Violet recaps Season 3 Episode 8 of Arrow, titled The Brave and the Bold, where Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin visit Starling City in a second Flash/Arrow crossover episode! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Arrow, Season 3 Episode 8: The Brave and the Bold
This second of two Flash/Arrow crossover episodes begins with Roy and Arrow arriving at a house which they believe belongs to the Boomerang villain. Arrow sees explosives inside, which confirms that it’s him. After they set off the explosives at the front door, Arrow and Roy go inside — where the guy is long gone, and instead they find ARGUS agents, who tell them to let it go.
The next day, at Caitlin and Cisco show up to see Felicity at Palmer Technologies — they want to see the Arrow Cave. She brings them there, and Cisco marvels at all the gadgets and costumes.
Meanwhile, Diggle goes to ARGUS to see if he can get Lyla to get them some info about the Boomerang guy. Elsewhere in the building, the Boomerang guy uses his boomerangs to get past the security guards. An alarm goes off, and Lyla puts the building on lockdown. Diggle calls Oliver to tell him what’s happening, then Oliver and Roy head out. In the meantime, Diggle and Lyla try to handle Boomerang guy, who takes out more ARGUS agents with his boomerangs. Oliver and Roy show up and try to take the guy down. They fight for awhile, then it looks like a boomerang is headed straight for Oliver’s chest — when the Flash speeds in and deflects it. The Boomerang guy takes the opportunity to escape.
Lyla tells the others that the guy’s name is Digger Harkness, former ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service), who went rogue. They caught him 3 years ago, and placed him on the Suicide Squad. He was on a mission that went bad, and ARGUS thought they had killed him using the micro bomb, upon Lyla’s orders, but apparently it malfunctioned.
Down in the Arrow Cave, Barry shows off doing the Salmon Ladder at super speed. He runs out to get some food, and when he runs back in, Lyla has returned with Oliver and Diggle — and Barry has just exposed his identity to one more person. Oliver pulls Barry aside and says that if Barry helps on the case, they have to do it Oliver’s way. He agrees, and quickly puts the boomerang bits back together, so they can try to figure out where the boomerangs came from. Cisco takes a look at the boomerangs and recognizes a signature on them as belonging to a guy named Marcos. Felicity can’t find any contact information on him, but sees that he was arrested last year by Detective Lance.
Oliver and Barry pay Lance a visit at the police station, and Barry asks Lance about Marcos. Lance says Marcos was arrested for identity theft — he was stealing credit card numbers for the Russian mob. Oliver, being a former member of the Russian mob knows where they run their Cybercrime unit, so Oliver, Barry, Roy, and Diggle sneak up on the building. While Oliver has a quick chat with Diggle, Barry takes the time to quickly knock out and tie up a group of men inside, to Oliver’s annoyance. Barry finds and apprehends Marcos, and Arrow shoots Marcos in the arm with an arrow. Oliver starts to move the arrow around to get Marcos to talk, despite Barry’s protests. Marcos gives Arrow an encrypted phone that ARGUS gave him, though he swears he doesn’t know where Harkness is. Barry runs Marcos over to Lance’s office and runs back. Barry tells Oliver he doesn’t like how Oliver tortured Marcos, and they get into a bit of an argument.
Felicity works on un-encrypting the phone, and is able to figure out where Harkness is. The team, minus the girls, head over there. Harkness isn’t there, but a guy says Harkness paid him $10,000 to give them a phone. Harkness played them.
Meanwhile, in the Arrow Cave, Marcos’s phone rings, and Harkness enters and begins attacking Lyla with his boomerangs, while she fires back at him. He’s able to get one boomerang into her chest, just before Felicity throws a grenade toward him, at which point he escapes. The boys return to the Arrow Cave, and Barry runs Lyla to the hospital.
Felicity, Roy, Cisco, and Caitlin have drinks at Verdant while Lyla is in surgery, and Oliver insists on spending time alone down in the Arrow Cave. However, he and Barry have a heart to heart talk, wherein Oliver blames himself for all of this happening, and says he feels like he’s trading away Oliver Queen for the Arrow. But Barry reassures Oliver that he has a light inside of him. Felicity comes in and says she has located Harkness from running a facial recognition program.
Arrow and the Flash confront Harkness at the train station. Harkness says he has planted 5 bombs throughout Starling City, and they can either stop him or the bombs, which will go off in 90 seconds, but not both. The Flash runs off to stop the bombs while Felicity and Cisco locate them, as Arrow fights Harkness. However, they figure out that the bombs are linked, so they all have to be diffused at the same time. The Flash runs Roy, Caitlin, Felicity, and Cisco to each of the other four locations of the bombs, and the five of them simultaneously diffuse the bombs.
Meanwhile, Harkness taunts Arrow for not killing him, saying it means he’s weak. However, Arrow says it means he has humanity. The Flash returns, and Arrow starts to walk away. Captain Boomerang takes the opportunity to reach for a boomerang — but Arrow is too fast, and shoots it out of his hand, pinning his hand to the pillar.
At the hospital, Lyla is recovering. Diggle asks her to marry him. She says yes.
Caitlin tells Felicity she’ll continue working on the DNA results from Sara’s murder in Central City, and call her with the results. Oliver and Barry return to the Arrow Cave and report that Harkness is now cellmates with Slade Wilson on the island. Barry discovers that Oliver has had a costume mannequin placed in the Arrow Cave for the next time he’s in town. Cisco gives Oliver a present: a new, improved Arrow suit.
Oliver and Barry go to an abandoned warehouse for another face off. We don’t get to see who wins this time, though.
In a flashback to Hong Kong, Amanda Waller brings a guy to Oliver to torture to find out where a bomb is. The man taunts him for not having the stomach to torture him. The bomb explodes before Oliver is able to get any info from the man. In the aftermath, Waller yells at him, and says that he needs to practice the art of torture. Later, Waller gives Oliver another chance, bringing him one of Chien Na Wei’s men for interrogation.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 3 Episode 8 of Arrow: The Brave and the Bold
For the most part, I thought this episode was fun, being a crossover episode. It was interesting to see the change in dynamic between the last crossover episode, where the Arrow team was in Central City, and this episode, where the Flash team is on Oliver’s turf in Starling City. It was funny seeing Oliver visibly annoyed with Barry every time he showed off his super speed. Admittedly though, it does come in handy!
However, I felt like they tried to make the difference between the two crossover episodes a little too much of a contrast between each other, as this episode of Arrow felt like it was a bit darker than normal. It brought up the issues of Oliver killing people, which is so last season. Hasn’t Oliver already made the decision not to kill anymore?! So why are they trying to make it seem like he hasn’t? Also, they bring up the issue of Oliver torturing people, which hasn’t really been an issue before. Maybe if this episode had taken place during last season, it would have made more sense, but putting it in now feels a little out of place.
After watching the previous crossover episode, and how Oliver’s identity was revealed to so many people, and then seeing this episode where Barry’s identity is revealed to yet another person, it’s almost like there’s no point in keeping any of this a secret from Thea. And then Thea served Felicity, Roy, and Cisco at Verdant. Wouldn’t she think it was weird that they were hanging out? Obviously, they’re going to put off telling Thea the truth so that it can blow up in Oliver’s face later on when she finds out another way. But at this point, it’s like everyone knows except Thea, so why keep her out of the loop?? Okay, Detective Lance doesn’t know either. But might as well tell him too!
Anyway, so the end of the episode suggests that Barry could be coming back to Starling City at some point. Hopefully it will be sometime this season, because I would love to see more crossover episodes!
Josh’s Thoughts: Arrow, Season 3 Episode 8: The Brave and the Bold
Again, I loved the Arrow and Flash crossovers. I think if CW can continue making the stories viable and believable, I will enjoy seeing more of these coming up. So far, I think these two shows are the best comic based shows to be on TV thus far.
I have to say, I thought Boomerang Man, or whatever his name is, was going to be a big problem with the cheesiness this episode. But the episode was able to pull it off I think. He was still a little cheesy, but the menacing factor he brought far outweighed the cheese.
Of course, the drama between Barry and Oliver was heightened again this episode to add some more to the show, but I didn’t particularly care for the artificial tension between the two. I think the episode would have worked just fine with them working more collaboratively the entire episode.
Having said that, Boomerang Man came off as a very intelligent villain, which was great to see. Just like the first crossover episode, the writers for the show came up with a specific scenario in which to utilize both characters in the episode, and I think this one worked a little better than when Barry and Oliver were pitted against each other. I think the reason for this is the twist added to it, when the bombs are revealed. Everyone assumed, including me, that the Flash would just zip around and disarm them all. Normally I hate plot devices, like the one brought up at this point in the show– that they had to be disarmed at the same time–but I liked how it got the entire teams, Arrow’s and Flash’s, involved to save the day. I thought it worked really well.
Overall, I find myself waiting for Tuesdays and Wednesdays so I can see the next episode, which hasn’t happened for a CW show for me since Buffy or Angel. It’s too bad we’re hitting the mid season finale next week!
Scenes from Arrow, Season 3 Episode 9: The Climb
Here are scenes from the next episode of Arrow, titled The Climb:
