‘Arrow’ Recap: Thea’s Aggressive Condition Worsens

Despite their protests, Jessica makes her announcement so the Green Arrow and Speedy vow to protect her. And while new characters from the DC Comics universe continue to be folded into the story, the prize for weirdest reference in this episode is a toss-up among Oliver’s wig, the Love Fern, and a possible Stanley Tucci reference. She’s taking things too far, and showed it yet again tonight by setting Anarky, one of the latest villains to surface in Star City, on fire. It’s sweet that Laurel would do anything for her sister (that scene of Sara’s desiccated corpse though…) but I’m more interested in the logistics of the plan at this point than anything else. We also get to meet a family friend of Oliver and Thea’s Jessica Danforth played by Jeri Ryan who plans to run for mayor of Star City. This is throwing him into the spotlight like never before, and we have to say that it puts both him and Damien Darhk on quite the collision course.

Oliver kills the guard who attacked him when he landed and receives orders to infiltrate. Can’t say we’ll miss that.

During Felicity’s next day at Palmer Tech, she has to fire a whole new mess of people. Felicity Smoak says she wants a code name, but she’s able to halt the chatter long enough for Green Arrow to defuse a bomb on-site. Continuing her trend of bad decisions, she reveals to Oliver that she allowed her daughter, Madison (Tiera Skovbye) to go to the library. Oliver wasn’t happy when he discovered that Felicity had been working with Team Arrow behind his back and Diggle (David Ramsey) wasn’t happy to have Oliver back as part of the team. He pitches Felicity an algorithm that will help downsizing. When Oliver Queen foils that attempt, Anarky opts to take young Madison instead. As you can imagine, Lance isn’t real thrilled that Ollie chose to stick around, and he wonders what will be different this time. Not only does Oliver Queen have to deal with the threat of Damien Darhk, he faced a new enemy this week in the form of Anarky (Alexander Calvert). Exactly how that was going to come about was a mystery, until Laurel echoed Oliver’s sentiment about doing whatever it takes to save his sister. And with Anarky’s violent escape from his police and medical escorts, I have to say that I side more with Thea. Lonnie electrocutes Thea from behind and ends up fighting with Oliver, zapping him as well. As it turns out, it’s one of the last things that Deadshot (Michael Rowe) told him about the assassination of his brother.

But Oliver takes what Quentin has to say at heart, as well as Danforth’s reasoning for originally running for mayor. She and Thea dig up Sara’s grave and Laurel opens it in a nightmare-inducing sequence.

Jessica holds a press conference asking the kidnapper to let her daughter go. He gives Lance the location of Madison, saying that it wasn’t his kidnapping but that Lance had better watch his tone.

At Palmer Tech, Felicity stuns the board by telling them she’s brought all the fired people back.

Ollie pays Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne) a visit at the police station.

Thea and Oliver take a picture of Lonnie down to the paper mill and question people about whether they’ve seen him. The board gives them six months to dazzle them at the next shareholders’ meeting, and Felicity tells Curtis that she’s betting he really does have an awesome idea. He’s offered the job of the soldier he killed. She assures Oliver that she can handle taking down Machin. The highlight of Anarky’s involvement in this episode was the 2-on-1 fight featuring Green Arrow, Red Arrow, and Anarky himself.

Laurel offers to take Thea out of town for a spa vacation – but that’s a front for going to Nanda Parbat to get help from the League. So he’s got it: he’s going to run for mayor! Thea is so not buying it but then again it could just be because she is already insane.