Violet recaps Season 2 Episode 16 of Arrow, titled Suicide Squad, where ARGUS sends Diggle in with the Suicide Squad, which is made up of Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, and Shrapnel, to extract a deadly nerve agent, and Oliver tries to track down Slade! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts on the episode.
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Episode Recap of Arrow, Season 2 Episode 17: Suicide Squad
- Oliver visits Alexi to ask the Russian Brotherhood to find Slade for him. Oliver tells Sara he plans to kill Slade when he finds him. Diggle is on watch for Slade outside Felicity’s house, but she sends him away. He then meets up with Lyla in a hotel room. In a flashback to 6 years ago to when Digg and Lyla were in the army together, Lyla apprehends Gholem Qadir, a druglord and arms dealer, which impresses Diggle.
- Upon leaving the hotel, Amanda brings both Lyla and Diggle in for duty at ARGUS. She reveals that Gholem Qadir is out, and now has a dangerous nerve agent. However, Diggle’s job isn’t to get the nerve agent out, but to get a task force in, better known as the Suicide Squad, which is made up of Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, and Shrapnel. Diggle isn’t very happy about that.
- When Arrow goes to take care of a robbery in progress, Deathstroke leaves behind a mask with an arrow through the eye. Meanwhile, the Suicide Squad and ARGUS begin their operation in Markovia. In a flashback, the apprehended Qadir tries to bribe Diggle, but just then their platoon is attacked with gunfire.
- In the present, Diggle pretends to accidentally bump into Qadir, and acts like Bronze Tiger is his security detail. Deadshot fires a shot through the window and Bronze Tiger feigns being hit, as Diggle shoves Qadir out of the way. Deadshot attempts to move on to the next step, but Shrapnel drives off in the car, not wanting to be a part of the Suicide Squad. ARGUS detonates the bomb they placed in Shrapnel’s head.
- Digg and Lyla don’t see eye to eye about the operation, but Digg successfully receives an invitation to Qadir’s Humanitarian Benefit. Alexi gives Oliver bank account info for Slade, but says they are done. Sara confronts Oliver about his obsession with Slade. Oliver tells Sara to stay away from him, because he doesn’t want Slade to use her to hurt him.
- Deadshot uses some fancy equipment to duplicate Diggle’s thumbprint. Digg brings Lyla as his date/bodyguard to the benefit, and Qadir leads them past security, while Deadshot uses Diggle’s thumbprint to get himself into the party. Continuing the flashback, Qadir tries to run away, and is about to be shot, but Diggle shoots his shooter, who turns out to be just a kid.
- Diggle and Lyla dance and argue, while the fate of the mission is in Deadshot’s hands. A sober Laurel offers advice to Oliver about Sara. Felicity gets an address from the bank account, and when Oliver arrives, he finds Alexi dead with an arrow through his eye, then sees images of Shado projected on the wall. Sara convinces Oliver that they should take on Slade together.
- When Deadshot reaches the nerve agent, he discovers it’s too large to extract. It turns out that Amanda already knew that, and only wanted to be able to activate Deadshot’s eyepiece to see it. Lyla realizes that Amanda has called in a drone strike. Diggle makes a toast to Qadir revealing his true identity and the fact that there is a deadly nerve agent below everyone, which causes the guests to leave in a panic.
- Bronze Tiger saves Lyla from Qadir by stabbing him in the back of the neck, while Diggle goes down to help save Deadshot. Deadshot saves Digg by shooting two guys who come in behind him. At first Deadshot refuses to leave, but Digg convinces him to for his daughter Zoe. They run and jump into the van with Lyla and Bronze Tiger, but when the drone changes course, they realize the drone wasn’t targeting Qadir’s house, but is targeting Deadshot. Lyla extracts the tracker and throws it out the back of the van, narrowly missing the explosion.
- Amanda is unhappy to report that the Markovian government is threatening to retaliate due to an unprovoked drone attack, and dismisses Diggle for good. Amanda informs Lyla that the tracker will now be placed in the spinal vertebrae. Diggle tells Lyla he can’t ever lose her again. In the flashback, we see Diggle and Lyla officially meet for the first time.
- Oliver meets with Amanda and asks her help finding Slade. She shows him a mercenary they’ve been tracing that they’re calling “Deathstroke.”
Violet’s Thoughts on This week’s episode of Arrow: Suicide Squad
This was a fun episode to watch, with Diggle stepping into the spotlight! Usually he’s just playing second fiddle to Oliver and taking orders from him. But in this episode, even though Diggle was technically taking orders from ARGUS, he disregarded some of those orders and took matters into his own hands. I liked seeing Diggle take charge. It was also an interesting change to see flashbacks to Diggle’s past instead of flashbacks to Oliver’s past.
Being a huge Firefly and Serenity fan, I had been hoping that we would see Shrapnel (played by Sean Maher) again, so I was excited when I saw that he was part of the Suicide Squad! Unfortunately, his return was short-lived, as ARGUS killed him off very early in the episode. So, no hope of ever seeing him on Arrow again. Unless he somehow was able to remove the bomb from his brain and didn’t really die. After all, we just see a puff of smoke from far away. Hmmm…
As for Oliver, this episode did pretty much nothing to advance his storyline with Slade. All that happened was that he got jerked around by Slade the whole episode, and he’s no closer to finding Slade than he was before. Oh, and he and Sara had some issues, but Laurel of all people helped him resolve them. Laurel is remarkably well-adjusted in such a short period of time. I don’t think most women would give their ex-boyfriend advice about dating their sister, especially if their sister stole the boyfriend from her not once, but twice! Okay, I guess Sara technically didn’t steal Ollie the second time, but it probably felt like a slap in the face to Laurel, which is why she freaked out about it at the family dinner a couple episodes ago. It just seems a little too unbelievable that not only is Laurel sober, but she’s now offering advice to Oliver about Sara. It seems too soon for her to be able to do that, considering what bad shape she was in very recently, and for so long.
Once again, we didn’t see Roy helping out, although at least they came up with a plausible excuse for him (watching Thea to protect her from Slade). If they’re going to put him on the Arrow Team, he should actually be around more than we’ve been seeing him lately! Remember, he has the Mirakuru in him, so he’s just as powerful as Slade.
Looks like we get a showdown between Black Canary and the Huntress next episode. Could be interesting…
Josh’s Thoughts: Arrow, Season 2 Episode 16: Suicide Squad
Arrow this week was a bit different than most episodes, in that it almost seemed to feel like Oliver was a secondary character this episode. Front and center was Diggle, which was pretty interesting to me. I really enjoy his character, so it was nice to see him get a little more action.
ARGUS, the organization Diggle deals with this episode, certainly seems like the “Big Brother” that no one wants to mess with. They know who Oliver is, and seem to be locking up every “super villain” they can find. On top of that, they are putting little bombs in their heads, and using them as their own weapons.
I thought it was kind of odd how easily Diggle took to working with Deadshot. This is probably my biggest complaint this episode. I understand he didn’t have much choice in the matter, but for him to be relatively calm about it–and even save his life in the end seemed to be a bit a stretch considering how much Diggle wanted to kill him before. I guess this can speak to Diggle’s character however.
As for Oliver this week, he seemed to be struggling with basically asking for help on his mission to take down Deathstroke/Slade. It seemed like most of this episode he spent trying to get information, and then finally realizing he might not be able to solve this problem on his own.
What I can’t wait for is the showdown between Slade and Oliver. The way it looks now though, Sarah will be involved, and more than likely Diggle and Roy could be too. That is a lot of manpower to take down Deathstroke. I am curious to see if it is enough, or what tricks Deathstroke has up his sleeve.
So where is Malcolm Merlyn in all of this anyway? We know he is alive, but I would like to know what he is doing. Is he cooking up another catastrophe for Starling City? Another attempt at taking down Arrow? There was also little Roy or Thea this episode.
Closing out, for those into DC comics, particularly Batman, keep an eye out for the imprisoned female therapist that may have a few screws loose herself! While we do not get to see Harley Quinn directly, there is a voice in one of the scenes at ARGUS where she speaks up! All in all, this episode was a good one, but I am not looking forward to next week, where the Huntress seems to be making an appearance and the obligatory showdown between Sara and her will have to take place. I think I have mentioned my hatred before for the Huntress, right?
Scenes from Arrow, Season 2 Episode 17: Birds of Prey
Here are scenes from next week’s Arrow episode, titled Birds of Prey:
This seems like a good show, but I’m too far behind to try to start now. Maybe someday I will. I tried to watch this a bit early on, but it didn’t catch my interest enough, but it looks like it picked up eventually.