Josh recaps Season 3 Episode 19 of Arrow, titled Broken Arrow, where we see what happens after Ray takes the fall for Oliver, plus there’s a meta human in Starling City! Following the recap, both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Arrow, Season 3 Episode 19: Broken Arrow
Season 3 Episode 19 of Arrow picks up where the last episode left off — Roy claiming to be the Arrow and going to prison for Oliver. At the police station, Captain Lance is not buying this for obvious reasons, and Oliver even says he will sign a confession. Laurel steps in as his attorney though, and tells him to shut his trap. Lance warns Oliver that he isn’t done looking. So off to prison Roy goes, and he is having a pretty tough time given the Arrow put a lot of criminals in Iron Heights. He winds up in a fight with multiple inmates, and takes them all down, but suffers some wounds in the process. It was a cool fight scene, but a sad one. As Detective Lance tells Oliver, Roy will only be able to last so long. Oliver decides if he can’t turn himself in, he is going to break Roy out. Diggle and Felicity talk him down from that though.
Oliver also has a brief run in with Malcolm Merlyn, who tries to convince Oliver to take Ra’s place, to help the city and save the people close to him. Oliver still is saying no though. This might change, I have a feeling…
Things get worse for Oliver though. A new Meta-Human (dubbed Deathbolt by both Ray Palmer and Cisco, more on that later), is set on robbing banks in Starling City. Apparently, he caught wind of the Arrow being in trouble and wants to avoid the Flash if possible. Unfortunately for Oliver, Lance is all over him, trying to prove that he is the Arrow. He tears apart Thea’s apartment to find evidence, and has a search warrant for Verdant’s basement. This leaves Oliver without the ability to get his gear. There is a small bright side to all of this, Felicity managed to wipe all but Roy’s prints from the Arrow Cave, thus leaving Lance without his much needed evidence.
Felicity still thinks it’s too high profile for Oliver to stop this meta human though, so Ray decides to use his ATOM suit to take him on. Unfortunately, the inexperienced ATOM doesn’t do well, and has to flee his first confrontation, barely getting away with his life. The one good piece of news is that Ray is able to determine that Deathbolt can absorb energy, so their best bet to find him is looking at the power grid.
For some reason, Felicity is volunteered to this investigation, and winds up bumping into the new nemesis, Deathbolt. He grabs her by the neck, but luckily, Felicity is able to grab a steam valve, which provides enough distraction for Felicity to make a run for it.
Again, Oliver is set on heading out, but Ray reasons his suit will get there much faster than Oliver could on his Ducati. But Ray has another idea — use a device that will allow Oliver to control Ray’s movements, bringing the technology and skill together into one awesome conglomeration! This connection doesn’t actually last too long though, as the ATOM suit is damaged, breaking the link allowing Oliver to control Ray. Oliver basically turns into a cheerleader, trying to convince Ray he can beat this guy, which he finally does. Victorious, Ray actually takes Deathbolt to Central City, to be locked up in the prison Cisco has for all of the meta-humans. That is when the two come up with the nickname Deathbolt. One odd thing that does come up about Deathbolt though—he wasn’t exposed to Wells’s particle accelerator. So where did he get his powers…?
But back in Starling City, things are going really bad for Roy. He is shiv’ed by a prison guard who doesn’t seem to like him for some reason. Lance tells Thea, and Oliver happens to find out as well. This destroys Oliver, and when he meets up with Diggle and Felicity again, tells them he should have never listened to either of them, and made a rescue attempt for Roy anyway. Diggle and Felicity tell Oliver to not be mad at them, but Oliver clearly past that. Turns out though, the reason they are saying that is that Roy isn’t dead after all. Apparently Waller helped stage Roy’s death, which got Roy out of prison. There is still some sadness to come though. Roy has to leave town. Roy tells Oliver to tell Thea that he is alive, and to apologize for not being able to say goodbye..
So it looks like things might be working out in the end. Turns out that is not the case. Ra’s Al Ghul pays a visit to Thea. Thea knows who he is, and tells him that Oliver will never join the League. Thea then tries to fight/escape, but Thea is no match for Ra’s, and she is beaten swiftly. Not only is she beaten, but also shanked by Ra’s sword, and is presumably dead. Oliver/Arrow is going to be a broken man after this, and this might be the straw that has Oliver joining the League to save Thea (which seems to be hinted at in the scenes from next week).
Flashbacks
So in the flashbacks, Oliver, Tatsu, and Maseo decide to move to attack ARGUS and Waller. It turns out that Waller is actually a prisoner, by the Army. Waller warns Oliver that a deadly virus is about to be unleashed on Hong Kong. She warns him to get as far away as possible.
Returning to Maseo and Tatsu, they decide the best course of action is to steal the virus’s antidote since they will likely not be able to stop the release of the deadly infection. They manage to recover two vials of the antidote, but fight over who should take them. Finally they decide to see about having a cure made, for when the virus is released.
Josh’s Thoughts: Arrow, Season 3 Episode 19: Broken Arrow
I have more mixed feelings about this show. There are parts that are really good. For example, I really enjoyed the prison scenes with Arsenal/Roy, and him trying to stay alive. I actually hoped to see a bit more of that storyline before it was resolved. I thought it was done very well, despite it only being a small part of the episode.
I also liked the tension Oliver had, and him wrestling with the decision of how to proceed, but ultimately being stuck doing nothing at all. Seeing that frustration with Oliver was irritating to me, but really a good way to keep me interested. Then the big reveal Diggle and Felicity have at the end make you want to hate and love those two at the same time. I mean, it was obvious that Roy wasn’t dead, but still, the way it played out was a lot of fun.
Now for the not-so enjoyable. So, I really admire Detective Lance’s persistence in getting Oliver, he seems to be doing so at the expense of his other duties. He has this maniac that can explode people with his eyes seemingly wandering free because Lance is too busy chasing down Oliver. I guess you could say that other cops are on the case, but it is never brought up during the episode. It was really kind of strange to me, especially when the cops know that they don’t have the Arrow’s help anymore…
I also didn’t really like the whole ATOM situation, mainly when they decided to have Oliver “control” Ray. This is probably the nerdy side of me coming out but there are a number of problems here. Firstly, the link was all of about five seconds. The writers decided to use this for a split second, and it was over. Maybe that is because of my next complaints. So that leads me to my second complaint. This whole “Virtual Reality-esce” deal that Oliver put on really didn’t make sense to me. Sure, if Ray is standing still, with no external forces on him, Oliver could move him as intended. But, when Ray is being pummeled, I can’t really understand how Oliver can control him accurately. If Oliver had some sort of “feedback” where he would feel what Ray feels, it would make more sense, but Oliver would be probably in as much or more pain that Ray would be given that Ray at least has is armor. So, in summary, I really didn’t like that scene.
But the big deal of Thea dying is probably what pushes Oliver to the League. I am sure that Ra’s will tell Oliver that he will save Thea, but only in exchange for Oliver joining the League.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 3 Episode 19 of Arrow: Broken Arrow
So, I had all these brilliant thoughts written out on here, and when I clicked to update, WordPress conveniently lost them all! That means this time around, my thoughts won’t be nearly as good, with me being annoyed at having to recreate them. So I’ll just try to summarize what I had said.
Basically, I was expressing my sadness that Roy was gone from the show now, and saying how they had this double fake out of trying to make us sad about his death, then turning around and saying he was fine, only to have him leave Starling City. I almost would have rather had him die after all. Obviously, I would have most rather had him live and stick around. It just seems like a waste to have him live, but still leave the show. This means he’ll be on the Arrow/The Flash spinoff series, right? Right??
So then another part of that double fake out, is Thea’s death, or almost death, when Ra’s al Ghul attacks her, because you think that all the sadness of the show is over once Roy leaves, but the show circles around again for another gut punch. I actually assumed that Thea was killed right there, but we see her in the hospital in the preview for the next episode. However, we also see Oliver bringing Thea (or her lifeless body?) to Ra’s al Ghul’s Lazarus Pit. Now with Roy gone, and Starling City (except for Captain Lance) thinking Roy was the Arrow, and believing that he’s dead, Oliver can’t exactly go back to being the Arrow, can he? It seems like his only course of action is to accept Ra’s al Ghul’s offer in exchange for using the Lazarus Pit to heal Thea. Seems pretty straightforward, but maybe the show has a few surprises in store for us?
Scenes from Arrow, Season 3 Episode 20: The Fallen
Here are scenes from the next episode of Arrow, titled The Fallen:
