ARROW: Three Ghosts

For the second half of the fall finale, we’re starting off with the less than awesome cliffhanger – Oliver on some crazy drug that Barry can’t manage to figure out right now. I’d feel bad for Barry for getting into this mess, but I find him too adorable question his motives in how to save Oliver’s life (really rat poison?!).

Did we really need some flashbacks to the Island as Oliver is contemplating death? Did we? I suppose that there are larger reasons for that given that Blood Brother wants to replicate the same serum from The Island, but it makes this seem a bit uneven.

While I’m talking about that, did we really need Oliver trying to strangle Barry one-handed for saving him? Of course once Oliver’s done being not-dead, he’s worried about his secret identity being to Barry and not focusing on the fact that he nearly died.

So now, Blood Brother captures all the things he needed to replicate the serum from the Island, and all of this happens on the backdrop of it being Christmas in Sterling City. Just what we need at the Holiday: potential death to all the elite of Sterling City.

Oliver, your questionable choices from last week are coming back to haunt you: Roy’s sitting in Thea’s bedroom with the arrow Oliver put in him because hospitals are no good. At least Oliver has the sense to call Diggle for the First Aid kit, but I really want Diggle to chew Oliver out for shooting Thea’s boyfriend.

I suppose that Oliver is hallucinating about the Island because Shado’s alive and running through the Queen Mansion to tell Oliver not to fight or else everyone else he loves will die. Too bad that thought was quickly dashed as Thea walked back.

This flashback with Sarah and Ivo made me feel things I don’t want to feel. Of course!

Can Barry please stop being such a fanboy? Or could he not have given Oliver so much rat poison so that he’d hallucinate? At least Barry had good ideas on how to give Oliver more protection in eyewear. Not that Oliver’d listen.

Of course while Diggle wanted to be the hero and Oliver’s sort of MIA, Diggle got taken to town.

In doing background to what happened to Sin’s friend, Laurel drops a piece of useful information: all of the people who donate blood are subject to a psych eval before giving. Not shady at all.

Barry, your fanboy is still showing, and it’s even more obvious when you give Felicity advice on how Felicity shouldn’t like Oliver as much as she might.

Officer Lance is not getting anywhere with the information Oliver delivered before on Sebastian Blood, not that I’m surprised at all.

(Let me just stop for a minute and revel in Felicity being Jewish.)

There’s really no reason the jump between Oliver’s next hallucination of Slade alive and Lance’s takedown of Blood’s compound, but that only means I want to worry more about Lance’s safety and everyone else on this mission. Case in point, watching Detective Hilton get shot in the chest. Slade’s hallucination is making a proper mess of the hideout and making me worry for Oliver’s well-being by the end of the episode.

Laurel, why the hell are you talking to Sebastian Blood about the blood drive? Man is creepy and you don’t need that level of crazy in your life. Your life is already crazy enough as your dad got shot in attack and is in the ICU. Never is it an easy life to be a friend of Oliver Queen/The Vigilante. Especially for Officer Lance, who just lost another friend in Detective Hilton.

Sebastian’s even creepier now that he’s trying to put the moves on Laurel in her time of need. Especially if there’s someone on Blood Brother’s team in the SCPD.

Diggle’s providing useful advice on how to chace the hallucinations away, and it maybe will help for this battle. There’s no show without the titular character, right?

Roy, what are you doing breaking into the lab with all the psych evals? You’re hardly fit for walking and now there’s a guy pouring gas on the floor. For the sake of my heart, please don’t die! See, Roy you didn’t listen and now Blood Brother is going to make Roy one of his minions.

Or not. Oliver comes in right in the nick of time, and as Roy rejects the serum, Oliver has one more hallucination of Tommy and is told to fight, and fight he does. But my real question is, is Roy going to live or is he dead?

Roy lives! Thea freaks out, rightly so, when Roy was gone for so long, but he’s alive and lying about what he had been doing.

Sebastian’s working for Slade, it turns out, and that turns everything on a whole other level. Slade’s plan means he wants to destroy everything Oliver loves and trusts and then kill him. How lovely is that gameplan?

In another flashback, Slade sees Shado dead after he rips a guy’s heart out and I suppose that the whole plan to make Oliver’s life a living hell starts at that moment.

The serum’s being used to raise an army for some unknown war.

Felicity gets one nice call from Barry that includes a gift for Oliver and a note that Barry’s available when Oliver rejects her. Of course, back in Center City, Barry missed the particle accelerator line and gets blasted with some of the effects of it – all the way from the lab to his office. Hello Flash!

On a final note to end this half season, Felicity puts on Oliver’s new mask to take on the world of Blood Brother and Slade.