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Arrow Review – The Brave and the Bold – Season 3, Episode 8

By Nick Tylwalk

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Things are different in Starling City. Barry Allen is going to find that out in person tonight, though with Captain Boomerang looming, Arrow is probably going to be happy to have the Flash to help out.

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Yep, it’s the second part of the crossover that made fanboys and fangirls gleeful last night when it started on The Flash. Even better, this episode of Arrow is titled “The Brave and the Bold,” a name with a rich tradition of DC hero team-ups.

Can two very different approaches to being a super hero find some common ground? I’m pretty sure we already know the answer, but let’s find out!

Not So Quick Summary: Arrow, Arsenal and Diggle take position outside a home supposedly owned by the boomerang killer. They get their confirmation when Arrow sees that both doors are booby-trapped. Arrows fired at a safe distance allow them to set the bombs off and enter, but the killer just left. Some guys in riot gear draw guns on our heroes, but they aren’t cops — they’re A.R.G.U.S. agents. Arrow is told to let it go because it’s an internal matter, but when Arsenal asks if they’re really going to do that, he gets a sarcastic reply.

At the Arrow Lair, Oliver asks Diggle if Lyla can help with some leads. When Diggle quips that Ollie doesn’t seem to care about his marriage, Oliver responds that he would … if John and Lyla were still married. Yeah, but …

Felicity is just about to leave her day job when she gets two unexpected but familiar visitors in the form of Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon. They came to get the DNA sample they were asked about in part one of the crossover, but mostly so they can see the Arrow Cave. Felicity says they never call it that, but Cisco is undeterred and inquires if they have an Arrowmobile.

When they actually get to the Lair, Roy wonders when they started charging admission to the Arrow Cave. Funny, that! Cisco has some ideas for improvements to their crime-fighting suits and also thinks red is cooler than green.

Diggle actually does ask Lyla for help, though she tries to assure him that it’s an A.R.G.U.S. matter and is under control. The appearance of the boomerang killer and his effortless defeat of the building security detail say otherwise. Diggle and Lyla engage him with guns, and Arrow and Arsenal arrive just in time to help. The battle is on, and the villain is just as good at hand-to-hand combat with his boomerangs as he is at a distance. He gets off two last throws while fleeing, but the Flash (who zipped by a surprised Thea Queen on his way there) catches them both.

Lyla tells the heroes that the man’s name is Digger Harkness, and that he was a former member of the Suicide Squad. Unfortunately, his team had a mission go bad, and Lyla gave an order to “sanitize” all of them. The micro-bomb implanted in Digger must have been defective for him to be alive. Yeah, that would be fuel for a grudge. Oliver says there’s only one place they can keep Lyla safe …

Barry is already there, doing Oliver’s signature workout at super speed and not seeing why it’s so difficult. Felicity warns that Oliver doesn’t play well with others, but Cisco can only think how cool it was when they kicked butt together, saying they “were in a league of their own.” Barry briefly leaves to get sushi, returning to find that Diggle didn’t tell Lyla about him and his secret identity. Oops! Ollie pulls him aside for a brief talk, saying that if they’re going to team up again, they do it his way.

They need to reassemble the pieces of the boomerangs Harkness used in his attack, which Barry is happy to do at super-speed. The brains in the group are able to track the tech used in them to a Klaus Marcos, a man Captain Lance once arrested.

At the police station (where Lance thinks Barry is Bart Allen!), they find that Marcos was arrested for identity theft, working for the Russian mob. As luck would have it, Oliver used to be a member. Flash gets to the supposed location of Harkness eight seconds early, enough time to defeat and tie up all the henchmen there. As for Marcos himself, Arrow questions him by shooting him in the shoulder and then threatening to rip the arrow out, which horrifies Flash. Barry drops Marcos off at the police station and returns to have a philosophical discussion about interrogation tactics. Ollie, of course, says he deals with too much darkness in Starling City to not resort to extreme methods. He’s also seen his best friend and mother murdered, but Barry retorts that his mom was killed in front of him too. Oliver snaps that he’s not as emotionally healthy as his friend.

Back at the Arrow Cave (hey, if they’re calling it that, I am too), Lyla asks if everything is alright between Arrow and Speedy. Oliver thinks she means Roy, but she’s referring to Barry. She has some advice, just like everyone on this show. And Felicity has a location, found by hacking an A.R.G.U.S. satellite, much to Lyla’s chagrin.

On the ride there, Cisco, Roy and Diggle have a talk about the nature of super powers. Diggle is still freaked out by them, but Cisco says that crazies like Harkness were around before metahumans, and maybe powers have arisen to protect normal people from them. Plus they’re just super cool!

Flash and Arrow takes out more thugs, but Harkness isn’t there. That’s bad. What’s even worse is that he traced the phone they took from Marcos to find the Arrow Cave, and only the ladies are still there. Lyla tries holding him off with a gun, but Harkness nails her in the chest with a boomerang. Caitlin and Felicity are able to stabilize her, and Flash zips her to the nearest hospital.

While they wait for news, Roy, Felicity, Cisco and Caitlin hang at an upstairs table at Verdant. The S.T.A.R. Labs duo admits that they haven’t been taking the super hero game so seriously, possibly because Flash’s foes have powers that make what they do not seem real. Meanwhile, Oliver is doing what he does best: beating himself up, saying that none of this would have happened if he hadn’t tortured Marcos for information. He says every time he uses extreme measures, he feels like he’s trading away pieces of Oliver Queen, and that only the Arrow remains. Barry disagrees, figuring that only his humanity and light have been able to help him get through everything he’s experienced. Oh, and Felicity has found Harkness, because that’s what she does.

Digger is at a train station, and Flash clears the place of innocent bystanders before they confront him. There’s nowhere he can run that they won’t find him, but Harkness has a contingency plan: five bombs placed around Starling City, set to go off in 90 seconds. Flash goes to find them, as Felicity and Cisco think they can locate them by the frequencies needed to set them off, or something like that.

Arrow quickly defeats Boomerang, nailing him to a wall with a restraining arrow. Flash quickly locates the first bomb, but there’s another catch. The bombs are linked and need to be disabled at exactly the same time. Flash says he isn’t Multiplex and can’t be in five places at once … but he also doesn’t have to be. He rushes Caitlin, Felicity, Cisco and Roy to the other four bombs, and Cisco coordinates it so they all cut the right wires at once.

In the meantime, Harkness has been taunting Arrow to torture him if he wants the bombs stopped. You can see the hamster turning the wheel to consider it, but the time passes and no bombs explode. Was that a moral decision, or just trust in his friends? Arrow says it means he has some humanity left. As Cisco says, “Screw you Captain Boomerang.” Harkness tries to get off one last throw, but Arrow turns and fires an arrow through his hand, trapping it against the wall.

Diggle visits Lyla in the hospital and asks her to marry him again, possibly to stop the running jokes throughout the episode about how they aren’t married. The two teams prepare to say goodbye in the Arrow Cave, with Oliver revealing that Boomerang is now cellmates with Deathstroke. They also exchange gifts: Barry gets his own mannequin for his Flash suit for next time they team up (Ollie says he’s still calling the shots), and Oliver gets a redesigned costume from Cisco that is lighter and can hold more gear. But before they leave, there’s still one more thing they have to do. You’re not going to punch each other, are you?

In a large, empty warehouse, the two heroes decide it’s time to find out who would win. Barry reminds Ollie that it’s literally like he’s standing still when they fight, but Oliver figures he has an edge in tactical awareness. Before they go at it, Barry says that his friend was wrong. He can inspire people, but as Oliver Queen, not the Arrow. The episode ends with Arrow firing off shafts as fast as he can with Flash catching them on his way in. Guess we’ll all have to decide who wins for ourselves!

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong: Amanda Waller wants Oliver to “question” about a man named Chang concerning a bomb somewhere in the city. To aid in his efforts, she gives him his bow and arrows, which she claims A.R.G.U.S. found when they found him.

Chang realizes that Ollie has never tortured anyone before and taunts him about not having the stomach to inflict pain, which is actually harder than killing (side note: I’ve hurt people before but never killed anyone, so I don’t know about that). Oliver hesitates and sees the bomb explode in the distance.

At the bomb site, Waller chastises Ollie for not torturing the man, claiming they need to use extreme methods when necessary. Later, she presents a man who works for China White and offers Oliver a “stab at redemption.” Wait, did Waller just make a funny?

Favorite moment: Too many to choose from tonight. Cisco was in rare form, and the mentions of both Speedy and Impulse were great. And of course the fact that Arrow and Flash felt the need to settle their battle for their own satisfaction. We’ll call this a multi-way tie.

Final thought: Pretty much all you could have hoped for from a crossover, including the heroes both teaching each other something and the fact that both support teams got to experience each other’s worlds. I guess the only thing you’d ask for in the future is a villain who could challenge Flash and Arrow, though Captain Boomerang is important to both the Rogues and the Suicide Squad, so he made sense here. Let’s do this again next season!

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