Roy Harper is back in Star City, but it’s not the kind of reunion Team Arrow would have liked!

Previously, on ARROW

The last few episodes of the show have really been dragged down by the annoying petulance of The Terrifics, who are so annoyed by being placed under surveillance from Team Arrow that they can’t be bothered to see how badly they behaved. But this week, the sniping between the two teams is at a minimum. In fact Wild Dog, the worst offender, doesn’t appear at all while he recovers from the beating he took last episode, and Mr. Terrific’s role is limited to telling Wild Dog’s daughter that her daddy is hurt but will be OK.

The only member of the team to get much of any screen time this week is Black Canary, in her role as police detective Dinah Drake, and she gets shut down pretty hard from Oliver & Company. Oliver brings her in to let her know that Diaz killed Cayden James, which means Diaz has a lot of SCPD cops on his payroll, so Dinah agrees to work with Quentin to get more information. Oliver, though, makes it clear he doesn’t trust her and is fine without her when she offers to help on a mission. It’s nice to see Team Arrow show some justifiable frustration with the offshoot team for once.

With minimal involvement from the junior team, the 15th episode of the season was actually really great. It advanced the season arc, had some great action and included a guest appearance from Colton Haynes, reprising the role of Arsenal/Roy Harper. When the district attorney tells Oliver and his attorney, Jean Loring, that Roy will serve as a new witness in the case against Oliver Queen, it sets off the meat of the episode, as Team Arrow tries to track Roy down and rescue him from being held as a prisoner of Ricardo Diaz. Bringing Harper back to testify against Oliver is Diaz’s latest tactic in his machinations to take over Star City.

It’s not the only plan Diaz sets into motion this episode, though, as he also sets the Earth-2 Laurel Lance up to infiltrate Team Arrow, under the guise of wanting a second chance and acting more like the dead Laurel of this Earth would. Laurel convinces the team that she’s on their side against Diaz, but some Sirens don’t change their tune, as we find out towards the end of the episode.

Roy doesn’t really get to do much this episode, as he’s either being held captive or recovering from the beatings Diaz’s men inflected on him. Instead, Thea decides to put the Speedy mask back on to rescue him, giving us a nice reunion for the couple. Oliver stresses to his sister that she should go to find her happiness with Roy, which will likely lead to her exit from the show.

I’m hoping we get more episodes like this as we approach the final batch of episodes for season 6. And yes, I do mean less appearances from The Terrifics.