It is vacation time for Oliver and the gang! Okay, not quite. Oliver heads to find Thea and bring her home. Felicity gets acquainted with her new job, and Laurel takes matters into her own hands. Check out Josh’s recap of Season 3 Episode 3 of Arrow, titled Corto Maltese, and then see what Josh and Violet have to say about the episode!
Don’t need the Arrow episode recap for Corto Maltese? Click here to jump directly to Violet’s thoughts on the episode!
To see Josh’s thoughts on this week’s Arrow episode, Corto Maltese, click here to get directly there!
Episode Recap of Arrow Season 3 Episode 3: Corto Maltese
This episode of Arrow takes place away from Starling City for the most part. The episode begins with a flashback of Malcolm Merlyn taking Thea to Corto Maltese. Before they leave, Merlyn admits he is worried “someone” will find both him and Thea. That person must be Oliver.
Back with our hero, Oliver has chased down some no-do-gooder, lassoing him with a roped-arrow. He questions him about Sara’s death, but the man has no information.
Back at the Arrow Cave, the team is bummed by the lack of leads on Sara’s killer. Felicity has done some work at finding Thea, and she is on an island off the coast of South America. Oliver decides it is time to bring Thea home. Roy decides to go, and grabs his bow. Oliver reminds him–a bow and arrow is probably not the best thing to bring on a plane.
Diggle, meanwhile, plans to stay home, but Lyla seems to hint that he should go. Then after picking up on the hint, Diggle realizes that there is more to this nudge than just helping Oliver. She wants him to rendezvous with an ARGUS operative that has “gone dark”. Mark, the missing agent, is a friend of hers, and she doesn’t want to get him in trouble.
Meanwhile, Laurel pays a visit to a fighter, investigating one of the fighter’s students. The fighter is uncooperative, but does offer his services for training to fight to release some steam. Laurel seems interested….
Laurel heads to AA and talks about Sara’s death, but abstractly, not specifically saying what happened. Her father comes in and watches, and Laurel clams up. Laurel listens to the next AA member share, who has been beaten by her boyfriend–and it isn’t the first time it has happened. She talks to Lance about it, but his hands are tied.
Arriving in Corto Maltese, Oliver visits the house Felicity was able to dig up. He talks with a local, learning where Thea works. Meanwhile, Merlyn is hiding inside, thinking about nailing Oliver with an arrow–but decides against it.
Another flashback shows Merlyn training Thea–pouring steaming hot water over his own hand, trying to show that pain is “bearable”. Thea then receives her painful turn at the steaming water poured on her hand.
Oliver finds Thea working at a restaurant, and Thea seems happy to see him. They chitchat about what has happened. Oliver tells her that he has a plane ticket home for her. She tells him that she is never coming back.
Returning to flashbacks, she is struggling to bear the pain of the steaming water, and is preparing to give up. Merlyn comforts her, and tells her it is his fault that she is failing.
Ray Palmer, meanwhile, introduces Felicity to her new job. Ray seems pretty generous, providing Felicity with a new office, and an assistant, among other perks. Ray Palmer is excited to begin working on the Applied Sciences Division, and leaves Felicity to it.
Lyla’s mission is the next goal for Oliver and Diggle, so Diggle heads in for a chat after finding him. Mark is a bit edgy, and Diggle has to talk him down. Mark says that he has intel regarding some information of ARGUS’s intel being sold. They head in to take care of some business, but it turns out to be a double cross. Diggle gets tazed, but luckily Oliver is providing backup. Mark takes off, but before doing so takes a device from Diggle used to decode some information–because he is the seller of the ARGUS intel.
Back with Thea, Roy pays a visit to her. He decides to try to convince her to come home himself. She tells Roy that the secrets drove her away. Roy accepts that if she is happy, she should stay. With that, Roy leaves. Merlyn pays a visit though, and is none-too-happy to see what is going on.
Returning to the flashback, Merlyn decides to train Thea as his “student, not his daughter”. He begins wailing on her, and she grabs a sword to defend herself. Merlyn seems pleased, saying, “now we can begin”.
So after the double cross, Diggle contacts Lyla, She has a team coming in, but Diggle and Oliver resolve to take care of this matter themselves. They elicit Felicity’s help–and at the same time, Laurel does as well. Felicity tells Diggle he will find Shaw’s location, and Laurel is looking for the girlfriend beater–and Felicity works on getting that information as well.
Oliver, meanwhile, decides to tell Thea the truth about himself, in an attempt to get her to come home. Diggle disagrees with that plan, but he seems resolved. He talks to Thea, telling her about his time away–and that his father did not drown on the boat. He tells her the story of his death, and his father’s sacrifice to save him.
So that information that Laurel requested from Felicity gets her in some trouble–she, masked, attacks the girlfriend beater, but doesn’t fair well, and gets pummeled herself. She winds up in the hospital, and Lance visits her. He tells her to cut it out. Laurel seems depressed about the state of the world, and its unfairness, but will not tell Lance the reason why. Lance makes her promise that she will not do this again, to which she agrees, but doesn’t seem convincing.
After the cheery conversation with Thea, Oliver meets up with Diggle, and Roy is around to help too. Mark Shaw is making the deal, so the three move in. Oliver made some makeshift bows from the hotel room’s various decor. But unluckily for them, some more soldiers show up, armed to the teeth.
The team jumps into action, taking down the soldiers. We see Oliver blast away some men with a gun, which is probably a first. Diggle gives chase after Shaw, and yanks him from his getaway jeep. Roy and Oliver meanwhile take down the other men. Oliver is able to recover the data being traded. Diggle asks Shaw why he did what he did, and it was to get out of ARGUS. Diggle doesn’t care, and takes him in custody.
We learn that Thea has learned a great deal from Merlyn, handing a sword quite well. They fight over her ability to go home or not, and she wins. But it looks like he might have let her win. Thea meets up with OIiver, Roy and Diggle at the airport.
Back home, Oliver visits Laurel, who is still pretty bruised. Laurel wants him to train her, but he won’t. She turns to the fighter she met earlier instead. The woman beater does get his due though–an “anonymous” tip came in, and the man is arrested. I think Lance might have had a hand in that. Meanwhile, Felicity recovers some precious data that Ray Palmer was looking for, which turns out to be a bunch of weapons and such. Then at the Arrow Cave, Nyssa from the League of Assassins, armed with a bow, demands to know where Sara is. Dun dun dun!
Josh’s Thoughts: Arrow, Season 3 Episode 3: Corto Maltese
So this was an interesting episode of Arrow…We finally have a setting for the main storyline outside of Starling City. It is another island location, but I guess I can’t complain too much about that. Another interesting thing to bring up about this episode–there were no Oliver flashbacks. All of the flashbacks this episode were of Thea, and her time away from Starling City.
I am curious why Thea had a sudden change of heart, and decided to go home. The more important question is, what does she plan on doing with her newfound abilities? A disgruntled, well trained fighter in a city of thieves and criminals could be interesting, but we have a lot of those right now. Based on Malcolm’s “letting” her go home, I have a feeling he might have some plans for her in the future. What they are, it is hard to say.
Speaking of pissed off women, we have Laurel playing vigilante now. How many vigilantes can we have in Starling City? Shouldn’t the police be doing something about this?! But as both Violet and I, and probably everyone else watching, have noticed, Laurel is edging closer and closer to her hero time. I guess we will see where this leads, and if her new friend remains just a trainer, or perhaps turns into a little something more. This is the CW after all. But for the record, I am with Oliver on this one. Laurel has no business trying to be hero. She has no skills, and to develop those skills, it is going to take a heck of a long time. A couple sparring rounds in a boxing ring is not going to be enough.
Ray Palmer sure had a sinister look on his face when he saw the weapons blueprints Felicity dug up for him. From what I understand, Ray is supposed to turn hero, but so far, I am not convinced. We will have to see what he does with this new data he has recovered.
The final thought I have is regarding ARGUS. This story seemed to hint pretty ominously that all is not okay with the ARGUS ranks. Mark Shaw wanted out, and even Lyla towards the end of the episode makes a comment to the effect of, “I do whatever Amanda Waller tells me to do.” I have a feeling Diggle and Oliver will be having some more butting of heads with this group.
Overall, I thought this was a good episode. A little change of scenery, learned about Thea a little more, and we have a couple of surprises at the end of the episode. What does Nyssa want? And how will she react when she finds out what happened to Sara? Hopefully we will find out more next episode.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 3 Episode 3 of Arrow: Corto Maltese
This was a nice change of scenery from Starling City. And we also got an answer as to the location of Corto Maltese, which I was wondering about at the end of the last episode: it’s an island off the coast of South America. It was pretty cool how the whole Arrow team went (well, minus Felicity), thought it seemed a little to convenient that Lyla just happened to know someone in Corto Maltese that she wanted Diggle to check on. And if not for that person, this episode would have been pretty uneventful. Seriously, Shaw is the only reason there was any action in this episode. Other than that, it was pretty easy for Oliver to convince Thea to come home, and for Thea to “win” from Merlyn the right to go home. Speaking of which, why did he let her win? Is it because he wants his daughter to be happy? Or does he have ulterior motives? We know that John Barrowman is now a series regular this season, so we can expect to see more of him back in Starling City!
I am, however, disappointed in the “truth” that Oliver revealed to Thea. He makes this whole speech about how it’s time to stop lying, and time to start telling her the truth about everything, but when he sits down with her to do so, all he does is tell her about their father sacrificing himself to save Oliver. Um, yeah, that’s not really the truth that I was expecting to come out of his mouth, and felt really way out in left field to me. When Oliver made his declaration about telling Thea the truth, I was like GOOD, because pretty much everyone knows that Oliver is Arrow except for Thea, and now’s as good a time as any, since you’ve decided to come clean about everything. But no! He doesn’t tell her the most important truth of all! Why??? Why are they dragging this out? Just tell her already, geez! So frustrating. So, what’s going to happen, is Merlyn going to be the one to reveal Oliver’s secret identity to Thea, and Thea’s going to get pissed that Oliver didn’t tell her the truth, even though he said he was going to start telling her the truth?? I really hope that doesn’t happen. That would be annoying.
Speaking of annoying, Laurel. Is there any episode where she’s not annoying though? In fact, is there anyone out there who actually likes Laurel? I’ve never heard anyone talk about liking Laurel (and by “heard” I mean seen on Twitter, or randomly online somewhere, though it’s not like I go searching for it though), but maybe there are some people out there who do. Anyway, so I guess last week she thought she was all tough, twisting the arm of a guy in a hospital bed, and felt like she was qualified to chase a guy down with a baseball bat. Um, dumb idea, Laurel. You have no training whatsoever, yet you think you can take on someone who you know beats women? Right. And then she talks about wanting to make a difference, and it’s like, um, don’t you make a difference working for the District Attorney’s office, putting criminals behind bars? What, that isn’t enough for you, you have to take matters into your own hands and physically fight them? Yeah, okay. She just wants to be like Sara. Every time she grabs that black jacket, it makes me cringe, because I know what’s coming. Thankfully, Oliver declines her request to train her, but unfortunately, that isn’t the end of it. She’s gonna take boxing lessons. And now we know that’s how she will get her training to become Canary. Duuuumb. How long is that going to take to get her anywhere near ready to be a real fighter? I guess the show has pointed out that Thea has made a lot of progress in just a few short months. I suppose they’ll be that way with Laurel too. But I have a feeling she’ll want to take on some criminals before she’s actually ready.
And finally, Felicity. I wasn’t sure how involved with the team she would be after taking Ray Palmer up on his job offer, but it looks like she wants to do both. But it also looks like she’s keeping it a secret, for now. I’m still not sure why she decided to take the job, especially after learning in this episode that she didn’t even know what the job was! She came in expecting to be an executive assistant, but it turns out that she gets her own assistant and a huge office. So, basically her whole “wanting more out of life” thing was to become an executive assistant?? I could understand if she actually knew what job she would be getting, but she didn’t. So it doesn’t make any sense. I’m just waiting for Oliver’s reaction when he finds out what she did.
So I guess basically, this episode pretty much annoyed me overall. Is there any way we can get Thea to be Canary instead of Laurel? I would be okay with that.
Scenes from Arrow, Season 3 Episode 4: The Magician
Here are scenes from the next episode of Arrow, titled The Magician:
