with black hair and emo makeup, tip-tapping away on her computer, writing code for Linux Zork emulator. Her boyfriend, Cooper, is impressed, and they make out until his roommate tells them to cut it out. They have work to do. The work they have to do turns out to be hacking into the Department of Education using a supervirus Felicity wrote. I don’t know exactly what their plan was, but Cooper is actively deleting student loans, and that was definitely not what they were planning. Whatever they were planning was going to be small, enough that someone would think it was a glitch; this they would trace, this would get them sent to jail. Felicity unplugs the system and Cooper gets angry. He asks her: Do you want to be a hacker or a hero?

In the present-day, Oliver visits Thea and she confesses that she’s been using Merlyn’s money from his estate. Oliver doesn’t want her to take her father’s blood money, especially since he’s actually alive, but Thea says she’s her own person; he can come visit with popcorn if he wants, but his manpain is not welcome here.

As Thea storms off, a blackout rolls through Starling City. Chaos follows suit. A store with a dozen TVs on display in the window flickers to life, and a scary eyeball comes on every screen, shouting angry and cryptic messages about doom and destruction, etc. In a calculated power play (no pun intended), the voice says “let there be light” and power is restored to the city.

Felicity takes her mom to Verdant, and tells her to stay put while she goes down to the Arrow Cave, but before she can run off, Oliver walks in. Like Ray Palmer, Mama Smoak knows exactly who Oliver Queen is, and is impressed by the company her daughter keeps. Diggle walks in next and Felicity looks like she wishes she could Alex Mack herself into a puddle right about now. Mama Smoak sees a baby in Diggle’s arms and starts cooing and Felicity reaches the end of her rope. She tells her mom not to move a single muscle, but when Oliver tells Diggle baby Sara can’t go down into the basement full of arrows and knives and swords, Felicity reluctantly offers up her mother as babysitter.

Flashback Felicity hangs up the phone after telling her mother, not for the first time, that she doesn’t want a fake ID. She fights again with Cooper about his smooth move, but they make up just in time for the FBI to swoop in and take him away. Poor baby Felicity could do nothing but watch. Flash forward to the Eye of Sauron sending another message, this one talking about hacking the banks and reducing everyone’s bank account to zero. Luckily, this time, Felicity traced the IP enough to have breadcrumbs to follow to lead them to this evil entity.

Across town, Laurel learns that she’s the acting District Attorney, and though she was surprised at first, she soon takes her new power in stride. She orders an Emergency Services Unit be sent to the growing crowd outside the bank, and is very firm on the subject. Of course, this turns the angry mob into a riot, and it takes Team Arrow and some tear gas arrows to calm things down. Meanwhile, Felicity found the virus that’s causing all the problems. Unfortunately, it’s unstoppable. She knows this because she wrote it, five years ago.

Felicity freaks the freak out. She starts to ramble to Oliver about how she never imagined her virus being used for evil, even though she could have, because she’s good at imagining things, she even dreamed up cronuts before they were invented. Oliver tells her to relax, and she does, at least enough to tell him about her hacktivism trio and the supervirus she created so they could hack into any system they wanted. He asks why she never mentioned this and she is just like “So how was being dead for five years?” and he moves on and asks for names. She’s sure it couldn’t have been her boyfriend, but sends him to talk to Myron, Cooper’s roommate.

Flashback Felicity visits Cooper in prison, ready to confess that she was the one who wrote the virus, but it’s too late, he already confessed. They exchange ‘I love you’s with their words and ‘goodbyes’ with their eyes. Oliver finds Thea in Verdant finally suspicious of the locked door she’s never been through, but distracts her by apologizing for earlier. She tells him he’s allowed to be worried, but to dial it back. Family is precious, and they’re all they have left. Sort of.

Felicity texts Oliver that she found Myron, and the Arrows Red and Green visit him at his office. Myron is greeted with the classic, “YOU HAVE FAILED THIS CITY” and gets a few arrows to the computer. Felicity feeds Oliver things to say to back Myron into a corner, but he swears he isn’t responsible for this. He may or may not have shown the code off to a few randos as an ice breaker post-college though. Oops!

Back in the Arrow cave, Felicity is more freaked than ever. Oliver asks again if her boyfriend could be behind this, but she insists he couldn’t be. Thinking she maybe was blinded by old feelings, Oliver asks if she’s sure, but Felicity snaps and says Cooper killed himself in prison. She excuses herself to be alone. Felicity was hiding out at Queen Consolidated to avoid her mother, and Ray asks if she wants to talk, but Mama Smoak got tired of waiting around and storms into Felicity’s office. She whines about her daughter’s workaholic nature, but Felicity says it’s not just a job. Felicity is tired, scared, stressed, and weary, so she lets her mom have it. She apologizes for being perpetually single, she apologizes that she doesn’t dress like a porn star, she apologizes for being a disappointment. Mama Smoak sees they’re playing the honesty game and plays along; she might not have been the perfect mother, but she was there. Felicity’s father left them, but when she looks at Felicity, he’s still all she sees. Mama Smoak was always afraid Felicity would leave her, too, but she’s starting to see that maybe she already has. Felicity goes back to the Arrow Cave, still frazzled and shaken. Ollie tells her she needs to get her head in the game, so she should take an hour to talk to her mom. Thea taught him family is precious. Felicity is hesitant, but knows he’s right, knows she can’t let her mom leave Starling City like this. She’s suffered too much loss that was out of her hands to not fix something so fixable.

When Felicity goes back to her apartment to talk to her mother, she ends up learning that Mama Smoak is here because she won a free round trip through a contest she didn’t even remember winning. Felicity immediately knows that this can’t mean anything good, but before she can do so much as text Ollie, men rush in and kidnap both Smoaks. They’re taken to an empty warehouse (of course) and the evil eyeball starts to talk to them. Eventually the simulated voice fades and the human behind it comes out of the shadow. It’s Cooper, and he is very much alive.

He explains that his death was a lie the NSA told because they needed him for his hacker skills and being dead would help quell some questions. He’s been jaded by this experience, and has an every-man-for-himself way of thinking now. When he found out Felicity was working for Queen Consolidated, he decided to release the full potential for the virus, to see what damage it can really do. If only he knew she was the right-hand (wo)man to the local vigilante. Cooper drags Felicity to his computer console and tells her to hack into some armored trucks and reconfigure their GPS coordinates to lead them to his lair. Her mother seems pretty sure she’s not going to survive this ordeal, and says her goodbyes, telling Felicity all she ever wanted was for her daughter to be happy. Felicity does the hacking Cooper wanted in three seconds flat. He cuffs her to the desk with a zip-tie and heads out to meet the trucks. Mama Smoak’s fancy watch goes off and Felicity is struck with an idea; she hacks into its wifi and click clacks away until Cooper returns.

No longer in need of her services, Cooper is about to shoot Felicity in her perfect face and put a bullet in her genius brain, but Mama Smoak stalls him a little by shouting at him. Luckily, it’s just enough time for Oliver to return Felicity’s call for help, and the Arrow shows up just in time.

After watching Oliver disarm some machine guns and train his arrow at him, Cooper grabs Felicity and points the gun at her again. Before either man can move, Felicity elbows, disarms, and knocks him out. She saved herself, she saved her mom, she saved the day. Back at Arrow HQ, Oliver asks Felicity if she’s OK after the whole ex-boyfriend-back-from-the-dead-as-an-evil-villain. She says she’s okay, but old lovers open old wounds. She then cringes at her own use of the word “lovers” and proves our Felicity is still in there; she’ll be just fine. Oliver tells her that she’s glad for her wounds, because without them, she wouldn’t be who she is today, and where would any of us be without Felicity Smoak as we know and love her?

Flash back to Myron the roommate coming home and seeing Felicity come out of the bathroom, her black hair dyed blonde, her contacts replaced by glasses, and her punk rock chic look ditched for business attire. The secret origin of Felicity Smoak. After the riot debacle, Laurel had gotten scolded by her father, who told her to sort her shit out before she fully goes off the rails. He could tell something is bother her, and tells her to talk to someone about it, even if it’s not him. Laurel takes his advice and goes to her boxing instructor, telling him that her sister was murdered but she can’t tell anyone. He understands her better now, and knows how to train her. He offers her to robes; red or black. She picks black. The secret origin of the Black Canary.

Oliver shows up at Thea’s with popcorn, and the siblings make up and watch a movie together, while Merlyn watches from a nearby rooftop like an absolute lunatic.

Felicity’s mother comes to Queen Consolidated to say goodbye, and Felicity gives her a big ol’ hug. She thanks her mom for always being there for her, and says Mama Smoak was wrong about something, she did get something from her mom: Her strength. She’s been through hell and back in the past few years; she’s been beaten down, emotionally and physically. But she’s stayed tough throughout, and she gets that from Mama Smoak, the single mother in six inch heels.

Ray walks in on them and Felicity gives him an adorable little fake cough and tells him she won’t be able to work today. Her and her mother leave to spend one last day together in Starling City. The final scene Sara’s death playing over and over, blurry as though through a smeared lens…except this time, the camera pans out and we see who’s behind the arrows being whipped at the Canary; and it’s Roy. Roy wakes up from this nightmare in a panic; is it memory or imagination? Is he responsible for Sara’s death? Or is he having nightmares due to residual guilt from that time he went on a blackout murder spree?

What did you think of “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak”?

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