Arrow Recap S2E19: The Man Under The Hood

Felicity has troubles with her burglar gear. Team Arrow heads in against Slade. They see a man who use to work for Oliver, but now he works for the enemy. Felicity utilizes the Clock King’s key, and they gain access to the warehouse that they met Barry in. The group plants their bombs, and Felicity wonders if she can list bomber on her resume. Oliver hesitates to blow up the building, even with Felicity’s all clear. He presses the button, and the building goes boom.

Isabel holds a press conference in regards to the bombing. She speaks of terrorism, threatening to find the culprits, but Oliver had to destroy the building to prevent the production of Mirakuru. Slade is looking to build a Mirakuru army, he still needs an industrial centrifuge, which they just destroyed. While they’ve delivered a set-back, they still haven’t stopped him.

Laurel looks over her Arrow clippings all serial killer like. With the missing piece of his identity finally hers, she has answers but more questions. Laurel pays her father a visit in jail. He tries to convince her that he’s fine, but she doesn’t believe it. He’s concerned about her, asks about her meetings. She doesn’t think the charges will blow over. They want the Arrow’s name, but he says he has no idea who he is. She asks about the woman in black as Sara walks in. He tells her the same, he doesn’t know who she is either. Quentin is taken away, time’s up, but Laurel isn’t sure if he’s telling the truth or not. He tells the girls to protect eachother. Sara tells her that their father isn’t one to lie, Laurel knows that sometimes its those closest lie best, and walks away.

The Queen lawyer tells Oliver and Moira the bad news. Thea isn’t in attendance. Isabel is thorough; she’s been working on the take over for a long time. Although they still own a majority of the company stock, she’s diluted the stocks so much that they’re practically worthless. On paper they’re broke. The good news is that he can move their assets into trusts that Isabel can’t touch, he just needs their signatures and Thea’s which could be a huge problem. Moira’s bid for mayor becomes more important if for nothing else than income. Oliver blames himself for losing the company, she told him months ago that he shouldn’t trust Isabel. Moira remarks that his father had a weakness for beautiful strong women too, ewww. Daddy worked with her too. She was in business school at the time, the pretty intern that caught the CEO’s eye. Moira gives Oliver the signed papers, with the mission to convince Thea to help them fight back.

Past. Sara tends to Oliver’s wounds. She helps him to rise, to go to his trunk. He ingests something from it, as Anatoly prepares to torture Ivo, like he tortured them. Anatoly prepares to take his eye, like Ivo did to one of the other prisoners. Ivo stops him with promises of stopping Slade. He tells them that there is a cure to the Mirakuru.

Oliver heads over to the club looking for Thea, but she hasn’t been there. Felicity and Digg report that they went to Roy’s apartment, and its empty. It’s been cleared out for days. Oliver worries over where he went, but it’ll have to wait. Slade is still the priority. They head down to their “batcave” and Slade /Deathstroke is there. He opens fire on them. They duck for cover. Sara jumps at him, and he tosses her aside like a rag doll. Digg opens fire on him, they graze off him, not stopping him. Slade throws him through a glass case. Oliver springs into action, but even he’s no match. Slade is the one that taught him to fight. When the coast is clear Felicity comes out of hiding, and the rest of Team Arrow are down. She flips on the lights, but he’s gone.

Laurel heads to the hospital looking for her sister Sara. She’s fine, just a wrist fracture, and some nasty bruises. The doctor mentions that its nothing compared to her previous injuries. The girl has a lot of scar tissue he remarks. The last person he saw with that many scars was a wounded soldier from Iraq. He asks if she served in the military, but she hasn’t. Laurel walks in as Sara pulls on her tank top, seeing for herself the scar that mar her back. She asks Sara what happened, and Sara tells her that she and Oliver had a little motorcycle accident. She’s more concerned about her back. Oliver comes in the nick of time, so Sara doesn’t have to answer the question. Oliver and Sara give a few more details about their little “accident,” but they say they didn’t see the point of filing a police report. They’re both fine. Laurel doesn’t press, and makes her excuses to leave. Her mind flashes over the truth that Oliver is the Arrow and her sister Sara is the Canary.

Thea stocks her store room. Oliver tells her that they missed her at the meeting yesterday. He knows that she’s mad, but he doesn’t want to let her anger get in the way of their future. He tells her about the lawyer’s plan to prevent their ruin at Isabel’s hand. Thea makes the dig that it’s Oliver’s fault, that he let her ruin them. He doesn’t deny it. She sees the papers that it says Thea Queen, that she’s no Queen, she’s a Merlin. Oliver tells her that their father loved her, and so does he. She realizes that she tried to kiss her half brother Tommy, before her father killed him. Her life finally seemed in order, when this truth was exposed. She’s the daughter of two mass murderers, and no matter what her life was never going to be okay. Thea walks away, and Digg comes to Oliver to discuss their security breach before he can go after her.

Slade wasn’t there to kill them, he was after something. Felicity tells him that Slade took the Skeleton Key, it’s the only thing missing. They just need to figure out which laboratory has the technology Slade needs.

Star Labs has an impressive layout, but Dr. Wells is getting shut down after their little unregulated prototypes. Caitlyn beats herself up about what the company did, and Cisco tells her to not be so hard on herself. The two go to investigate a noise, it is a security guard. They tell him that they’re almost done when he falls over dead. DeathStroke is the culprit, and the pair make a break for it. He stalks them all Pepe LePew style, slow and steady. Caitlyn has a plan, and runs to some equipment to stop him. She leaves her life in Cisco’s hand. He blasts Deathstroke which takes him down long enough for them to get away, but he’s found what he’s looking for so he doesn’t give chase, just carts off the item before Arrow and Canary arrive. They barely miss him. Laurel spots them in the parking lot.

Felicity and Digg arrive at the crime scene. She knows Caitlyn and Cisco, asks if they’re okay. Caitlyn picks on her “he” comments. Caitlyn asks if she knows who attacked them. Felicity lamely stammers about hearing man parts on the scanner. Dig introduces himself as Queen consolidated security. Caitlyn won’t spill about what was taken, its top ssecret. Felicity asks about Barry, filling Digg in that he’s been moved to Star Labs, which is how they all met. Cisco tells Felicity that Barry gets lots of visitors, including Iris, his “something.”

Felicity hacks into Harrison Well’s files, Director of Star Labs. She finds a biotransfusor, an experimental device, hence the hush hush. It would allow a blood transfusion to multiple people at the same time. Not because Slade needs a blood transfusion. He can retrofit the machine to metabolize the Mirakuru and up the number of successes. Digg points that even with Slade’s stamina it’ll still take a lot of blood for that type of operation. Oliver wants to let Slade use it, he’ll be weak and vulnerable. Felicity reasons that with the high power drain caused by the machine, she’ll be able to pinpoint its location when its flipped on.

Past. Anatoly doesn’t believe Ivo, thinks he’s just stalling to save his life. Sara tries to reach Ivo, get him to tell her about the cure. Ivo says he wants to help, but she has to help him too. Oliver tells him that she can’t save his life, but he knows she can’t he’s dying. All he wants is a quick death, though he doesn’t deserve one. He was never able to reproduce the original Mirakuru, but he was able to make cure for the version he produced. He gives Sara the key to his safe which houses the cure. With his end of the deal done, Sara reaches for her gun to complete hers.

Isabel isn’t exactly welcoming. Oliver asks for Slade’s location, urging her to do the right thing. She thinks her position shows that she did the right thing, she earned it. Oliver questions if sleeping with his father qualified as earning her position. His father fooled around with a lot of girls, but she was more than a passing fling. Slade put her through hell training her, and she didn’t do it because she was a jilted lover. Oliver isn’t really sure what Isabel is. She proclaims herself his father’s soulmate, says he planned to leave Moira, leave the company, and leave him. Their bags were packed when Thea broke her arm, Oliver remembers that Thea fell off her horse. Isabel begged him not to go, reminded him that Thea wasn’t his. He knew the whole time, he was a fool, not an idiot, and he loved her anyways. Oliver’s father terminated her internship the next day and she never saw him again. In the end he chose his family over her. Security arrives, and Isabel orders them to escort Oliver off the premises. He’s no longer welcome in her building. Oliver goes with no fight. He calls Thea. He needs five minutes of her time. She grudgingly makes the date with him. Digg tells him that someone reached out to Arrow, wants a meeting with him, Laurel.

A guard comes to check on Quinton, when a prisoner causes a disturbance knocking out the guards. He’s angered that Detective Lance and Arrow put him in  jail, and gives him a welcome with a night stick before the other guards can restrain him.

Arrow meets with Laurel. He’s sorry to hear that her father is in jail. That’s not what she’s here about. She’s always felt a connection to Arrow, and she never questioned it. She’s not asking why now either, she knows the answer. Sara calls about her father.

At the jail, Laurel slides past the DA, who claims that her father was in protective custody, but Laurel knows there is no protective custody there. She’s tired of seeing her family in hospitals, and she asks her sister to leave for a moment. She tells Quinton that she knows who the Arrow is, but he tells her not to say anything. He tells her that there was a time he would have done anything to know his identity, but now he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want him to be humanized. He needs him to be a superhero, to not worry about if he’s being put into danger. It’s what the city needs, it’s the Arrow that matters, not the man under the hood. He tells her the least he can do is sit there and do a little bit of time for him. Laurel approaches the DA, and demands that they drop the charges against her father. She’s prepared to make a new career of being a pain in the DA’s ass. The DA cows to Laurel, but warns her to pick her future battles wisely. Sara congratulates her sister on a job well done, before heading back into to see their father.

Thea meets Oliver behind the club, but they’re interrupted by his phone before he can start. It’s Felicity with news that Slade’s machine has been plugged in. Although he only has a short amount of time to get there, she doesn’t want him to go. If he doesn’t get Thea to sign those documents, his family loses everything, but if he doesn’t stop Slade everyone loses a lot more. His decision is made, but it doesn’t matter, Thea is already gone, she’s made hers too.

Arrow leaps into action, and finds a whole lot of bodies hooked up to the machine, The process has already been started with the prisoners, but it’s not Slade they’re using to extract the blood from, its Roy. He goes to unplug him, but Slade cautions him to not unplug him. It would likely kill him. After Oliver crushed him, they found him in a shelter, and he didn’t put up a fight. Slade warns him that if he knew the power of the Mirakuru he would know that he does not fear an arrow, and soon he won’t be alone. Arrow cuts off the power, and sets about sling off more at Isabel and Slade. Isabel takes up her gun, and fires some shots until Arrow disarms her with an arrow. The pair converges on him, Arrow throws Isabel and he manages to shoot Slade with an exploding arrow, disabling him. He goes to unhook Roy, and Isabel takes aim, but Digg is there shooting her before she can pull her trigger. Arrow grabs Roy and they make their getaway.

Back at Team Arrow headquarters, Roy is still asleep, Sara is unsure what the biotransfuser did to him. She tells them that he needs a real doctor, but they can’t do that. It’s a waiting game they’re forced to play. Oliver retrieved a Mirakuru sample to engineer a cure. Felicity isn’t sure that its possible, but Oliver knows that it is. Five years ago he had the option to use the cure on Slade, but he chose to kill him, everything that is happening is his fault.

Past. Ivo saved Sara once, and now he wants her to do the same, and pull the trigger. Oliver stops her. Ivo was once a good man, until the Mirakuru drove him mad he says. Oliver shoots him midsentence. Sara tells him that he didn’t have to do that for her. He tells her that once you take a life it changes you forever. He asks the group if any know how to pilot a submarine.

Thea has packed her bags. Moira tries to stop her. Oliver is there, and he asks if he can speak to her now. He tells her that their father knew the truth. Whatever his faults where, he loved all of them, they were his family, and no blood tests were going to change that fact. He chose them above all. Thea says that tells her that he was a liar like they are.

Felicity brings the Mirakuru to Caitlyn and Cisco. She needs a favor, and this time it’ll be their secret.

Oliver stares at a picture of his family. Laurel comes to see him, and she says nothing, just hugs him. She tells him that he’s important to him.

Slade shakily stumbles away from the machine. He’s changed Isabel. His army is complete.