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“Arrow” recap (4.11): Someone to Watch Over Me

Previously on Arrow, something called ARGUS was a thing, Andy Diggle was a Ghost, but Team Arrow got him out and has been keeping him in Nyssa’s old cage, and Damien Darhk sent a bunch of men with guns after Oliver, and they ended up paralyzing Felicity.

This episode is split into two threads about being split in two. Diggle’s storyline is about being two people at once; his brother was two-faced, a commander in the army was two-faced, etc. Felicity’s storyline was about two versions of herself arguing, trying to figure out which is her authentic self. In a move that will surprise no one, I am going to focus more on the latter. I just thought that was worth mentioning. I like when shows are clever.

We open with Diggle and Lyla on a date (I’m glad Lyla’s been around more. Stick around, Lyla) when an ex-coworker of hers, Alan, comes running up to them, saying he was compromised, but only managing to get out Waller’s name before he’s kidnapped. But these were no Ghosts…

Back at the Loft, Felicity is nervous about being carried by Oliver but eventually relaxes into her shiny new wheelchair. Oliver gives her the meds the doctor prescribed and yells at her to rest up and get better. Felicity reminds him that she might never make a full recovery, but he says that’s fine; her brain is her real superpower anyway, and that’s mostly fine. She decides she wants a nickname, and she wants it to be Hot Wheels.

Felicity says that despite her superpower being probably intact, she’s not ready to get back to vigilante-ing just yet. Oliver is ready to convince her otherwise, but Diggle calls to tell him about the attack, so off he goes.

At Arrow HQ, Lyla says that the men who attacked them looked like military men, and they stare at the computers, wondering what to do next. Thea really misses Felicity.

But Oliver tells them Felicity isn’t ready to play yet, so they try other things instead.

Speaking of Hot Wheels, Felicity decides to take some more pain meds, but she takes a little more than prescribed and starts to hear a voice, mocking her for having a pity party, taunting her for hiding out all alone. Felicity rolls around to try to find the source of the voice but eventually yells at herself for talking to herself -until she realizes just how literally she was talking to herself.

Across town, Laurel uses sass and a fierce look or two to get Diggle onto a crime scene, where he identifies the body of his friend Alan, who is not only super dead but is missing a lot of blood, some fingernails, and an eyeball.

Diggle and Lyla go to ARGUS for help, but Amanda Waller claims she can’t help them. She shakes Lyla’s hand but is super weird about it, so when they’re on the way out Diggle asks what that was all about. Turns out The Wall slipped a USB to Lyla during that awkward shake.

Back at The Loft, Felicity checks and is relieved to see that hallucinations are, indeed, a side effect of the drugs she’s taking. So she, at least, has a good reason for losing her mind. Emo!Felicity starts taunting her again, saying she’s wasted her life-her strength, her brains, everything -on playing superhero with her handsome boyfriend and stunning ladyfriends.

In the Arrow Cave, the ladies are doing their best to do some computer magic without Felicity.

On the USB is a logo that means Shadowspire. Diggle recognizes it because there were some corrupt army guys involved in it back when he was in the military. Andy admits to being involved with them because he was different than his brother thought he was. Andy was two people; someone his big brother would be proud of, and someone who looked out for number one.

But it’s all going to work out because Andy can help; he knows where Shadowspire would hide out.

At Andy’s suggestion, they go to something called a freeport (not to be confused with the new name for ABC Family). Laurel takes one look at the high-tech locks and echoes Thea’s earlier statement: They need Felicity. So Oliver calls his girlfriend, and Felicity answers despite (or to spite) Emo!Felicity’s insistence.

Felicity easily hacks into the system and reports back to the Team while Emo!Felicity gags at her helpfulness.

After some typical Team Arrow hustling, Oliver tells the girls to leave. But as soon as they do, Green Arrow gets trapped in a box, and Spartan becomes surrounded. Eventually, Oliver gets out and saves Diggle, and he’s able to report their safety back to Felicity, but her Goth counterpart wastes no time pointing out her mistakes.

When Oliver comes home, Felicity is facing a window, singing the Christina Aguilera version of Mulan‘s “Reflection.” Oliver tells her that everyone is fine and what happened wasn’t her fault, and that if anything it was his for pushing her before she was ready. She says she can’t be part of the team anymore, but Oliver insists she can’t let her injury stop her. But she feels so helpless, so useless. Trapped.

Emo!Felicity shows up and starts teasing her again, talking over Oliver’s speech until finally Felicity can’t take it anymore and tells them both to SHUT UP. Felicity yells directly at her hallucination and Oliver is as concerned as Emo!Felicity is amused.

Meanwhile, Diggle lets Andy out of his cage in Arrow HQ in exchange for a slightly bigger cage at ARGUS. But he still wants to help; he tells them that if he knows Shadowspire (and he does), the rain guns they found in the freeport are just a distraction, and they’re aiming for something bigger.

Back at HQ, Laurel is boxing with Oliver, because the Powers that Be love us, and she asks if he wants to talk about what’s bothering him.

Laurel reads his mind (not hard) and tells him to stop blaming himself. But Oliver points out it could very well be his fault because he messed with the timeline in that crossover episode when they all died, and Barry turned back the clocks to save them. Laurel says there’s only one man to blame: Damien Darhk. She then reminds him that Felicity makes her own choices, even though it’s not super relevant right now, mostly because he’s the kind of guy who needs reminding. And because she’s looking out for her friend.

Speaking of Felicity’s choices, despite being haunted by The Ghost of Felicitys Past, she’s currently reading The Shining. Which both amuses and annoys Emo!Felicity.

Felicity breaks down and asks why the hell her teenage self is bothering her. Emo!Felicity came here to remind her that when her ex-boyfriend Cooper supposedly died, she decided she was going to stop relying on anyone, she was going to make her own choices. But instead here she is, feeling sorry for herself, hiding behind a disguise of blonde hair and glasses. All because she thought she was more badass than she was. And poor Felicity looks like she’s really taking it to heart.

Somewhere else in Star City, our favorite leather-clad trio is keeping an eye on the rail guns, waiting for Shadowspire to show up.

But nothing is happening, because Shadowspire is using the eyeball they plucked from Alan to get into ARGUS. While they’re being taken over, Lyla sneakily presses an intercom button, which lets Diggle and Andy down below know what’s going on.

Shadowspire is here for something called Rubicon and is willing to kill ARGUS agents one by one until he gets it. Thus far, Amanda Waller is unmoved.

Diggle has no reception down in the dungeon, but won’t let Andy out of his cage to help. He’s going to use the monitor to signal his team, but his brother says they don’t have time to wait for the cavalry, not if they want to save Lyla.

Unaware of his current situation, Oliver leaves Diggle a message explaining the lack of action with the rail guns, when suddenly he’s graced with the presence of a goddess on wheels.

She got sick of feeling bad for herself (and arguing with herself). She signed onto Team Arrow because she wanted to help people. Her old self was angry and did nothing particularly productive with that anger except buy more chokers and add more buckles to things that don’t need buckles.

Felicity was pretty proud of her speech, but Oliver is still looking at her with that puppy-that-peed-on-the-carpet look. Felicity echoes what I can only imagine is a conversation she and Laurel had during this week’s Feminists of Flarrow book club/support group. (Most recent book: Know Your Value by Peggy Carter.) Felicity says that what happened to her isn’t Oliver’s fault, it isn’t her fault-it isn’t anyone’s fault but Damien Darhk’s. And they’re going to stop him because that is who they are.

Oh and also, the Arrow Cave needs a few ramps.

After politely waiting until the Olicity moment was over, Diggle sends through his SOS from ARGUS and Oliver springs into action.

Waller is staying strong in the face of her dying agents, and Lyla so helpfully points out that Waller will never break just because a worthless human’s life is on the line. The bad guy says in that case, she’s useless and shoots her right in the head.

And now, normally I’d be like, “Hot damn, that was kind of badass, characters with names hardly ever get killed without warning or fanfare or without Oliver being in the room so he could blame himself for their death later.” But really, Arrow? Amanda Waller? A woman of color? When you have so few? Did you learn nothing from shoving Sara Lance in the refrigerator? And actually, while I’m at it, since we don’t recap The Flash, why the heck was a character that was a woman of color in the comics being played by a white woman? Granted, The Flash is the most diverse show in the Arrowverse, but still! That’s not the way colorblind casting is supposed to work! It’s 2016, why can’t anyone get this right?!

Eh-hem, anyway. Back to the action. The bad guy tells Lyla she’s going to get the next bullet if she doesn’t give him Rubicon.

Diggle lets Andy out because now Lyla’s life is on the line, and Team Arrow descends into the trenches.

Oliver calls to Felicity over his comm, giving her a brand new nickname: Overwatch. He jokes that he was going to go with Oracle (which has been a longtime fan theory), but the name was already taken.

Felicity loves it, but she doesn’t know any better. I mean, look at the names she’s been exposed to so far: Green Arrow, Black Canary, Speedy and Spartan? Heck even White Canary or Hawkgirl/man? Kind of on the nose, don’t you think? Not exactly as formidable as names like Iron Man or Captain America. Doesn’t quite strike the same kind of fear as Black Widow or Scarlet Witch. But at least she’s not just Wheels, like that poor boy on the Burger King bags. (Also, I’m not really one to talk. I had an imaginary brown cat named Cocoa, a brown toy horse named Mocha, and a stuffed cat named Kitty…)

Andy busts into the hostage situation and tells the bad guy that Lyla’s husband is around here somewhere and will make for great motivation. The guy’s minions find him and force Lyla to start using codes to unlock Rubicon (or the place where it’s stored? I’m still unclear as to what Rubicon is.) But Felicity is blocking the codes as fast as Lyla can type them, giving Canary and Speedy (who Felicity NEEDS-she said so) time to do their thing.

Emo!Felicity is lurking nearby, but Felicity’s voice doesn’t waver when she says that she hasn’t been that version of herself in a very long time, and Emo!Felicity disappears.

So Team Arrow works together to save the day, of course. Then they gather in the Arrow Cave to pour one out for Amanda Waller, despite her kind of being a bad guy in her own right.

Back in the Loft, Oliver gets a box for Felicity, out of which she pulls a picture of Emo!Felicity.

Oliver is highly amused. Felicity says that this is the old her; she used to be a rebellious hacker, but now she’s a certified badass. Emo!Felicity would have released Rubicon to make a statement and Emo!Oliver would have snapped the bad guys’ necks, but now they’re smiling and cuddling on a big fluffy bed.

Felicity burns the picture (WHICH. FIRE HAZARD.) to symbolize the changes they’ve both made.

Oliver tells Felicity that, even though he knows it’s not healthy to be in denial about her condition, they live in a world where people can run faster than the speed of light, become as small as an atom, spread wings like a hawk, and come back from the dead. So he’s not about to shrug off this paralysis as permanent just because some normal human doctor said so, even if he was “all the way” from Central City.

What did you think of “AWOL”? Do you like Felicity’s new nickname?

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