My head is still spinning.
So much happened in tonight’s ARROW that I don’t even know where to begin. “Unchained” not only brought back quite a few important characters, but introduced a new villain, that happens to be closer to our Felicity than we could have ever imagined.
It all started when the team was chasing a burglar that had been stealing tech components. During the chase, Thea manages to corner him, but suddenly passes out and nearly falls off a building. Oliver arrives just in time to catch her, but it’s pretty clear that something is not right with his sister. She is weak and it seems that the Lazarus Pit’s lasting side effects are making their presence known again. The booster that she had gotten when Damien Dahrk tried to use his fatal magic touch on her is wearing off, and she needs to kill again. Malcolm explains that the pit has given her life, so she needs to take a life in order to balance things out. Except she doesn’t want to kill anyone and that decision is costing her her life.
As Thea gets weaker, the burglar strikes again, but this time, Oliver manages to catch him for a moment. To his absolute surprise, he suddenly finds himself staring shocked at Roy Harper, who just looks at him like he’s never seen him before and punches him in the face, before making a run for it.
Oliver returns to the lair and tells the team what he has just seen, which prompts the first of many awesome Felicity’s one liners: “Whose shocking return should we expect next?”. Our IT queen was on fire tonight and I’ve got a whole list of some of her great lines. While they are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that Roy is apparently stealing tech stuff for no reason, Oliver gets a call from Alex and finds out that none other than Damien Dahrk’s wife, Ruvé Adams, is running against him for mayor.
Instead of seeing this as an immediate problem, he sees it as an opportunity to try and save his sister. So, as the Green Arrow, he corners Adams, asking for a meeting with Dahrk. She obviously laughs in his face, but agrees to pass the message along. Oliver is part relieved and part terrified that he is making a big mistake, but this is the only way to save Thea, so he is all for it.
While he is trying to get a meeting with a crazy villain, his other half has figured out what it is that Roy is after and it looks like he is stealing components to build a web nuke – something that would have the effect of a nuclear bomb, but it would destroy all of the internet. And that would just really suck because, as Overwatch herself said, “I love the internet!”. So Felicity figures out what the last component is and it just happens to be at Palmer Tech with Curtis. And I have to say, guys, Mr. Terrific is a serious badass, but Roy is obviously better and kicks his ass. Before he can escape, however, Team Arrow arrives and tries to make him stand down. When he doesn’t, Felicity notices something and tells Oliver to knock him out with an arrow and bring him back to the lair.
When Roy comes to, Felicity has already removed a device from his eye, saying that was some serious tech that she had never seen before. Arsenal, then, explains that he got made. A guy threatened to expose he was alive if he didn’t steal the stuff he needed. He even implanted some kind of tech in his eye with a camera so his every move was monitored. And Roy went along with it because if it got out that he was alive, the suspicion would once again fall on Oliver, and he couldn’t let that happen. Oliver is really touched, even though he feels guilty for putting Roy in this situation.
Felicity is dealing with a lot in this episode. She has a big presentation coming up and, when she does a dry run of it to one of the board members, he basically tells her she sucks and that they should have someone else do the presentation. That crushes her, but she concedes, feeling overwhelmed and inadequate for being in a wheelchair. It is only when she goes to Palmer Tech to retrieve a piece of tech that would allow her to infiltrate the web nuke guy’s system, that Curtis – as always – becomes her personal cheerleader. This scene was so touching and it just made me smile so big. Emily Bett Rickards has mad chemistry with Echo Kellum and every scene with these two is always entertaining.
So the IT queen returns to the lair with her confidence restored and tech in hand to crash this dude’s system. The Calculator, as he calls himself, is very surprised that someone got through his security system and what follows is just an all around funny and entertaining back and forth between the Calculator and Overwatch. They soon find out that his evil plan is not to destroy the internet – because that would be very tragic – but to kill everyone in Star City. It’s an evil, evil plan anyway.
In the end, after a near-miss, Roy manages to save the day and Felicity bests the Calculator in their virtual war; or as she said herself: “I believe the technical term is that I pwned you!” and that she did. She also pwned that presentation hard and Oliver and Curtis were both super proud of her. To our surprise (and Felicity’s), her dad shows up and he just happens to be the Caculator himself, even though Felicity doesn’t know that. Now, my question is, does he know that his own daughter was the one who bested him?
Daddy drama aside, all is not well in the Queen household, because Thea takes a sudden turn for the worst. She shares an emotional goodbye scene with Roy and, when Oliver hears from Malcolm, Thea is in the hospital in a coma and the odds do not seem to be in her favor. But then Nyssa shows up and all her scenes throughout the episode finally made sense. Because she has what could be a cure for Thea in her hands, but she will only hand it over if Oliver kills Malcolm Merlyn.
So yeah, good luck with that, Ollie.
A new episode of ARROW airs on February 10 at 8/7c on The CW.