Except this time, it’s the whole world.
The clock is ticking
We pick up right where we left off last week: with Team Arrow (minus Thea and plus Lyla) realizing that Darhk’s “Genesis” involves using Rubicon to take control of the world’s nuke supplies in order to bring about the apocalypse. There is less than 21 hours to stop the launch and Felicity reveals that as good as she is, she’s not as good as her father. They need his help to stop this apocalypse from happening.
Finding Noah is tricky at first, because Darhk is after him too (for the same reason). But, after a TMI conversation with her mother, Felicity realizes her father is at a remote cabin and she dispatches her boys to go help him out, just in time, as Darhk’s goons were about to take him out. Get in loser, we have a world to save!
Family Bonding
This was the episode for ill-timed father/daughter bonding. If there’s one theme that Arrow excels at, it’s terrible father/daughter relationships. Some relationships are less worse than others. Worse: Thea and Malcolm. Thea waits under Ghost-guard surveillance in the house she was staying in with Alex until Merlyn shows up to fill her in on what’s going on. He’s delighted, of course, because mass destruction and ridding the world of undesirable elements is always the best solution! Thea is less than thrilled.
Interestingly, Felicity and Noah are one of the better father/daughter relationships. Noah is more than happy to help save the world (he’s not a monster, not like MALCOLM), but they need some special tech from Palmer Tech to get it done. Unfortunately, the board and the evil Mr. Dennis have terminated Felicity as CEO and locked her out of the company so they have to break in (yay, Team Arrow in the field!). Felicity assures her dad that this isn’t a bonding session. Except it’s totally a bonding session.
It’s safe to say that Felicity and her father are on the road to establishing some understanding. This is further evidenced when he takes a bullet to protect her. Way to act like a father, Noah! You’re only… a little (a lot) late!
Oliver is the most well adjusted one here
I’m a little scared. This is so far off the norm, I almost don’t know what to do with it. He gives advice to Diggle, for crying out loud. And he’s not wrong. Hey, if anyone has learned that it’s a really, really bad idea to lie to your wife (or your wife-to-be), it’s Oliver. He’s concerned about Diggle’s well being and it’s super nice to see that shoe on the other foot for a change, even if it is a little unnerving.
Though maybe he was out-Yoda’d by Noah a bit when discussing the perils of leading dual lives. Oliver believes it’s impossible to do so and that Noah trying it is why he lost Felicity. But it’s also kind of why Oliver lost Felicity. Which Noah is quick to latch on to. Honestly, if nuclear doomsday hadn’t interrupted, I would have been super happy to see the rest of this conversation between these two.
The flashbacks are back
Oh goodie.
To be fair, however, the flashbacks did serve a bit of a purpose this week. After it became clear that taking out Reiter wasn’t going to happen because he kept kicking Oliver’s ass, the new plan was to take the idol (and thus, Reiter’s source of magic) and run off into the woods. However, things hit a snag when the charged up idol (Oliver did shoot some guards, killing them) seemed to infuse a confused and scared Tianna with dark magic. Which, one can only hope, will lead to Oliver having to kill her next week. Fingers are crossed.
Adventures in Dome-Land
After learning about Darhk’s doomsday scheme, Thea’s primary concern is getting the hell out of the “ark” but she needs Alex because while he might be under the influence of Darhk’s mind-control pills, he’s still her boyfriend and she’s nothing if not loyal.
However, her plan of grabbing Alex and getting the hell out of dodge hits a snafu when Anarky drops in, seeking to cause a little anarchy. He wants to take out the CO2 scrubbers, killing everyone inside the “ark”. Thea intends to stop him and try to enlist him to help her take down Darhk instead. It doesn’t quite go according to plan and Alex gets hurt pretty badly in the crossfire.
Tens of Thousands
Felicity and Noah work feverishly while Oliver, Diggle, Lyla and the rest of ARGUS fend off HIVE. They’re able to accomplish keeping nearly every missile in its respective silo. All but one, actually. It’s in the air and Felicity discovers it’s impossible to divert it once it’s already locked onto a location. She gets the idea to hack a GPS satellite and make the nuke think Monument Point (the city it’s locked onto) is in fact twenty miles away from it’s actual location.
The bad news is a smaller town called Havenrock is located there and suffers a direct hit by the nuke. Felicity is deeply shaken when Lyla tells her that the number of casualties are in the tens of thousands. It’s better than the several million that would have been Monument Point, but any loss is a bad one for Arrow’s favorite tech girl.
Meanwhile, Oliver and Dig figure out that the Star City nexus is located underneath city hall and they rush there, hoping to find Darhk. They find him, alright, but he’s already harvesting those tens of thousands of souls from the idol and appears to be all but unstoppable.
