Previously on ARROW

Oliver Queen continues on his Star City apology tour this week, going on television after polls show that his association with the police department is not a popular move. But the bigger problem comes from the son of Robert Queen’s bodyguard, who Robert killed on the life raft after the Queen’s Gambit sank.

When Oliver returned from the island after people thought he was dead for 5 years, it gave Sam Hackett hope that his father could be alive, too. But when he gets hold of the transcripts of Oliver’s psych sessions when he was at Slabside, his anger at the Queen family bubbles up again. While he has a lot of feelings to work through toward Oliver and his dad, he takes it out on everyone who he feels is enabling Oliver. So Sam kidnaps the TV host who interviews him and boobytraps the SCPD to try and get the cops to kill Oliver.

Oliver tries to reason with him and tries to apologize for his father’s actions, but I really think another tactic would have been better: Maybe he should have explained that while Robert shot Sam’s dad, the Queen’s Gambit only went down because Oliver’s mother was working with Malcolm Merlyn as they tried to enact a plot to destroy the city. “It’s not my dad you should be pissed at. It’s my mom. And Deathstroke put a sword through her, so maybe you should calm the hell down.”

Seriously, Oliver has suffered enough with his family. I feel like it’s inevitable that Moira Queen shows back up at some point, having been revived by a Lazarus Pit. That may be too comic book-like for ARROW, though.

Dinah manages to shoot the electrical system Sam rigged and Oliver takes him down and Oliver goes back on TV to announce more “Confessions From the Island,” and once again promising transparency. His actions at the SCPD, though, gives him another opportunity to talk to his newly-discovered half-sister Emiko, who now seems more open to getting to know her half-brother.

While Oliver’s poll numbers need some help, Star City District Attorney Earth-2 Laurel Lance is experiencing the opposite, as the TV news called her the most popular DA the city has had in decades. But the popularity comes at a price – she has a stalker. Turns out that the stalker is the same person who killed Earth-2 Quentin Lance in a car accident. Laurel assumes he jumped from Earth-2 to Earth-1 to torment her, and she goes off the rails a bit, trying to kill him until Felicity talks her down.

Obviously, seeing the guy who killed her dad would be traumatic, but it would be weird for that guy to travel between Earths, since even Laurel admits he wasn’t evil – just a drunkard. The Earth-1 version is more of a piece of garbage, though, and Dinah tells Laurel he got arrested. Felicity adds that Cisco checked on his Earth-2 counterpart and assures Laurel that he’s dead. All’s well that end’s well, I suppose.

Finally, over at ARGUS, Curtis and Diggle continue to bicker over the Ghost initiative – I guess we’re back to not being able to use the term “Suicide Squad” or “Task Force X” – specifically the bombs in the necks of Ricardo Diaz, Cupid, the son of Slade Wilson and China White. So Curtis develops a virtual reality protocol to keep everyone in line, which he experiments on Diaz, to some shocking effects. But Diggle won’t disable the bombs. He’s probably right, but Curtis tells him he plans on being a pain in everyone’s side about it.

The pace has slowed down considerably since the season kicked off, and next week, we celebrate the show’s 150th episode! Will it be another trip down memory lane? Tune in next week!