There are so many things I loved about this episode. Curtis is my new hero, for one. Serious, badass Donna Smoak is probably my favorite kind of Donna Smoak. Felicity being awesome. You know, the usual things that make me love this show and not throw something at the TV.
Because tonight, ARROW proved that its title hero simply cannot learn a lesson, even if we hit him over the head with it. And it doesn’t stop there. Oliver is not the only Queen who endorses lies, because Thea’s first reaction to finding out her brother has a secret son is to tell him he is doing the right thing. I mean, what?! No. Just… no.
But let’s all take a deep breath and recap what happened in tonight’s most apropriately titled “Code of Silence”.
Oliver’s mayoral campaign is underway and, now that he has Damien Dahrk’s wife running against him, there is going to be a debate. Thea is the one running the whole thing and the girl is the boss when it comes to organizing a campaign. She has Oliver at the right place, at the right time, saying the right things. That’s how she finds out that, once upon a time, Moira Queen wrote a million-dollar check to a Samantha Clayton; but the funny thing is, that check was never cashed. Oliver denies knowing anything about it, but of course Thea is not going to let it go. But more about that in a second.
Meanwhile, Malcolm is now officially working for Dahrk and we get to see him sitting in a conference call of some kind, in which a member asks Damien what he is going to do about Captain Lance, now that they know he is working for the vigilante. Dahrk assures everyone that it’s all under control and that Lance’s loose end is being dealt with – which skyrockets his chances of being the one in the grave. Or Laurel, if what happened next is any indication.
Quentin gets a bogus call about a B&E and Laurel, luckily, decides to tag along. When he goes into the building to investigate, it becomes crystal clear he has just walked into a trap and the whole place starts falling apart. Laurel manages to find him and get him out of there just in time, before the whole building collapses.
So, Felicity being her awesome, badass self, tracks down where the call came from and identifies one of HIVE’s bases of operation. Team Arrow storms the place, but the ghosts implement the same protocol they used on Lance and the whole thing collapses, with Thea barely making outside with HIVE’s laptop.
Felicity asks Curtis to try to recover the banged up device (one of the ghosts went a little trigger happy with a nail gun) and that’s when she finds out he is planning a surprise engagement gift for her. And what a gift that was, as we later found out. So the plan for the debate continues as planned, but Curtis gets back to Felicity about the laptop and says he recovered blueprints of some sort and sends it over to her. Turns out the ghosts were going to take down the building the debate was going to happen, but Team Arrow manages to stop them and everything goes well and Oliver does fantastic and everyone is happy.
However, no one is happier than Felicity because Curtis Holt is our new hero. The surprise he has for her is a bio-stimulant that can be implanted in her spine. So she can walk again. And then walk down the aisle on her wedding day.
Curtis. Curtis, you sweet, sweet man. You made me cry. This has got to be the best present in the history of television ever.
But let’s talk about what really matters is this episode, shall we?
Oliver Queen is a lying bastard and Thea is completely stupid to encourage him in this ridiculous notion that he is doing the right thing. “Code of Silence” could not be any more obvious in the foreshadowing if they tried, because they were basically hitting us over the head with it. The theme of the episode was secrets – from Lance keeping a secret from Donna to Oliver’s completely delusional idea that everything is going to be okay.
For a moment there, I thought he was finally going to see the light, but then… Seriously, I just want to shake Thea really hard and yell at her, what the hell were you thinking?! Because, when Oliver finally comes clean to her about William and explains the contrived and convoluted situation, she says she completely understands and that he is doing it out of love. I mean, what? NO.
I don’t care if this was TPTB trying to force down our throats that this stupid storyline has a point, because it doesn’t. It sucked in the crossover and now it’s even worse, because they raised the stakes so high and the fallout is going to be so big, that I don’t know how they are going to crawl out of that hole they have dug themselves into. Now they are engaged, Oliver has kept this a secret for months and he wouldn’t even tell her if Dahrk hadn’t kidnapped William.
Oh yeah, Damien Dahrk has William. We all saw that coming, right? And now Oliver’s big, ugly secret is going to come out in the worst possible way next week. Sigh.
Why, why are you doing this to us, TPTB? Why?
Don’t miss the next episode of ARROW on Wednesday, February 24 at 8/7c on The CW.