Violet recaps Season 3 Episode 6 of Arrow, titled Guilty, where it looks like Laurel’s trainer, Ted, is guilty of something! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Arrow, Season 3 Episode 6: Guilty
Arrow, Diggle, and Roy raid a drug cartel’s warehouse — but find everyone strung up dead inside, and a few million dollars of heroin untouched. One man, not yet dead, says the name “Paco.” On the floor, written in blood, is “GUILTY.”
Back at the Arrow Cave, the team regroups and analyzes info. Oliver and Diggle head back out to question members of the rival gang, while Oliver tells Roy to stay behind because he has noticed Roy seems out of it, and wants him to rest up.
Laurel continues training with Ted at the boxing ring. They finish up for the night, and head to dinner together.
Roy asks Felicity to test his blood for traces of Mirakuru.
Arrow questions a gang member, who reveals the identity of “Paco”: Emilio Ortega. Oliver relays the info to Felicity, who tracks his position. Arrow goes there, and finds a body strung up. Then Laurel’s trainer, Ted, enters. The location is the boxing ring. Arrow aims his bow and arrow at Ted. But then, Laurel enters, and tells Oliver that she’s been with Ted for the past 2 hours, and the body wasn’t there when they left.
Felicity reports to Roy that his blood tested negative for Mirakuru. Roy is relieved. Felicity asks him what’s going on. He tells her that the reason he hasn’t been sleeping is because he’s been having weird dreams that felt like memories, and in which he killed Sara. He says that he remembers throwing arrows into Sara.
Detective Lance shows up at the boxing ring to investigate, and is suspicious about Ted, but Laurel sticks up for him. Laurel goes and talks to Arrow, who asks why a mass murderer would string up a body in Ted’s gym. Laurel reports that Ted caters to a rough crowd, and that he thinks someone is trying to send him a message. Oliver is upset that Laurel went behind his back for training when he refused to train her, and warns her to watch out for Ted.
Back at the Arrow Cave, Oliver asks Diggle what he knows about Ted “Wildcat” Grant. Dig remembers seeing his title fight a few years ago. Felicity has discovered that the victims at the warehouse and the gym were beaten to death with brass knuckles. This matches a murder from 6 years ago where the victims were also killed with brass knuckles worn by a left-handed attacker. Ted was known for being a lefty. However, Ted was never arrested.
Just then, they see that the tracker is on the move, so Arrow goes and investigates. He finds another body strung up. He looks around and sees a mask, weapons, and newspaper articles — it looks like someone’s lair. Suddenly he is attacked from behind — by Ted. They fight, but Ted says that he’s never killed anyone, and that he used to be a vigilante 6 years ago. Ted claims someone is trying to set him up, and that they’re leaving him a trail to follow. He found a key to his storage locker, where they are now, on the body found at the gym. He says he stopped being a vigilante after the drug dealer was beat to death 6 years ago, and that he carries the guilt of that man’s death. Ted says no one else knows about the locker.
Arrow and Ted meet up with Laurel, who brings them info about the latest victim, Robert Mancini, who was a magician’s assistant. Oliver reveals to Laurel that Ted killed someone 6 years ago. Ted says he doesn’t know who Mancini is, but then sees that Mancini worked at Zanzibar, the same night club where the drug dealer was killed 6 years ago. Oliver warns Laurel that she’s playing a dangerous game, trying to follow in Sara’s footsteps. Then he and Ted head out to Zanzibar to follow the trail the killer has left for Ted.
Diggle heads back out to provide backup, but Felicity has Roy stay behind to talk to him. She reveals that Sara in fact was killed by arrows in such a way that matches what it would look like if someone threw the arrows at her with Mirakuru force. While there’s no Mirakuru in Roy’s blood now, Felicity thinks that it’s possible there may have still been a trace in him when Sara was killed, so he might have done it.
Arrow and Ted arrive at the club, and a masked man starts shooting at them. Arrow shoots an arrow at the guy, who runs off. Just then, the police show up and arrest Ted, as they have found the body in his storage locker.
They return to the Arrow Cave, along with Laurel, and Roy confesses that he killed Sara. Felicity helps explain that he has had repressed memories resurfacing in dreams. Roy leaves to be alone. They ask about the DNA found on the arrows, but the results were inconclusive. Laurel is distraught. Oliver asks Felicity how sure she is, and she lists several pieces of evidence.
Detective Lance questions Ted in an interrogation room at the police station. But then Laurel shows up to talk to him alone. She asks who framed him. He reluctantly reveals that it was Isaac Stanzler, who was his sidekick when he was a vigilante. He then tells her that the murder from 6 years ago was Stanzler, not him. At that point, he cut Stanzler loose, and told him never to come back to Starling.
Back at the Arrow Cave, Diggle says that he’ll go after Roy, but Oliver isn’t agreeable to Diggle’s suggestion that he abandon Roy.
As Ted and Laurel leave the police station, Stanzler approaches Ted at gunpoint, telling him that after he abandoned him, he was tortured as payback for the man they lost, until he escaped. Stanzler has Laurel drive, as he sits in the back seat, and Ted sits in the front. Laurel secretly calls Felicity, who is able to track their location. Diggle plays chicken with them in a van, but Stanzler insists she keep driving straight. Arrow drives up on his motorcycle, but Stanzler shoots at him, and he falls over.
Then Roy heads after them on a motorcyle, and Stanzler falls out of the car trying to shoot at Arrow, as Laurel makes a dangerous swerve. The car crashes into a couple of parked cars, and a fire starts. Diggle and Oliver pull up in the van, and pull Ted and Laurel out of the car just before it explodes. Meanwhile, Roy and Stanzler fight. Stanzler tells Roy that Arrow is just using him, he’s just another weapon in his arsenal, and that he’ll abandon him. But then Roy gets the upper hand, and knocks Stanzler out. Arrow runs up, and Roy tells Oliver not to abandon him. Oliver replies, “Never.”
Arrow shows up at Ted’s gym and asks him to stay away from Laurel. He says it’s her choice, but if she stops coming, that’s fine. Oliver assures him she’ll stop coming. Ted offers a word of advice about not waiting till it’s too late to cut his sidekick loose, but Oliver tells Ted that his mistake wasn’t cutting Stanzler loose, it was losing faith in him.
Back at the Arrow Cave, Oliver pulls out a candle and sits down with Roy to help him meditate. Suddenly, Roy remembers what really happened: he killed a police officer by stabbing arrows in him, then looked up and saw Sara. He didn’t kill Sara, but he’s upset that he’s still a murderer.
Laurel shows up at Ted’s gym and reports that no new charges against him will be filed. She asks Ted to give her the tools to avenge her sister’s death.
In the final scene, as officers leave the police station to transport Stanzler, a woman shoots arrows at the officers. When Stanzler asks who she is, she replies, “I’m Cupid, stupid.”
In the Hong Kong flashback, Oliver and Maseo wait in the marketplace for a target — Chin Na Wei’s courier. Oliver spots him, but he quickly realizes Oliver is after him and tries to run away. Oliver gives chase, until the man is hit by a car. However, when Maseo tries to retrieve the envelope they were after, it’s not there. Maseo says Oliver must have seen him stash it somewhere while he was running, but Oliver doesn’t remember seeing that happen. Back at Maseo’s place, Oliver struggles to remember, and Maseo’s son plays a memory game with him to help. Meanwhile, the Maseo begs his wife, Tatsu, to help Oliver remember what he saw. She reluctantly agrees. They sit on the floor together, and she lights a candle between them. She has him close his eyes, and she talks to him in a soothing voice. Suddenly, Oliver remembers. They retrieve the envelope and find a picture of a picturesque mountain landscape. They bring it back and find a hidden message: Contact Li Kuan Hui. Oliver thanks Tatsu for her help, but she tells him to get out of their lives as soon as possible.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 3 Episode 6 of Arrow: Guilty
I’m so glad that Roy didn’t kill Sara after all! Even if he had, it wouldn’t have really been his fault, since he would have been under the effect of Mirakuru, but we already saw how everyone reacted to the news when they thought that he did do it. They could never look at him the same way again, and Diggle even wanted Oliver to abandon Roy for some reason! That seemed really out of character for him to all of a sudden say that, based on something that, even if Roy had done it, was something that he didn’t do of his own volition, and is no longer a danger anyway, since the Mirakuru is no longer in him. I guess Felicity kind of presented the facts saying that maybe they don’t know the long lasting effects of Mirakuru, so maybe Diggle was worried that Roy might still be dangerous, but still, it surprised me that he wanted to write Roy off so quickly. I suppose they just needed someone to present this suggestion so that Oliver could so vehemently go against it and stand up for Roy, a gesture that I really appreciated. So what will Roy’s alias eventually be? It seemed they were trying to shift Thea’s nickname of Speedy to him, but now it looks like he might become Arsenal!
I didn’t realize that Laurel’s trainer was going to be such a prevalent character on the show. Or maybe it was just this episode. But Laurel insists on having him continue to train her, so maybe we will keep seeing him. But yeah, there was just way too much Laurel in this episode for my taste. I know we have to get used to it eventually, since she will be the Canary pretty soon, but I would like to have as little Laurel as possible, at least until then. I guess they’re trying to ease us into having her around full time. Sigh.
So, if Roy didn’t kill Sara, then who did? We now know that whoever did it would have thrown arrows into her with Mirakuru force. Who could have done that? Well, this goes back to my theory that Malcolm Merlyn has Mirakuru in him. We have since learned that Malcolm Merlyn was in Starling City at the same time Sara was in town, because she took pictures of him. So this new information about how the arrows were thrown at Sara makes me lean toward Merlyn being the murderer. But why? Or Felicity could be wrong about the arrows being thrown into Sara, and someone actually just shot her with a bow and arrow. Could it have been this new archer we were introduced to this episode, Cupid? Who is this Cupid anyway? Guess we’ll soon find out!
Josh’s Thoughts: Arrow, Season 3 Episode 6: Guilty
Okay I think I have already said this, but I do not like the character of Ted. I think I have a big problem with the acting. I am especially now having trouble because he doesn’t seem like a guy who was a do-gooder vigilante. I think the main problem is the fairly wooden performance the actor delivers. But we’ll see. Maybe I need to give him more of a chance.
I thought the story line was pretty good this episode, a sort of “looking glass” for Oliver and Roy to look through to see what could potentially happen. I was pretty irritated with Ted when he planted the seed of doubt in Roy about trusting Oliver. I hope that Oliver is able to keep his word though, and not abandon Roy in the end. I did think the references to “Arsenal” were neat, as from what I understand, Roy eventually takes the name Arsenal. I really enjoy how DC/CW make these quirky topical references.
I am curious to know exactly how it was determined that Roy didn’t kill Sara. I understand the theory Oliver proposes, but the evidence shows arrows thrown, just like Felicity has deduced from the “virtual autopsy”. It seems like a huge coincidence that the way Roy dreamed it is the way it happened. But if we are saying that Roy is innocent, I guess I will go back to thinking that Ra’s al Ghul is the culprit. It clearly is someone Sara knew, and someone she didn’t think she needed to be scared of, so I think that is a pretty good guess.
Scenes from Arrow, Season 3 Episode 7: Draw Back Your Bow
Here are scenes from the next episode of Arrow, titled Draw Back Your Bow:
