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Arrow Recap And Review – Season 3, Episode 19: Broken Arrow

By Nick Tylwalk

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Given everything else going on in his life right now, Oliver Queen really doesn’t need to see a metahuman super villain show up in Starling City. I mean, that’s honestly the last thing he needs.

Of course, that’s what he’s getting tonight on Arrow. And given the fact that only an extremely unselfish act by Roy Harper has prevented Ollie from rotting in jail, he might not be able to fight this newcomer the way he usually would. Let’s see how Team Arrow deals with (more) adversity in “Broken Arrow.”

On-the-Mark Recap: There’s some trouble with the power at Starling National Bank. Normally, that might not be such a big deal, but considering the cause is a metahuman who can fire beams of energy from his eyes, it’s a potentially fatal problem for the two guards.

A circus in underway at the police station. Not the kind with elephants, mind you, but the media kind. Roy Harper is brought in by Captain Lance, and Oliver is already there. Laurel Lance shows up to inform her incredulous dad that despite Ollie’s confession, the office of the D.A. wants him released. Oliver questions what Laurel is doing, to which she replies that she’s simply trying to prevent them both from going to jail.

At Ray Palmer’s company, Felicity Smoak is trying to lose herself in her work. Ray tries to walk back his unrequited “I love you,” to awkward results. Meanwhile, Oliver is visiting Roy, trying to get a handle on his motivation. Roy is still feeling guilt about his killing of the cop while he was on mirakuru, and though Oliver says the city still needs him, his response is that Starling needs the Arrow more.

Someone else wants to talk to Oliver, and that someone is Malcolm Merlyn. He’s kind of in broken record mode as of late, telling Ollie that Ra’s al Ghul isn’t going to stop, and that his days as the Arrow are essentially over. He’s not trying to hear it though, saying he has a lot of work to do to break Roy out of prison.

Back at Verdant, Oliver tells Thea he didn’t put Roy up to this and that her boyfriend will not be behind bars long. Problem: there’s a bank-robbing metahuman in town. Bigger problem: Captain Lance arrives, and he’s got a warrant for the basement. Uh-oh …

… Except Diggle and Felicity have already wiped everything clean. Lance promises he’ll be there when they eventually mess up. Unfortunately, the police presence means Oliver can’t go after the metahuman as Arrow, and calling Barry Allen isn’t an option, according to Felicity. But maybe someone else can help.

Yep, we’re talking about Ray. Though it hurts Oliver to do it, he and Felicity go see if he can assist. So it’s a team-up — high five!

Thea goes to visit Roy, who doesn’t want to open up to her because he promised to never lie to her again. Kind of depressing. Getting a phone call from his sister, Ollie promises Roy won’t be in there long. Ray and Felicity figure out a way to identify the metahuman as Jake Simmons, usually a resident of Central City. Oliver makes Ray promise to run (or fly) away if he gets in over his head. That doesn’t take long. As the Atom, Ray takes an energy blast from Simmons and learns that blasting him just makes the villain stronger. Simmons wraps a chain around his neck, and he barely manages to escape with his life.

Naturally, that gets Ray a lecture from Oliver. He needs to learn not to be so reliant on his suit if he’s going to make any headway as the Atom.

At the prison, a handful of inmates decide to test Roy. He’s wounded in the ensuing fight but manages to take all of them out, reminding them that he did it without any arrows.

The crusade continues for Lance, who now has a warrant for Oliver and Thea’s loft. Even a warning from a colleague to let it go doesn’t stop him, nor does a plea from Thea. Instead, Lance tries to guilt trip her about leaving Roy to take the fall for her brother. He gets a phone call about the prison attack and uses that as a second dose of guilt.

Ray and Felicity are working on tracking Simmons when Thea runs in to inform Ollie about the assault on Roy. That makes Oliver want to spring into action, and he and Diggle end up in a shoving match when John tries to talk him out of it. Maybe Felicity will have better luck? Her theory is that Oliver is struggling because he sacrificed everything to be the Arrow, and now he can’t. His response is that he doesn’t know who he is any more, and while it looks like she’s going to express her love, she calls Ollie, “the man that I believe in.”

Lance visits Roy and throws in his two cents about how sitting in jail now doesn’t make up for killing the cop before. Elsewhere, Felicity is trying to hook up the tech needed to track Simmons when she ends up face to face with the man himself. And that’s not good.

Ray is figuring out what happened to her at the same time, and when Oliver tries calling her phone, Simmons answers instead. They need a way to combine Ray’s tech with Ollie’s instincts, and happily, Ray’s been working on a neural link that will allow the Atom suit to be controlled remotely. That works initially during the inevitable showdown, with Oliver able to batter Simmons for a while. Alas, the link gets severed in the fight and Ray ends up on his own. He fares poorly at first, but can a pep talk from Oliver help him dig down deep and beat the bad guy? You better believe it. All we needed there was the soundtrack to turn to this:

We don’t get to savor that victory for long, as we head to prison to see Roy wary of being stabbed by a fellow prisoner. Imagine his surprise when he’s stabbed by a guard instead. Oliver returns home to find a distraught Thea, and Lance gives him the bad news that Roy has been killed.

Oliver is in the dark in the Arrow Cave when Diggle and Felicity drop in. They ask him for forgiveness, not for talking him out of saving Roy, but for … hey, Roy is still alive! A flashback shows up that they cooked up a plan earlier, and one of Diggle’s A.R.G.U.S. contacts helped pull it off, stabbing Roy in exactly the right place and coating the blade with a beta blocker so his heart slowed enough that he appeared dead. Well, that’s good! But now that the Arrow is dead, what happens to Roy Harper?

He leaves town, that’s what, starting a new life somewhere else. Everyone says their goodbyes, and Felicity tells Oliver he needs to learn to let people help him. And did Ray see something in that conversation that’s a sign that her heart belongs to Ollie? Hmm …

Simmons gets locked in the Pipeline (from The Flash), where Ray and Cisco Ramon dub him Deathbolt. One thing, though: Simmons wasn’t in Central City on the night of the particle accelerator incident. So how is he a meta?

Time for one last scene. Thea is trying to have a glass of wine when she turns and sees Ra’s al Ghul is (literally) in the house. She tells the Demon’s Head that her brother will never accept his offer, but he insists Oliver will beg him to take his place. Bravely, she tries fighting Ra’s, but all that gets her is thrown through a glass table and a blade through the chest. Agh.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong: Oliver, Maseo and Tatsu try to come up with a plan. There doesn’t seem to be a way out of Hong Kong, so Ollie figures he’ll go find Amanda Waller first.

Only he could never have expected what he’d find. Waller has been held captive by the men of General Shrieve, or so it seems. She informs Ollie that the General is going to unleash the Alpha-Omega on China, and that the army has a vaccine to protect their own people. Her advice is to run as fast as he can.

The thing is, Maseo says the General has more resources than Waller, so running is out. How about they steal some of the vaccine instead?

They manage to do just that, with Oliver also taking a phone in the process. He tells the family to leave the city while he uses the plans on the phone to stop the weapon from being unleashes, but Tatsu insists that she and her husband will help because it will mean saving millions on innocents. After all, Oliver needs to learn to let people help him.

Favorite Moment: Believe it or not, Oliver made a funny tonight! After Ray makes a crack about how when he talks about the Atom, he’s referring to the suit and not talking about himself in the third person, Ollie leans to Felicity and mutters, “There’s a decent chance you and Palmer are related.” Ha!

Final Thought: I could say I didn’t see that coming, and really, I can’t remember a show that acted like it was killing one character off only to fake that death and hit us with another. The previews for next week sure make it seem like the Lazarus Pit will be involved, but Thea’s death, even if temporary, is probably going to be the straw that breaks Oliver’s back, figuratively speaking. Should I get used to calling him Ra’s al Ghul in my recaps?

Next: Previously, on Arrow: our recap of Public Enemy

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