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“Arrow” recap (3.13): Canaries in a Coal Mine

Previously on Arrow, Sid told Captain Lance that the woman in leather running around Starling City isn’t the daughter he thinks it is, Merlyn told Thea that they had all been marked for death by Ra’s al Ghul, the shady DJ told the League of Assassins Thea’s whereabouts, and Oliver told Merlyn that they were going to train together to beat the Demon’s Head once and for all.

We begin with Laurel in her Black Canary getup being thrown around. And not just by your run-of-the-mill bad guy. But by her sister.

Punch me all you want, just don’t leave again!

Sara calls Laurel selfish, a liar, an addict, all while giving her a beating that goes above and beyond sibling rivalry. Laurel begs Sara to stop, reminds her that they’re sisters, but Sara uses that point against her. They’re sisters, so why is Laurel trying to take her place?

Cut to 48 hours earlier. Oliver and Roy chase a bad guy along a roof, just like old times, parkouring around like one of them didn’t pretty much die a few weeks ago. They’re about to lose the rather agile baddie when a streak of black and blond comes out of nowhere and beats him down. Oliver is PISSED. His ego is as bruised as the bad guy’s face, so he yells at Laurel and calls her selfish. She doesn’t care what he thinks, though, and just suggests fighting crime in separate dark alleys from now on.

Down in the Arrow Cave, Oliver asks Diggle how he let Laurel play dress-up for so long, and Diggle raises and eyebrow and points out that Laurel is a grown human and makes her own choices. Felicity interrupts Oliver’s tantrum to tell him he has a visitor, and in strolls Malcolm Merlyn. Merlyn says the time has come; they can’t sit around and wait for Ra’s to attack, they have to start training now, and if they want to stand a chance against the League, they need to loop Thea in. Diggle warns Oliver again that Thea will never forgive him for lying to her all these years, forgetting his speech about grown humans being allowed to make their own choices and deciding how Thea will feel for her.

Across town, prisoner Werner Zytle is being transported and is shouting to face his accuser, the Arrow, but Laurel the Lawyer steps in and tells him to hush. She instructs a guard to take Zytle to the van but the guard suddenly freaks the freak out and opens fire on the crowd of reporters. Having no other options, Laurel throws a punch and knocks the guard out, and by the time she looks around, Zytle is long gone.

“I punched a guy and I liked it.”

At Verdant, Oliver visits his little Speedy and Thea loves seeing her big brother again. He savors the hug and then tells her he needs to show her something. Oliver leads her down into the basement he told her was flooded beyond repair and turns the light on to reveal the Arrow Cave.

Oliver tells Thea that he lied to protect her, even though that might not matter to her. Thea takes in the Arrow’s hood in its glass case and understands. She turns to face her brother and works it out aloud; every time he was flaky, every lame excuse he gave, every single time he bailed on her it was to save someone’s life. He nods meekly and Thea’s eyes fill up with love. She thanks him-sweetly, genuinely thanks him-and gives her big brother a hug.

Suck on that, Diggle.

Thea explains that she’s wanted to thank the Arrow for so long, and teases him about breaking her window (and how she kicked his ass). Malcolm appears and Thea turns on him with her teeth bared; he lied to her, he told her she had no one left to trust. Malcolm says they have to work together to beat Ra’s but Thea doesn’t want to work with Merlyn anymore. She knows he was trying to cut her off from the only real family she had left, and she hates feeling manipulated.

Back at Arrow HQ, Felicity is watching the news footage of the escaped prisoner and waves Oliver over to watch her favorite part: Laurel clocking the prison guard.

I love how Felicity is the center of the universe in this shot.

The star of the moment arrives just then, and Laurel tells them that a reporter dosed the guard. Oliver starts to suit up to find said reporter when he notices Laurel pulling out her leathers as well. He tries to stop her, but she is fed up with him trying to boss her. Oliver pulls Laurel aside and tells her that he’s not worried about her risking her life, he’s worried about her being addicted to vigilante-ism, afraid she’s just chasing the high to keep Sara off her mind. She looks him square in the eye and asks if he doesn’t think that’s the pot calling the kettle Black Canary.

Oliver and Roy don their hoods and find the reporter, who admits to drugging the guard, but he was blackmailed. In fact, he’s still being blackmailed, and has a bomb. Surprise! Oliver tries to talk him down but fails, so he and Roy leap out of windows as the bomb goes off, landing safely (though probably not comfortably) on the hoods of cars. Nearby, the escaped prisoner cackles to himself, thinking he’s eliminated his only opposition.

Oliver heads to Thea’s, where he tries to tell her again that working with Merlyn is a necessary evil.

Pants, though. Totally unnecessary.

Thea begs him to make theirs a siblings-only crime fighting team, but Oliver asks her to trust him, this is what they need to do. Thea relents, but only because she trusts her brother; she still does not trust Malcolm with a single drop of the blood they share.

Laurel is in her office when her father comes to visit, impressed with her newfound boxing skills. He asks Laurel if she’s heard from Sara, and when she says she hasn’t, he confesses that after a conversation he had with Sin, he suspects the woman in black saving lives around the city isn’t his youngest daughter, and that he just wants to have a chat with her, whoever she is. Laurel does not love this plan.

Hope Felicity hasn’t worn out the Sara-voice software.

Later, in the Arrow Cave, Felicity uses a tracer Oliver secretly placed on Laurel and tracks her to the shipyard. Vertigo is back in season, which explains the prison guards mental breakdown. While Oliver and Roy rush to the shipping containers to help her, Laurel takes out human obstacles and snoops around. She was doing well until Zytle himself comes out of nowhere and shoots her up with some Vertigo and he suddenly transforms into Sara.

Bird fight!

And now we’re back where we started, with Canary on Canary violence, though what Laurel sees as Sara is still just Zytle knowing exactly how to manipulate someone on Vertigo. Just before he bashes her beautiful face in, an arrow shoots the nightstick out of his hand and the boys run to Laurel’s side, where she lay twitching from the drug.

When they get Laurel to the Arrow Cave, Felicity treats her immediately, but before she passes out, she sees Sara one more time, saying what I’ve been shouting into the abyss in the general direction of the Arrow creative team for months: Sara didn’t have to die for Laurel to take her place as the Black Canary.

Thea comes down amidst the kerfuffle and Oliver does his panic-yell for her to get out. Roy tells him to lay off, but Thea just wants to know if Laurel will be OK. Oliver says she will be, so Thea leaves, and turns on Roy and asks what his little outburst was all about. Roy starts to stand up to him, and Felicity decides this is a good time to get off her chest what she’s been holding inside during her near-silence this episode.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN.

Oliver was gone. For weeks, entirely gone. They had to move on, they had to find their own way of getting on. It’s not fair for him to swoop back in and a) expect everything to go back to normal b) start challenging the decisions they’ve made, the way they do things now. Just because he’s back doesn’t mean normalcy ever will be. It’s like he’s never been dead and then tried to come back to his old life before, sheesh.

Oliver storms off, but Diggle catches up to him. Oliver admits that he’s surprised at how much things had changed in his absence; that Team Arrow had not only continued on, but grown and some might even say thrived. Diggle says that when Oliver was gone, they realized they weren’t just doing this for him. It wasn’t Team Oliver, it was Team Arrow, and the Arrow stood for something different for each of them, something more. They all had their own reasons to fight. But Diggle reminds him that this isn’t a bad thing; Oliver should be proud of the team he built.

In the basement, Laurel comes to and is shaking like an addict in withdrawal. Felicity goes to her and quietly asks her if she’s okay with the bedside manner of an angel.

I wanna hold your haaaand.

Laurel admits she saw Sara, that, on the drug, her sister was alive and calling Laurel a fraud. Laurel hangs her head and admonishes herself for thinking she could ever be worthy of wearing her sister’s jacket. Felicity says that now that it’s just the two of them, she has some truths to lie down. Sara wore her mask to hide her demons, not her identity. Felicity has seen into Sara’s soul, seen the pain and darkness, and she’s been getting a glimpse into Laurel’s lately too. And Laurel has a light inside her that her sister never had. Sara had to find that light outside of herself-in saving lives, in Felicity-but Laurel possesses a light all her own. Felicity then gives her the single best piece of advice: Stop trying to be Sara. Just be Laurel.

This advice brightens that light inside her, and Laurel gives Felicity a hug.

Felicity hug + Laurel arm porn = happiness.

Meanwhile, Thea takes the shady DJ home, calls him simple, then goes for a roll in the hay with him. They are about to have a sip of post-coital wine when she realizes her wine smells less earthy with notes of chrysanthemum, and more cyanide-y with a hint of ill intent. Thea fights the DJ, but before she can crush his windpipe with her tiny hands, Roy and Merlyn show up, to “save” her I guess. Knowing he failed his mission, the definitely-not-really-a-DJ downs a vial of poison and dies a sacrificial death.

In the Arrow Cave, Felicity tracks down Zytle and his posse, and since Oliver can’t find Roy, he asks Laurel to suit up and come with him to the up-and-coming Vertigo lab. After making their grand entrance, they stand together and tell Zytle his reign as Starling City Baddie of the Week is over. Zytle starts a fire and runs for his life, and Felicity radios in that Oliver and Laurel need to GTFO or they’re going become Smoking Arrow and the Blackened Canary. Not one to take even the wisest of suggestions, Oliver instead frees the lab scientists who had been trained to their stations, and runs to pick up the injured one. Laurel, meanwhile, runs around looking for Zytle, and instead finds the pointy end of a Vertigo needle…again. And once again, Zytle transforms into Sara.

With a face crazier than ever.

The Canary sisters fight again, but this time the hallucination flickers between an angry Sara to Detective Lance, shouting at Laurel for not telling him about Sara, for taking away his right to mourn. They continue like this, flashing back and forth between them, taking turns at chipping away at Laurel’s resolve with their accusations and their fists, but then Felicities words come back to Laurel. They fill her up and make her strong, and with Felicity’s voice in her ear, she decides she’s done trying to be her sister. She overtakes Zytle and starts wailing on his face. Laurel looks up and sees Sara again, but this time it’s not Sara the Canary, it’s just Sara the girl, and she’s proud of her big sister.

Goodbye, ol’ girl.

Having learned from her hallucinations, and from her chat with Felicity, Laurel knows there’s something else she has to do besides stepping out of her sister’s shadow. She goes to see her father, bottom lip trembling, and tells him that she has news. Quentin Lance puffs out his chest, trying to show his daughter that she doesn’t have to be afraid, and says he already knows that she’s newest bird on the street, that Sara hasn’t been back lately and is probably off globetrotting with that beautiful girlfriend of hers. When tears fall from Laurel’s eyes, he mistakes it for relief at his knowing the truth and pulls her in close. Laurel hesitates, feeling safe in her father’s arms, not wanting to break him, not wanting him to push her away. But finally she steps back, crying in earnest now, and admits the news is about Sara. That’s all she has to say for the heavy realization to hit him; it’s every father’s worst nightmare, and he’s had to live it twice. “Not my baby,” he chokes out, “Not again.” His heart shatters into a million pieces, and Laurel wraps her arms around him. He holds her and they cry together; for themselves, for each other. For Sara.

Across town, Oliver goes to see Thea, who is sitting with Roy. Thea says she thought she could keep herself safe, that she was stronger, but now she knows that the League of Assassins are not your run-of-the-mill overly aggressive dudes, which is really all she intended to use her training on before Merlyn told her she was marked for death. Thea admits that even though she’s still pissed at her bio-dad, she sees now that maybe they can’t do this without him. She turns to Malcolm and assures him that she won’t forget the things he has done, and he says that’s fair. Merlyn tells the Queen siblings that if they have any hope of beating Ra’s al Ghul, they will first have to conquer their fears. And he knows just where to start.

Oliver tells Team Arrow that he’s leaving again, this time with warning, and this time only for a few days. Felicity doesn’t love the idea. But it’s for Thea. Besides, Oliver knows now that the Arrowless Team Arrow still functions pretty damn efficiently. The city is safe in their hands. He makes it clear that he’s including Laurel in this declaration of approval, and she appreciates it. (Though even if she did want to say something snarky like, “No shit, Sherlock,” she is plum out of energy, physical and emotional.)

Arrowless Team Arrow: Reassemble!

Cut to Oliver leading Thea on a hike that she is already 1000% over only two hours in. Oliver tells her she better get used to it, because this place will be their home for a few days. They look out over the view and Oliver says, “Everything the light touches is a place where I almost died.”

Oliver took her to the island. We’re going back to Lian Yu.

What did you think of “Canaries”? Did you love seeing Caity Lotz as much as I did, even if it was just a hallucination?

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