A drugged Oliver is all alone and going a little crazy as he’s losing the war to keep his job and to defeat The Dragon.

Previously, on ARROW

After Diggle, his last ally in the field, decided to find his own mission at the end of last week’s episode, Oliver is faced with the challenge of taking down RIcardo Diaz – The Dragon – all by himself. On top of that, the Star City City Council has decided to convene impeachment hearings after Oliver fired the district attorney and police chief, both of whom were on Diaz’s payroll.

This would be the worst possible time for Oliver to be dosed with the drug Vertigo and have hallucinations of an old enemy, prompting him to make some bad decisions. So, of course, that’s what happens. While meeting with a member of the council – who is, of course, also on Diaz’s payroll, the councilman drugs the Mayor. As the hearing approaches, Oliver has a conversation with Adrian Chase, last year’s big bad as PROMETHEUS, who eggs on Oliver’s worst impulses.

Despite Felicity getting evidence linking Diaz to the DA and the police captain, there was no way to explain how he got it without outing himself as the Green Arrow, which doesn’t make the Council very happy.

With everything going to hell for him, Oliver dons his original Hood costume and heads for the Star City Police headquarters, where Diaz holes up for 45 minutes every night, intent on confronting the source of all his problems. Unfortunately, Diaz is holed up behind a wall of trigger happy corrupt cops, ready to blow Green Arrow away. If not for Felicity’s timely intervention, risking her life to talk Oliver down from the ledge, Oliver would have been a goner.

After his near-death experience, with the City Council deciding to impeach him as Mayor, Oliver decides it’s time to go it alone again, just like his original mission, and tells his wife that her services are no longer needed in the Arrow Cave.

Let’s recount all the ways this is a contrived, and very dumb, scenario. Despite the personal issues within the former Team Arrow and the tensions with THE TERRIFICS, all of the heroes on the show have reasons to want to take Diaz down. Working separately – Oliver, The Terrifics and Diggle with ARGUS – doesn’t cause a three-pronged offensive against the criminal. It just causes confusion among the heroes and gives The Dragon an advantage. Instead of coordinating attacks to take him down, they’re all letting Diaz – and Cayden James before him – sow dissent among them, and they should all be smarter than that by now.

At this point, Diaz, who is basically a low-level street thug who got lucky, looks like an unbeatable bastard, and unless our heroes figure out how to come together, he’s going to take them all out. Next week, The Dragon looks to expand his power base.