Everyone is searching for Ricardo Diaz as the Dragon looks to steal some high-tech ARGUS weaponry.
Previously on ARROW…
Last week’s season premiere was so strong that it mitigates some of this week’s weaker moments, but I thought the second episode of ARROW‘s seventh season was a bit of a letdown.
Ricardo Diaz continues to be the bogeyman that haunts Oliver Queen’s former teammates in Star City, most notably his wife, Felicity, and the Earth 2 Laurel. Felicity is not handling Diaz’s attack last week very well and continues to interfere in ARGUS investigations to try an hunt him down. This doesn’t sit well with Diggle or Curtis, who are both working for ARGUS and who like their jobs.
Meanwhile, Dinah is babysitting Laurel, who is slipping away from her police detail to hunt Diaz so she can be the one to kill him.
Both groups end up fighting members of the Longbow Hunters, the assassins/bodyguards/criminals that Diaz hired to take out Oliver toward the tail end of the sixth season. They were never seen then, but we get a good look at them this week, as the for Team Arrow takes them on in separate battles.
The assassins are made up of three fairly obscure characters: The Red Dart, Kodiak and The Silencer. Kodiak and the female Red Dart were created by Geekery favorites Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentio during their run on the character during the NEW 52 era. The Red Dart actually WAS a member of the Longbow Hunters during Lemire’s run, while Kodiak was the leader of the Shield Clan and, appropriately, uses a shield as a weapon in this episode. The third member, The Silencer, was created for a series that debuted earlier this year and has no discernible connection to Green Arrow in the comics. Her ability, though, to make everything around her go silent, was useful in a battle with Black Canary’s sonic scream.
Over at Slabside Prison (what a terrible prison name, by the way), Oliver tries to get information on Diaz from the trio of criminals who tried to kill him last week – Brick, Bronze Tiger and The Criminal Formerly Known As Stardust. Brick still wants Oliver to join up with them, and tells Oliver to kill a guard in exchange for the info he wants. After trying things Felicity’s way – by hacking a prison computer to find literally nothing helpful – he does things the Oliver way. He frames the guard for shanking him and the guy gets taken away.
The guard may have been a dick, but he had a family and was a good prison guard, by all accounts. Now he’s gonna be suspended at best. Oliver’s a great guy.
In the end, everyone’s plans are foiled and Diaz gets away and Felicity FINALLY does something she should have done a while ago – she goes to FBI Special Agent Watson to call bullshit on the deal she made with Oliver, sending him to prison in exchange for taking down Diaz. But instead of demanding her husband be released from prison, at least until Watson is taken down, she tells Watson that the two of them are going to take down Diaz themselves.
Felicity is an idiot.
Back on the island of the future, William tells Roy he was directed there by the Arrowhead rock Felicity gave him in the season premiere, which leads to a buried bow. There, Roy finds a hidden message, which he burns before William can see it. And then, it his best Dr. Jack Shepherd from LOST voice, he tells William “We have to go back… to Star City!” Do they also go back in time so William can be the new Green Arrow seen last week?
I guess we have to keep watching.