ARROW Gets Dizzy with Twists!

Episode 207 “State vs. Queen”

[photos: Jack Rowand/CW]

Well, now! Didn’t quite see that one coming…

Stylistically, some elements of The Dark Knight Returns, with the news stories crossing over between story threads. In addition to the S.T.A.R. Labs element being dropped in every now and again. That particle accelerator will be a big deal at some point soon.

There’s two stories here: Count Vertigo escaping and Moira Queen’s trial. Let’s cover the Vertigo thread first, because the other one gets a little twisty. We get a flashback to show how he got out (and we also get to see the Dollmaker thread payoff), and then we’re in present day where Count Vertigo is poisoning the city with flu vaccines. Diggle is affected, as is the Assistant District Attorney working first chair on Moira’s trial. When he’s abducted, Team Arrow uses Felicity’s magic computer box to do some quite remarkable things they probably couldn’t do in real life, and Arrow gets to save the ADA and blow up Vertigo’s lab without killing anyone.

This disappoints the Count, to say the least.

Turns out, Vertigo was set up to draw Arrow out in the open. By Sebastian Blood. Who looks to have figured out the formula for his drug. Certain test subjects have survived and are feeling quite a bit better. This is probably going to have something to do with Miraclo, but it’s not clear how yet.

Speaking of which, in flashbacks we get to see Shado and a badly mutilated Slade rescue Ollie and Sara from Ivo and his Amazo crew. There’s an arrowhead Ivo needs in order to find that missing sub. Shado’s got it, and on the back are coordinates to find the boat. This “miracle cure” for what ails you might be Slade’s ticket to recovery, Oliver thinks.

Meantime, back in present day, Felicity and Diggle have tracked down how Vertigo’s getting people addicted to Vertigo — using mobile flu shot trucks. So she takes it upon herself to investigate and gets caught. The resulting hostage situation is taut and well-performed, but as soon as Oliver walked in without the hood up, I knew Vertigo wasn’t going to survive the encounter.

Sure enough, he didn’t. Felicity did, though, badly shaken and convinced she was going to die before her crush showed up.

Olicity shippers were no doubt having fits about the couple of moments where it looked like something’s brewing beneath the surface for them both. Maybe not so deep for Felicity. She wears her feelings on her sleeve, so it’s easy to see she’s got a thing for her boss. Oliver’s still hard to read sometimes, although the show seems to be taking them down the road to a future tryst of some sort. Maybe they’ll regret it, or maybe they’ll go for a while…

Oliver already has feelings of regret because he was forced to kill again. Despite the fact that it was Felicity’s life on the line, and she feels terrible about being the reason he had to do it, he knows it was his only choice. Which may be an entry point for more trick arrows, but otherwise it just gives us a little more angst to deal with. It also gives Amell and Richards a chance to play a different kind of scene — this one actually has a tender side mixed with regret. And is that regret only because he had to kill Vertigo? Or is there something more for Oliver he’s not letting out? Remember what he said to her after Russia…

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the hour, we’ve got Moira’s trial. This is one of those pieces of the story where I was completely bounced out by the fact that the District Attorney has Laurel anywhere near this case. Her relationship to Oliver, the fact that she holds Ollie responsible for the “death” of her sister and subsequent breakup of her family, the fact that she had Moira’s daughter at CNRI as an intern, the fact that she was dating one of the victims of the earthquake… in the real world, this is called “conflict of interest” and would be grounds for Laurel to be removed from this case — either by the DA or by Laurel herself. The fact that she didn’t recuse herself means the writers probably didn’t have anything else for her to do, since her only other story line right now is turning into a drunk who takes pills.

Really, Arrow, get Laurel into the fishnets soon. She’s the least interesting character on the show, and she’s supposed to be the Black Canary, for Pete’s sake!

Granted, there’s a throwaway scene to establish that Laurel’s actually working from the inside to help Moira by keeping ADA Donner from going full-bore in the prosecution, but when she has to take the first chair in the case (again, Laurel should have said “no”) and learns the silver bullet Donner has — the fact that Moira and Malcolm had an affair — she violates all sorts of legal rules and such by visiting Moira on the sly — as a friend — to tell the defendant not to testify on her own behalf. Because Laurel has this information, which she shares with Moira — again, in violation of how many rules? — to get her to stay quiet.

Moira, instead, tells the kids before they find out in court, and testifies anyway.

Now, here’s where it gets twisty. Moira gets acquitted of everything — everything — and gets to go free to a frenzy of media coverage outside the courtroom. Oliver knows there’s something hinky going on. Moira should have gotten something for her involvement, whether coerced or not, and the fact that she walked away scot free seems off base enough that Oliver is likely to look into it. Or have Felicity do it.

Good to see Teryl Tothery back as Jean Loring, although every time I see her I ask “Where’s Ray Palmer?”

But the real twist comes at the end of this episode, when we find out — gasp! — Malcolm Merlyn is still alive! And — double gasp! — did he hint at the Lazurus Pit? Or did he just admit to a skill in pretending to be dead? And then — triple gasp! — Thea Queen is actually the daughter of Malcolm Merlyn!

What the what?

>>>>

[Official Show Site at CW]     [Previous Recap: “Keep Your Enemies Closer”]