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Arrow Season 3, Episode 14 Recap: The Return

By Nick Tylwalk

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I have to admit, I was kind of hoping we’d left Lian Yu behind forever after Season 2 of Arrow. It served its purpose, but it was time to move on.

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Still, once Slade Wilson ended up imprisoned there, it was probably inevitable that we’d head back at some point. Tonight, Oliver and Thea Queen try to find themselves on the island, but you know Deathstroke is going to be a factor. Let’s check out “The Return.”

On-the-Mark Recap: On Lian Yu, the Queen siblings do some stickfighting training. You know, the usual brother-sister stuff. Oliver is impressed with how much Thea has learned in nine months. As they eat that night, Thea asks if it’s weird being back on the island. She also thinks it’s cool that there are no more secrets between them. Was that foreshadowing? I kind of think it was.

As he sleeps, Oliver is repeating Sara’s name. Thea wakes him and asks why he never told her that Sara was dead. The billion-dollar question follows: was it the League of Assassins that killed her? Stuck for something to say, Oliver takes a walk to clear his head.

That walk leads him to go down and check on Slade’s cell. Naturally, Wilson is gone, the body on his cot replaced by one of the (now dead) guards and the vows that Deathstroke made about escaping and killing Oliver’s loved ones echo in his head.

Rushing back to Thea, Oliver is relieved to find her okay. His satellite phone rings, and it’s Malcolm Merlyn on the line. Guess who let Slade out? Merlyn says Oliver needs to regain his killer instinct, so yeah, he did it as a twisted lesson of some sort. Oh, and forget calling for help, because he’s deactivating the phone after this call. The siblings head for Oliver’s dad’s grave, where he digs up a weapon for Thea. He also notices that Slade has been there … but it’s too late, because he jumps out and ambushed the Queens.

Fortunately, Slade has no plans to kill the Queens, as he’d rather make it seem like they died and leave them there to rot. He locks them in his old cell and goes on a semi-rant about how Oliver loves his secrets and is still keeping some from Thea. Wilson suggests that if he had told the truth about Shado, their mom would still be alive, and he heads off, smirking and saying, “Welcome home, kid.”

Panicked, Thea asks if anyone else is there that could help them, but Oliver says only one other inmate is there, and he won’t be helpful. Thea asks about those secrets, pressing hard about Sara’s death. However, she inadvertently gives him an idea on how to escape, as he realizes the cells aren’t made for girls Thea’s size. Ah, but his plan requires him to dislocate her arm so she can reach the release button. Ouch!

They need to head back to the plane that they used to get there, figuring Slade was told about it. Along the way, Oliver barely saves Thea from one of the booby traps he set years ago, though he takes a spike in the shoulder in the process. Thea convinces him to take a break because of his wound, but because she just can’t let it go, she bugs him about Sara (AGAIN!). With little choice, he tells her the truth: that under the influence of a drug given to her by Malcolm, she killed Sara. She doesn’t take that news well.

Oliver tries convincing his sister that it wasn’t her fault, but that gives Slade a chance to sneak up on them again with a gun. The thing is, Thea is a lot more capable now, and she frees herself, and we’ve got ourselves a 2-on-1 handicap match. Just when Oliver looks like he’s going to lose, Thea clobbers Slade from behind and retrieves his gun.

She’s got her mother’s killer at gunpoint, and despite Oliver’s pleas that she shouldn’t become a killer, we fade to black and hear a single gunshot …

It’s just a flesh wound, and not the kind like from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Slade is back in his cell, but he notes that he can see the darkness in Thea’s eyes. He wonders aloud about Felicity Smoak and muses about how many people Oliver Queen can lose before there is no more Oliver Queen.

Back in Starling City, Laurel finds her dad at Sara’s grave. He’s torn up and thinking about crawling back into the bottle, but not because one of his daughters is dead. No, he’s hurt because Laurel broke the bond they had between the two of them. When Laurel suggests they attend an AA meeting, he says he’ll go to one if she goes to a different one. After her dad leaves, Laurel gets out a bottle of booze, but decides to pour it out instead of drinking it.

The Queens return home, and they really need to get a better security system, because Malcolm is already there. As you might expect, Thea goes off on him, not accepting his explanation that he made her kill Sara because he cares about her. And really, that is kind of hard to believe. Though Malcolm says Oliver should not have told her the truth, Thea says that she will be Merlyn’s student, partner and even soldier if need be, but she will never again be his daughter. A furious Merlyn turns so he and Ollie can have the obligatory staredown.

Meanwhile, in Starling City, in the past: Waller fills in Oliver and Maseo on why they are still alive and in Starling City. China White is in town, looking to sell the Omega to the highest bidder. Her contact is a man named Peter Wang, who Ollie recognizes as an employee of Queen Consolidated.

After planting a tracker on Wang’s car — and after a short interlude where we see Laurel Lance try to save her dad from his losing battle with the bottle — Oliver and Maseo are on stakeout duty when he sees Thea leaving school. They follow her to Oliver’s own tombstone (kind of weird, that) and see her about to score some drugs before Tommy Merlyn breaks up the buy. They argue for a bit, with Thea remarking that Oliver seems to care about her more now that he’s dead than he did while still alive.

Oliver breaks into the Queen Consolidated computer system, stealing some data along with, perhaps, some files he takes a personal interest in. He almost gets caught by Felicity Smoak, who looks at a picture of Oliver and his dad and remarks that Ollie is cute, so it’s too bad that he’s dead.

Maseo tells Waller that the auction is going down in four hours, but he has a lot of data to crunch before he knows the location. Asked about Ollie’s whereabouts, Maseo covers and says he must be checking on their weapons.

He’s not, of course. Instead, he’s sneaking into Tommy’s party with a hoodie on, getting past John Diggle, who’s working security. Nice. Oliver sees Laurel and Tommy, plus his sister, followed close behind by her dealer. She buys some drugs, and Ollie just can’t leave well enough alone, confronting the dealer upstairs. That goes bad when the dealer recognizes him and pulls a knife, leading to Oliver breaking his neck and dumping him off the balcony to make it look like he fell.

Naturally, Lance ends up getting the call to investigate, and he drunkenly berates Tommy, Laureal and Thea. Maseo arrives and takes Oliver away at gunpoint while Lance says some hurtful things to his daughter about taking a corporate law gig. He says he thought she wanted to help people. That’s like reverse foreshadowing. Flashbacks make my head hurt a little. Meanwhile, Maseo chastises Oliver for risking getting his cover blown. Not even trying to hear that, Ollie says he needs to fix his city more than trying to help the innocent people who could be killed if the Alpha and Omega fall into the wrong hands, and he bids Maseo farewell.

And … he goes home! In the Queen mansion, Oliver watches a pre-recorded message from Robert, imploring him to be a better man than his father and to save the city.

China White’s auction is still going on, and a vastly outgunned Maseo is captured. Oliver shows up just in the nick of time, and the two of them are able to foil the auction, stop White and Wang from fleeing and recover the Omega.

That should be it, as far as Oliver is concerned. Waller says it’s not up to her, and her boss, a General Shrieve, walks in. The general says Ollie did a great service for his country, but he still needs to be debriefed in China. After that, and once the Omega is secured, he suggests that he’ll let Oliver go anywhere he wants.

Favorite Moment: It’s not often than Maseo gets the best line of the night — come to think of it, he never has — but he did tonight. When Oliver claims he was never in danger of being recognized because he pulled his hoodie over his face, Maseo fires back, “That disguise wouldn’t work even if you smeared grease paint on your face.” See, it shouldn’t have taken Barry Allen to suggest wearing a mask!

Final Thought: Plenty of drama, thanks to the fact that Thea learned the truth, even if it got a bit old that she basically nagged it out of Oliver. Some tension too, thanks to Slade, but overall, I felt like this was a water-treading episode before we get to the craziness that Arrow always breaks out in the last few episodes. And the next episode already looks awesome, because Ray Palmer’s ATOM suit appears to be finished. Can’t wait!

Next: Previously, on Arrow ... our recap of Canaries

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