Arrow #4.3: “Restoration” Quickshot Recap

Written By: Wendy Mericle & Speed Weed
Directed By: Wendey Stanzler
Series Episode: 72
Airdate: October 21, 2015
Guests: Curtis Holt ( Echo Kellum ), Nyssa al Ghul ( Katrina Law ), Jeremy Tell/Double Down ( JR Bourne ), Mina Fayad ( Carmen Moore )
Flashback Guests: Unnamed Woman [perhaps Taiana] ( Elysia Rotaru ), Conklin ( Ryan Robbins )
Special Appearance: Damien Darhk ( Neal McDonough )
Special Guests: Sara Lance ( Caity Lotz )

Act One

Diggle and Oliver chase some ghosts through a lumber yard, of all places — Vancouver, you’re showing a bit to much skin — and one gets the jump on Diggle yet doesn’t take the shot. Oliver chases another on motorcycle until he’s blown off by a rando explosion. For the first time this season, we get to see the effects of Stephen Amell’s summer sojourn into the WWE world: his tongue injury makes for a funny line reading when he radios back to Felicity for help. She remote powers a clawing device and impedes the Ghost’s way, giving time for Diggle to get a hand on him. A hand to the mouth, that is, to do a quick bit of dental surgery and yank the guy’s cynaide-filled tooth before he has a chance to off himself. A stun gun gets him free, and Oliver and Diggle tuck tale and return to base. Felicity tries to rally the “Original Team Arrow” into a happy hour but Diggle wants no part and leaves. Oliver’s done trying to put things right.

Over in sunny Nanda Parbat, Malcolm and Nyssa trade sword strikes in “practice” and she openly threatens to take him down. Thea and Laurel show up with Sara’s low-rent coffin, and Laurel demands Malcolm bring her sister back to life. Demands mean little to Malcolm and certainly even less to Ra’s al Ghul in his home, and he explains that the Lazarus Pit bringing back someone from the dead is only but rumor in the League. Nyssa bristles at the suggestion, and Malcolm tries to delicately dissuade her by pointing out they don’t know the kind of monster Sara could become by use of the Pit. Cut to uncomfortable Thea.

At home, Diggle finds Lyla and baby Sara gone, but one of Lyla’s old A.R.G.U.S. cohorts in their place. He hands Diggle information on Mina Fayad, the woman with H.I.V.E. who hired Floyd Lawton to kill Diggle’s brother. She’s in Star City right now. Fayad meets with Damien Darhk to introduce him to Jeremy Tell, an assassin hired by the rest of H.I.V.E. to take down the Star City heroes because they are tired of waiting for Darhk to do it. Not really thrilled at the idea, Darhk still tests Tell’s skill on the Ghost who escaped from Oliver and Diggle. Tell quickly ends the Ghost’s life … with three playing cards to the chest. Darhk is pleased and amused.

Act Two

Laurel refuses to give up on resurrecting Sara. Nyssa tries to talk her out of it, insisting that what she’s doing is selfishly out of grief rather than love. Back in Star City, Felicity has tried to get DNA from the tooth Diggle pulled from the Ghost to identify the man but finds it impractically only has half of the genetic markers of a living human being. She and Oliver are both baffled when alert of a heist at an auto parts store sends Green Arrow out into the night. Felicity tries to call Diggle in for back-up, but he’s tailing Fayad and doesn’t respond.

GA finds the robbers killed and learns it’s a trap set by Tell, who is a metahuman pulling playing cards from the tattoos on his skin to use as weapons. Oliver does pretty well against fending off the onslaught, but which seems to be becoming a theme this season, he’s soon overwhelmed by the attack and has to escape, a card lodged into his arm. Meanwhile, Diggle gets discovered by one of Fayad’s men, and is soon awash in the sparks of bullets against metal as he’s showered with gunplay by her guards as they get her safely away in a limo.

Act Three

Malcolm talks to Thea about the bloodlust she now feels, telling her that the Pit doesn’t just restore health and life but also takes some of each user like the worst residual body film in a hot tub. When healing someone, it can infuse the essence of the others into a person, leading to the insanity. His solution: kill people, kill them all. Like a vampire, a kill abates the bloodlust for a short while and Malcolm thinks his daughter should get used to shedding some blood now and then to curb her urges. Looking for an actual rational, human response, Thea tells her dad to stuff it. You want more normal daddy advice, he says, there’s a mystic sage in the mountains who might be able to take away the problem. They’ll go in the morning.

At the base, Felicity patches up Oliver and is concerned he dealt with a metahuman, who Cisco informed her they call Double Down, alone. She flips her lid at Oliver and Diggle about both nearly getting themselves killed by not working together and decrees that they aren’t leaving the room without working through their differences once and for all. And she’ll find a bunch of Mirakuru soldiers to beat some sense into them, if she has to. Oliver is unsure why someone as forgiving as John isn’t doing so, and John bellows that it isn’t about forgiveness but about crossing an uncrossable line and the ever-present thought that he could just as easily do it again. Oliver completely understands but begs to know why John won’t even give him the chance to earn back his trust. Diggle offers an olive branch: asks if the meta is connected to Darhk. Oliver’s doesn’t know but says Double Down mentioned working for a woman named Fayad. Ding Ding Ding! Diggle knows a way Oliver can help.

Felicity goes to see Curtis Holt to find out more about Tell’s cards. While in the lab, she notices some weird glitch with her phone. Diggle takes Oliver to his place and hands him his H.I.V.E. journal, two years worth of information Diggle has, um, dug up on the group. Oliver is surprised Diggle kept the secret from him and remarks that they’re more alike than John would admit. They know Fayad is a substantial lead. She is with Darhk and Tell as Damien dresses them both down for the night’s failures. Darhk demands another demonstration of Tell’s ability … on himself. When Tell throws the card, Darhk manipulates it with his magic. Darhk recounts to Fayad how the other leaders of H.I.V.E. think of Darhk’s abilities as rumor and tricks. He shows that’s not the case by killing her with the card. The demo was to properly motivate Tell to do his job.

In Nanda Parbat, Thea is attacked by League members in her sleep. She handily takes them out, killing them. Malcolm appears to give her a “Flawless Victory” and says she will be good to go on the bloodlust for a few weeks now. She realizes the bit about the sage was bogus, and Malcolm says the only fix is to get revenge on the person who hurt her. With the previous Ra’s al Ghul dead, that leaves Thea in a pickle. A bloody, killy pickle, Malcolm contends.

Act Four

Felicity tracks Fayad’s phone to a location that Oliver and Diggle investigate. They find the woman’s body tied to a chair with a card in her mouth. Oliver apologizes for the lost opportunity, but Diggle owns up that if he’d told Oliver earlier about everything that he could’ve helped and prevented this. Though silly tongue returns, Oliver vows that Diggle is no longer alone in getting to the truth and getting justice for his brother.

Thea rousts Laurel to go with Malcolm in tow, trying to convince her he can help. Thea wants nothing to do with him, so Malcolm relents about Sara. He’ll resurrect her to ease her conscience and help both Thea and Laurel out. At Palmer Tech, Felicity checks in with Curtis on the card. He determined it’s not a card but something organic, and she wonders if he could track it back to its source. It’s possible but, Curtis offers, more likely that the guy with the cards would be able to track this one down easier. As Felicity realizes her mistake, Double Down appears looking for the Green Arrow. They run to a secret elevator that takes them down to the team’s base below the building, and Felicity has to admit to Curtis that she works with GA. Somehow, Tell not only finds a way into the base but makes it down there nearly as quick as the elevator and attacks the two. Curtis is knocked unconscious but Felicity manages to wound Tell with some decidedly untrained gun work.

Act Five

Oliver and Diggle return to base, concerned for Felicity. She’s fine and got Curtis off to the hospital. She’s able to trace Tell from his card and finds him on the road back to Central City. Oliver and Diggle intercede, and when Tell nearly hits Diggle with one of his card, Oliver jumps in front and takes the hit. Diggle knocks Tell out and appreciatively helps Oliver to his feet.

Nyssa protests as the others lower Sara into the Pit. It doesn’t appear to work, at first, but then a reanimated Sara emerges from the water. Nyssa is heartbroken as the other stare on in awe. Then, just as with Thea, Sara super-springs from the Pit and begins to attack some of the League. Malcolm manages to subdue her with some type of drug as Laurel attempts to calm her down.

The Tag

At a restaurant, Felicity toasts the “OTA” and says Cisco got Double Down into the metahuman lock-up at Iron Heights. Diggle says Tell’s too afraid of Darhk to give up any information, but Felicity wonders if Tell told Darhk about their base. Oliver eases their minds by offering he has a surprise for them regarding “Lair 3.0.” At Palmer Tech, a recovered Curtis puts his lab back together. Felicity thanks him for his help and for telling people the lab mess was an experiment go awry. He’s happy to know that his boss is working for someone helping the city like he wants to. Felicity notices her phone is buggy again, and then a message appears in all the chaos: her name.

The beast Sara is chained at the end of a hall. Laurel attempts to talk to her like she’s just come back from vacation when Sara lunges at her. Thea and Malcolm check on them, and when Laurel tries to rationalize Sara’s behavior, Malcolm is quick to say that none of them have any clue as to what the hell is going on with her. Malcolm is called to the Pit room where they all discover that Nyssa has poisoned the Pit, ending any further use of it. She vows she will kill Malcolm and there will be no coming back from it. Angrily, Malcolm orders her detained. As she’s dragged from the room, Nyssa fits Laurel for the guilty suit over what happens next with Sara. No more milkshakes.

Oliver stands guard when a woman forced to work the poppy fields chides him for rumors of him being a rich boy marooned on the island but used to ordering people around. A man tries to run for his freedom but Oliver manages to take him down. While Oliver tries to handle it gently, one of the other soldiers, Conklin, insists that these slaves only respond to violence. They find out the runner was a distraction so that someone could steal some of the drug SLAM, a genetic hybrid of heroin poppy and coca leaf, from the operation’s stores. Conklin rounds up the workers to find out who did it.

Conklin kills the runner in front of all of the workers. As he prepares to shoot another to get people to talk, Oliver tells Conklin he has another way. Oliver tortures one of the workers, figuring his skill will at least be better than people losing their lives. The woman from earlier can’t take it and admits to taking the SLAM to give to people to ease their pain. With what she took gone, Conklin prepares to shoot her but Oliver contends that Reiter wouldn’t like losing his workforce. Conklin thinks it would be justified and Oliver convinces him that he’ll take her someplace where he can “disappear” her so Reiter won’t find out what happened.

Oliver takes her into the woods and leads a guard sent with them into a landmine. He assures her he won’t kill her, but that she needs to trust him. She agrees and he leads her off.

Three Quick Thoughts

• At what point did it occur to Laurel that this is bad, bad, very bad?
• It was a nice little talk, but did Diggle give in to Oliver maybe a hair too quickly?
• Ray reaching out to Felicity by her phone whenever she’s in the lab is a great touch.