DJ Watches: Arrow Season Five: Episode Six: So It Begins
This week, we find Green Arrow and Spartan, overseen by Overwatch, in an abandoned warehouse in the bowels of Star City on the hunt for the mysterious Prometheus. Apparently, if you murder half a dozen officers and the criminal they were carrying in the middle of a highway, people tend to pay attention, and if that was the intent it certainly worked like a charm. Ollie, Dig, and Felicity, notably without the new recruits, discuss exactly what the masked man might want as they track the departed Church’s cell phone to this location, and for their trouble receive a somewhat theatrical, if foreboding message in flames – SO IT BEGINS. </titledrop>
Back at HQ, the newbies are rightfully annoyed that they’re being left out of the loop, to which the original trio reply…nothing, blockading them and pretty much doing the equivalent of “We’ll tell you when you’re older.” During his day job, Oliver however is a little more forthcoming, making a point of inviting that nosy, pesky reporter from the last few episodes for an official sit down interview. While Thea is watching from the side, Quentin is noticeably late as he comes in, and rightfully the Chief of Staff questions him on his whereabouts. Lance insists he was stuck in traffic and it’s nothing more, though Thea seems unconvinced, just as the reporter flirts with Oliver despite the tasty new evidence she has on him from last time. Thankfully, we don’t have to stomach that anymore, as Prometheus appears before…a single divorced mother cleaning up after her child, whom he murders in cold blood with a throwing star.
Huh.
A bit later, as DA Chase and forensics are looking over the crime scene, Green Arrow sorta just casually strolls in through the front door much to everyone’s surprise – presumably at the fact that he came through the door and not the window, or didn’t just mysteriously appear from a dark corner. The DA has seen this sort of thing before, it seems, as he asks the rest of the crew to clear out for a few minutes to have a discussion with the vigilante. Having a tense but fairly calm conversation, they weigh out what’s known – this murder seems to be completely random, and it was done with the throwing star, and it was by a man calling himself Prometheus. They’re barely finished before Chase gets a call confirming that there was yet another random murder, this time of a random taxi driver, again, with a throwing star and for seemingly no reason. Felicity doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere on this information alone, and so Oliver asks her if there’s anything else she can do….and ala, there is. So off to SCPD Ms. Smoak goes, to her cop boyfriend Matt, and while being (indirectly) direct doesn’t do any good and in fact just gets the guy a little suspicious, Felicity just opts for outright theft of evidence and takes the throwing star carelessly left on the desk with her to examine.
Just in time, it seems, as our nosey reporter has her ears in apparently everything, as she breaks the story of the throwing star murderer on the news. As things go in Star City, the public doesn’t take it well, as almost immediately, panic sinks in to the local outdoor market, and boy does it set in. A seemingly quiet night out shopping has turned into a frenzy, with people running around for no good reason, several men with firearms shooting blindly in the air, and more then a few overturned cars on fire. Look guys, I know weird stuff has happened in this city, but we shouldn’t be ready to start going into full riot mode at the drop of the hat like this. With the full team in to, Green Arrow arrives and split up to quell to panic, ushering everyone to safety and -ahem- gently calming the gun toting members of the crowd down a little. After all is said and done, the team is still a little miffed by being left out of the task of finding Prometheus, especially now that the cat is out of the bag, which of course means this is the perfect time for another issue of distrust to pop up. Having failed to find any link between the now three murders, Felicity and Curtis turned to completely nut job random connections, and bingo, one pops up. Taken together, the three victims names are all anagrams of people from “The List,” from way back in Season One. Ollie, naturally, has a somewhat awkward time explaining how, when he started off as The Hood, he went around horribly murdering people all because they were in his Father’s little book of names of people involved in the Undertaking, and that was good enough for him. Evelyn points out that a lot of these people were just regular, albeit corrupt, people with typical jobs, and calls him out for trying to impart lessons of control on them despite his beginnings as a murderous lunatic.
Ollie has no real response to this, and after the recruits leave to think things over, admits to Dig that sometimes he still wonders if he really has any right doing what he’s doing. John, for his part, give shim a small comfort in pointing out that the man standing now is a completely different one then the one who used that book as a tool and excuse. The recruits all gather in Rorie’s workshop and discuss what their plans are, and acknowledge that this I just another case of secrets being hidden from them by Oliver. Still, when the call comes, they answer and arrive at HQ, where Felicity has gone through the book and found six potential victims from using anagrams of all the names. Still uneasy, they still suit up and split up to oversee the different targets. Artemis pulls the short straw as her mark, a subway driver, is the lucky one chosen by Prometheus, and she does her best to defend the target, and while she manages to wound him on the arm, she is still overpowered by the masked criminal. Oliver fortunately is close enough and intervenes, stopping Prometheus from carrying out his murder. The villain, however, isn’t interested in yet confronting the Green Arrow, and escapes, but not before leaving a bomb in the pilot seat. With no time left, Ollie uses the trusty parachute arrow and leaps himself, Artemis, and the target out to safety just as the train explodes behind them. Throughout all of this, Thea, still suspicious, searches through Quentin’s office and discovers a bottle of alcohol, and after finding him at home in a drunken stupor, the deputy mayor admits he’s been lying and never quit drinking. Thea responds with disappointment, but takes him to an AA meeting all the same.
Oliver admits to everyone, especially Evelyn, that perhaps keeping everyone out of the loop like that was not in anyone’s best interest and reconciles, assuring all that while he’s not perfect, he’s still not the same person who had the kill list five years ago. Jumping on the truth train, Felicity returns the star to Matt and admits that her second job is her working for the Green Arrow. Matt….is actually intrigued and seems to fan boy out a little bit, which is a happy surprise to Felicity. A less happy revelation, however, is what she was able to find from said throwing star – it seems like it was made from all the arrows Ollie’s been using, melted down and re-forged into these weapons, which suggests that Prometheus is a person with access to SCPD evidence.
A member of the SCPD. And a former member of the SCPD, Quentin Lance, finds himself awakening from a blackout, with a bloody scar on his forearms from a mysterious throwing dagger.
In flashback land, Ollie learns how to make a bomb, tries to use said bombs on a casino, and gets kidnapped by and meets with Kovar, the man he promised he would kill. Kovar, it turns out, is Ivan Drago.
So another all right episode of the show, where quite a bit happens, and while this whole cycle of Ollie being a jackass to the team, getting called out on it by the team, and it getting resolved by the end of the episode after everyone’s learned their lesson is getting old now, at least it’s happening with different facets of his old dick-ish ways. It can take some time to change, I suppose, so it’s still some sort of progress being logged, as opposed to last year where in the same span of time (and longer) everyone sorta just spent the time walking in circles and getting nothing accomplished. The team is starting to come along pretty well now, matters of secrecy and compartmentalizing aside, and while this is expected in a serialized, show, considering where this show was last year it’s a nice change of pace into competency this season so far in that the plot and characters are actually getting somewhere and progressing.
Bringing back “The List” and having it bite Ollie in the ass was a good touch and I always wondered if it would ever come back up again. It’s also a pretty good example of how this show has grown in the last five years, even taking into account all of the missteps and problems along the way. Oliver has gone from just a murderous psychopath bent on vengeance into trying to be a hero, and while killing isn’t off the table anymore, it’s still mostly a last resort despite his misgivings about it. It looks like this won’t just be a one and done thing, since the tissue has already come up a few times this season. Dare I hope it be a recurring theme that gets resolved after actually taking into account whatever experiences he has this year? We’ll see.
I’m a little disappointed that Quentin was never even on the wagon after all,. Though Thea taking him to the meeting should hopefully be a sign that there’ll be more to this instead of him just being an utter failure. Sure, people have to want to be saved, but I don’t think this set of writers are good or smart enough to elegantly and properly write the story of a man who succumbs to his demons and ends poorly, not on a CW show, and especially not for a character who’s a good guy in the universe. Prometheus I’m still iffy on, though I’ll say this, just to kick Tobias Church’s corpse in the side one more time, in one single full episode he’s already a more believable and intimidating threat then Church ever was. I was also pleasantly surprised by Dolph Lundgren appearing as Kovar in flashback land, and for once I’m looking forward to seeing more.
Now, we wait. With sweeps coming up soon, I have to wonder if they’ll try to tie a bow on things before that big crossover, or just have everything bleed into everybody and go that way. I especially wonder if they’ll ever mention how Laurel’s evil Earth 2 self is locked up in STAR Labs’ basement, but I’m not holding my breath.