Arrow #4.4: “Beyond Redemption” Quickshot Recap

Written By: Beth Schwartz & Ben Sokolowski
Directed By: Lexi Alexander
Series Episode: 73
Airdate: October 28, 2015
Guests: Curtis Holt ( Echo Kellum ), Liza Warner/Lady Cop ( Rutina Wesley )
Flashback Guests: Unnamed Woman [perhaps Taiana] ( Elysia Rotaru ), Conklin ( Ryan Robbins )
Special Appearance: Damien Darhk ( Neal McDonough )
Special Guests: Sara Lance ( Caity Lotz )

Teaser

A hefty drug deal is going down but gets broken up by a heavily outfitted group of SCPD cops. They begin to collect the drugs and money, seemingly for evidence, when a pair of narcotics detectives show up on the scene to make the same bust. The narcs are confused as to why these other cops are there, but questions aren’t good for one’s health, apparently. The SWAT-like cops open fire on the narcs and kill them. They bug out with their loot.

Act One

Team Arrow checks out some new digs that are actually old and familiar: the former campaign office of Sebastian Blood. They’re baffled as to why they would have a new lair above ground and out in the open like this, but more so by a big announcement Oliver is supposed to make to them. Oliver and Felicity arrive and Thea nearly starts humming “Here Comes the Bride,” assuming that Oliver’s news is that he proposed, and looks for the ring that isn’t there, nearly spoiling the possibility. Instead, Oliver announces he’s running for mayor, confusing the others. While they try to wrap their heads around it and practice more enthusiastic and supportive responses, Oliver reveals part two of their surprise: Felicity bought the building with Palmer Tech money because Blood had his own secret lair below it. A hidden elevator ride down reveals the all-new Arrow bunker, a spiffy and roomy new place marred only by a few random technical glitches.

To business! Felicity discovers the drug raid with the dead narcs. Diggle and Thea go to investigate while Oliver heads off to talk to Lance, who is frustrated by budget cuts that aren’t allowing his cops to do their jobs. Oliver says he might be able to help that in the near future by becoming mayor; he’d like Lance’s endorsement. Of course, Lance doesn’t see it, forever pinning Oliver in that box of irresponsibility. Lance gets a text from Laurel that they need to talk and he hands some evidence over to Oliver to see if maybe the team can help him out with it.

At Palmer Tech, Curtis Holt is checking his theory on who the Green Arrow is with Felicity, spectacularly getting it wrong. (But a fun comics reference.) Her phone goes wonky again and she tries to call Curtis out on some prank, considering it only happens in this lab. Curtis looks and recognizes the code, a two-year-old code that Ray Palmer was fond of. Some quick bibbity-boppity-beep-boop on the computer and Curtis is able to guess that this might be a message Ray left just prior to his death. The thought saddens Felicity and she says she doesn’t want to find out.

Later at the bunker, Felicity determines Lance’s evidence is a SIM card from a walkie talkie. Tracing it leads the team to a hidden weapons cache that has a bunch of SCPD gear in it. They’re disturbed to think that corrupt cops killed the narcs. Meanwhile, Lance visits Laurel, who takes him to the basement of her apartment building. There, he finds his youngest daughter, back from the dead, and chained to the wall.

Act Two

Lance is incredulous, confused by what dark forces could’ve done this. Laurel explains about the Lazarus Pit, then blindly proceeds to engage the feral Sara like she’s in pre-K, showing her family pictures and trying to get her to point to Dada. Sara speaks for the first time, baffled as to who she is, which causes Laurel no limits of joy. Yet turning her back, even briefly, is a bad idea and Sara quickly pounces on her sister and begins strangling her with the chains. Lance gets her free and Laurel tries to write it off as Sara just needing a little more time.

The team realizes that the corrupt cops are making drug busts and then selling the drugs back to various gangs, likely for the profit. To catch them, they decide to set up a large drug sale. Thea gets in contact with one of her old dealers and asks for 80 kilos of cocaine for a party with a straight face. Oliver goes to Lance to let him in on their plan. Lance is obviously distracted — yet never once asks Oliver what-the-hell about Sara — but the moment he hears that they suspect rogue cops, he wants in on the bust. Somehow, Thea’s guy delivers, and she and Diggle wait in plain clothes while Green Arrow and Black Canary get into position. Oliver checks on Lance, who snarks why he doesn’t have a cutesy codename as well. “Detective” it is.

The corrupt cops arrive and all hell breaks loose. Canary tries to use her cry, but a guy has both sonic protection and an EMP gun to short out her collar. The struggle is good but the cops get the upperhand and the drugs and make off. Not before Lance recognizes one of them and the gear, but he also gets seen in the process.

Act Three

Oliver’s new leaf continues to take everyone by surprise as he marches Lance right into the new team HQ. But the two are all about business. Lance tells them that the gear the corrupt cops are using was specially designed for the anti-vigilante task force he started back up last year. Glitches continue to plague Felicity, so Lance offers her unfettered access to the police protected system. Meanwhile, Liza Warner, de facto leader of the cop band, tries to get her men under control when they start talking about having to take out Lance. Despite what happened with the narcs, she insists they aren’t crossing any lines like that. They do have to do something, though.

Curtis text-bombs Felicity into showing up to the lab, having determined that Ray did leave a message that’s password protected and the Felicity likely knows the password. She reveals that she and Ray used to date and that she really doesn’t want to hear a loved one’s final word. Curtis lays the whammy about his brother dying from cancer and how he’d die to hear one final thing from him. Felicity gives in. Elsewhere, Lance meets with Damien Darhk. He’s aware that Darhk was with the League at one point and likely knows all about this Lazarus Pit doohickey. He wants help with Sara, but Darhk’s advice is to end her life again because she’s now a soulless hellbeast from whence there could soon be no escape.

Back at the salmon ladder, er, bunker, Felicity shows Oliver files and records on Liza Warner, the sergeant for the task force. Now that they know who to look for, Felicity has feeds from all of the police cameras around town to try to find her. Oliver notices something disturbing in one of the feeds: Lance talking to Darhk.

Act Four

*BEST SCENE ALERT*: Lance comes home to find Oliver in his place. An opportunity years in the making boils up: Oliver has spent countless hours trying to prove to Lance that he is a better man than he’s ever given him credit for. That Lance was a more righteous man that Oliver aspired to be. But no more he’s not. Working with Darhk, who is trying to kill the city, negates it all. Lance was on the ropes and he made a devil’s deal with Darhk that has only gotten worse. When he desperately tries to explain it was for his daughters, Oliver opens up both barrels — no excuses. Oliver leaves, unsure of what he’s going to do with this information.

Thea finds Oliver in the campaign office. With his world kind of shattered, he’s not sure that the city he once thought it was is there to be saved. He doesn’t see running for mayor if there’s nothing to fight for. Lance, meanwhile, goes to put bullets into Sara. Laurel stops him, and he breaks down over everything and leaves. He runs into Warner and her cops, there to kidnap him. Laurel tries to stop them but takes a mean taser, bro.

Act Five

Warner takes Lance to the contraband disposal facility, where the SCPD destroys a couple of Thea Queen parties’ worth of drugs after its seized and no longer needed for evidence. SLAM puts in a cameo. Lance’s biometrics open the place, and they tie him up as they raid it. Through the glitches at the bunker, Felicity locates Lance’s access to the facility and the team scrambles. Green Arrow gets the drop on Warner and arrow-ties her up. He turns on Lance, arrow drawn but frees the captain instead of harming him.

The distraction buys time for Warner to cut herself free and put a knife into Oliver’s back. A shift and she can sever his spine. Lance lays down the power of speech — and an episode title drop — telling Warner how they need to uphold their ideals and be better than this to make this a better place again. That they need to save themselves first to save the city, appealing to her sense of justice. It works.

The Tag

Lance comes home to find Oliver there again. He asks the captain if he believes what he said to Warner. Lance does and he’s going to march into his superiors’ offices and turn himself over for what he’s done. Oliver asks him not to, saying that they now have an “in” on Darhk’s operations. Lance agrees to do it. Back at the campaign office, Oliver is surprised to find the place staffed and active. Thea convinces him that he should run for office and hands him a speech to make at his announcement.

At the presser, Oliver acknowledges that he doesn’t have the experience or track record normally found in a candidate, but that he has a love and care for his city that make him the ideal person to turn things around. He also gets to slip in a little of his opening narration to sell the speech. Meanwhile, Felicity cracks open Ray’s message. More pressing, though, Laurel is shocked to find that Sara has escaped.

The Lian Yu greatest hits tour continues as Oliver takes the woman to his old haunt, the cave, to hide her from Reiter’s men. He tries to get her situated so she can survive while he goes back to camp and figures out what to do next. He waves off eating the red berries when he has a light bulb moment. Back in camp, Conklin stops Oliver to ask what took so long. Oliver says his soldier buddy met the business end of a landmine and the woman escaped, but he tracked her down and put her down. Two guys dead by mine since they met the inimitable Oliver Queen doesn’t sit well with Conklin, so he demands Oliver show him her body.

On the way, Oliver explains that he strangled her and Conklin remarks that his pretty boy eyes are full of murder, which makes him a scary man. But Conklin’s not scared, no sir, because they are brothers in the cold stare of death club. At the cave, they find the lifeless woman. Conklin checks her vitals and confirms she’s dead, and tells Oliver to dispose of the body so no one can ever find out. Plus, they might maybe want to use this gem of a cave at some point in the future. Conklin skeedaddles back to camp, and Oliver proceeds to squeeze a pressure point on the woman to bring her vitals back to normal status. He can’t celebrate too quickly as Conklin finds Oliver’s hidden bag and discovers the messages from A.R.G.U.S.

Three Quick Thoughts

• I get that Laurel’s motivated by her love for her sister but she’s bordering on delusional over this whole thing.
• That scene between Oliver and Lance is an instant candidate for best of the series. Great work, Stephen Amell and Paul Blackthorne.
• Why wasn’t Oliver’s A.R.G.U.S. device encrypted, and why they hell were the old messages still visible on it?