Previously on ARROW

After Earth-2 Black Siren Laurel Lance was outed last week as having worked with Ricardo Diaz, basically blowing up her spot as Star City’s District Attorney, the faux Laurel has decided to say “screw it” to her attempts to be one of the good guys. She teams up with a criminal known as Shadow Thief, who she met while working for Diaz, and starts tearing up the town in her black leather outfit.

When ARROW first started, this would have resulted in multiple episodes of angst as Oliver tried to figure out what to do with someone who was trying to be an ally. That she looked like his former girlfriend would have added to the existential crisis before he finally tried to take her down.

Alas, this is not the ARROW of old. Heck, Oliver barely appeared in this episode, as the focus was put on his wife, Felicity, and her refusal to give up on the woman who has become her friend over the course of the season. But Laurel isn’t making it easy, setting Felicity and Dinah Drake – the current Black Canary – up as Laurel and Shadow Thief commit their crimes. So as it seems like Laurel is too far gone, Felicity makes a hail Mary play and brings Sara Lance in off the Waverider.

Bringing in the White Canary is an odd long shot, since this Laurel isn’t actually Sara’s sister, just a reasonable facsimile that would rather be out creating chaos than being a good person. The gamble pays off, though, and the combination of Sara and Felicity appealing to Laurel’s better angels has her turn against Shadow Thief, foiling the destructive plans and making sure that no one dies.

The end result, though, probably wasn’t what Felicity was hoping for. Laurel decides that if she’s really going to give this whole “being good” thing a go, she has to do it back on Earth 2. So Felicity still manages to lose her friend.

It’s not forever, though, as Laurel makes a return in the flash-forward. That’s literally all I remember from this week’s jaunt to 2040, though. The impact of the future stories has really been blunted as the story has gone on, and ARROW’s final season has been announced as 10 episodes in the fall and Emily Bett Rickards saying she won’t be part of the show for season 8. The show is really locking its characters into a pretty negative space, and it casts a pall on the rest of the series, at least for me.

But this episode was still fun… when I wasn’t tuning out the flash forwards. Having Caity Lotz back as Sara Lance was great. She really added some great moments to a great episode. And the camaraderie between Rickards, Lotz, Katie Cassidy and Juliana Harkavy really elevated this episode beyond what it should have been as a throw-away episode before the final run of the season.