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“Arrow” recap (4.19): Bye Bye Blackbird

Previously on Arrow, Laurel got shoved in the refrigerator her sister was once in. Murdered by Darhk to get back at her father for betraying him and his HIVE.

We open at a funeral, where Oliver Queen is called to say a few words. But then Laurel stands up, so it’s (probably) not her funeral. No, definitely not her funeral. It’s 2013, and it’s Tommy’s funeral. She talks about how much she loved Tommy, and how Oliver did too, and would say so if he wasn’t too busy sulking in the shadows.

In real time, we’re at the hospital, right where we left off. Lance is in shock, barely processing Oliver’s words. He stumbles into the room and looks over his daughter’s body, another daughter’s body.

Oliver and Diggle go back to the Arrow cave, and Arrow looks sadly upon the mannequin where Laurel’s Black Canary suit is supposed to be, and Diggle whines about this being all this fault. (Because it is.)

Oliver calls for Team Arrow to assemble, and they come, including Felicity.

Thea’s worried it’s too soon to go after Darhk, but she’s interrupted by Quentin Lance, who flies in waving a paper around. There was a reported Black Canary sighting last night when a blonde woman clad in leather Canary Cried her way into some guns.

Oliver says that the sonic device was missing from Laurel’s personal effects from the hospital, and Lance is convinced it’s Laurel, that she’s not really dead. He makes a good point by saying that crazier things have happened, but Oliver is unconvinced. So he takes Lance to the hospital morgue, where they find Laurel, still very dead.

Oliver talks to the doctor, and she promises to be discreet about the fact that he carried in the Black Canary, but she performed surgery on Laurel Lance. He asks her to help him figure out who might have taken something out of Laurel’s things, and the doc says there’s a young girl who comes into the hospital a lot, but she can’t give him her name.

Flashback again, this time to Oliver going to Laurel’s apartment after Tommy’s funeral.

They talk about Tommy, and they cry. Oliver feels like he failed his friend, Laurel tells him not to blame himself. So basically it’s exactly the same as 90% of their conversations.

Present-day Felicity tries to give Diggle the download about the lead from the hospital, but he’s not paying attention. It’s hard to hear a woman’s voice when your head is shoved in a bucket of manpain. He tells her about Andy working for Darhk and him not taking Oliver’s advice and why he blames himself. Felicity just says that she wasn’t there, so she doesn’t know what to say.

Thea is on a date with Alex, trying to let him distract her from the loss of her “roommate”, when the imposter vigilante, who I shall call the Stuffed Canary (get it? Like a fake bird? LEAVE ME ALONE, I’M MOURNING) screams at Alex and beats the crap out of him and almost shoots him until Thea fights her off and pulls off her mask.

The Stuffed Canary gets away, but Thea calls Oliver to go after her. When she sees the Green Arrow, the Stuffed Canary yells at him, accusing him of abandoning her, saying, “You left us at Rivington to die.” She uses his own line on him. “You have failed this city.”

Oliver goes back to the Arrow Cave and says that his earplugs didn’t do anything, that this girl fiddled with the sonic necklace. Thea asks what Reddington is, and it’s the place where they were taken when they were kidnapped back at Christmas. Felicity uses these clues to find a teenager who was orphaned and disappeared around that time (and a gymnast to explain her vigilante impression skills). They thought the people they left back at HIVE were there of their own volition, but they were wrong.

Lance is gathering up some of Laurel’s things at her apartment and Nyssa is there, paying her respects. Nyssa tries to express her feelings to Lance, saying the world would be a darker place without his daughter. He says he’s ready to go to Nanda Parbat, and she realizes he wants her to resurrect Laurel. She would do anything for Laurel, for any of the Lances, but she can’t do that.

Lance is frantic, there must be another way, and says he’ll find one on his own if Nyssa won’t help him. But it’s not that she won’t, it’s that she can’t, so a tear falls down her face as he storms out.

Felicity goes to see Oliver, who is thinking about all the things he’s done wrong in his life, a very productive use of his time, and Felicity says that she’s feeling a little guilty because Diggle was digging for absolution and she didn’t give it to him. She says it’s because she blames herself, too. She should have been there. Maybe she could have saved Laurel. And even though it’s just a maybe, it’s one that haunts her.

Oliver says sometimes he blames himself for things because it’s easier than having no answers at all. Thea calls to warn them that Diggle was supposedly going to see Lyla, but Lyla just called looking for him, so something shady is probably going down.

Sure enough, when Oliver finds Diggle, he’s pistol whipping the mayor. Oliver talks him down, saying that Laurel wouldn’t want him to become as bad as Darhk and his goonies.

The mayor holds a press conference and speaks out against vigilantes, putting out arrest warrants for all of them, but first and foremost the Black Canary.

Team Arrow needs to find the Stuffed Canary before the SCPD, but first, Oliver gets a call to meet Nyssa. She tells him about Lance’s denial and how desperate he was, so Oliver should keep an eye on him. Oliver tells Nyssa his own concerns, that Laurel was killed by an invincible monster, and that her legacy is being dragged through the mud. Nyssa hates it, too.

As predicted, when Oliver finds Lance, he’s storming around like a madman, determined to find a way to get his baby girl back. Oliver says that if there was a way to bring Laurel back, he would obviously do it, he called in a crazy man from a cancelled show to get the old Sara back into feral Sara’s body. But there’s not. Unlike literally everyone else on this show, Laurel’s death is for real. Lance breaks down, saying Laurel was his rock. He’s adrift without her.

Felicity finds Diggle and apologizes, which makes me real mad. Oh sorry, she didn’t tell you the same pretty lie you’ve made everyone else tell you since Laurel died. Sorry, she didn’t let you make Laurel’s death all about you, SIR. Eh hem. Anyway, Felicity says that just because now it’s Oliver saying “Don’t have a blind spot when it comes to your family,” and Diggle saying, “Woe is me. Everything bad that happens happens the worst to me!” doesn’t mean it’s not annoying as all get-out. And if they don’t cut it out, Laurel is going to come back from the dead to start the zombie apocalypse to put us all out of our misery.

Felicity’s computer pings just then because facial recognition found the Stuffed Canary. Felicity sends the team to work protecting Laurel’s legacy.

The Green Arrow catches up to the Stuffed Canary at the mayor’s event, but can’t stop her before she busts into the room full of people and points the gun at the mayor. The Green Arrow talks to her about the real Black Canary, and tells her to ask herself, WWBCD?

So the Stuffed Canary lowers her gun and doesn’t shoot.

At the Arrow Cave, most of the team is trying to see the positive, saying Laurel would have been happy to have inspired this young vagabond, but Thea is PISSED. Now the last memory of the Black Canary anyone will have will be of the crazy chick who tried to kill the mayor with a gun.

But Oliver promises he won’t let that happen.

At Laurel’s real funeral, Quentin and Dinah Lance walk arm in arm to another child’s funeral. Dinah is keeping her spirits up; surely this daughter will also come back from the dead. But Lance gives his ex-wife the same speech Oliver gave him, saying that this time the death will stick.

Oliver doesn’t hide in the shadows for this funeral, he stands up and talks about his love for Laurel. How she became a lawyer to help the helpless but didn’t stop there. She also became the Black Canary.

He sets the record straight that Laurel “Black Canary” Lance was a hero in every sense of the word. And that they would all do well to follow her example.

After the funeral, Oliver lingers at Laurel’s grave, and we relive the scene we started the season with. Barry comes to pay his respects, and Oliver tells him that he has no choice, he has to kill Damien Darhk. He gets in his limo, and Felicity had come to the same decision at the same time.

Even though Oliver is stressed because Darhk has a dark, dark magic, Felicity says they have no choice. They can’t let Laurel die in vain. He has to find a way.

What did you think of “Canary Cry”? When do you think Sara will find out about Laurel? Do you think Nyssa will tell her, or is that wishful thinking on my part?

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