ARROW: HEIR TO THE DEMON

If last week was the week of Roy Harper, this week he doesn’t seem to exist. And I find the episode that much better. I am not sure the two are related. (Spoiler: they totally are)

Katrina Law as Nyssa al Ghul (courtesy of screencapped.net)

We open in an airport. A woman is trying to make it through customs. I know she’s evil the second she winks at a small child, which shows you how much television has warped me. I mean, the wink is adorable, but it also portends bad things that are usually about to happen. I’ve never seen, for example, somebody wink at a small child and then throw candy out to a crowd unless the candy was poisoned. ANYWAY, to get to the point, she’s Nyssa al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, and we know she’s a badass because her name flashes an ARGUS warning and then she lays waste to a bunch of airport security and trots off with her roll-y bag, cool as you please. How this does not immediately get ALL OF THE MEDIA COVERAGE EVER, I don’t know. Starling City really is a parallel universe.

In that parallel universe, several things are in motion. For instance, Moira is going ahead with the campaign, which includes a meeting with the campaign manager, Thea, Oliver, Walter, and Moira. The manager has nothing to recommend him other than being a generic white guy, so I’ll learn his name if he ever does anything interesting. While he tells Oliver that he will have to end his romance totally-not-weird friendship/endorsement with Sebastian Blood, Felicity pulls Walter out into the hallway to tell him that the account he had her research on Moira Queen just flagged a large payment to an OB/GYN. Anyway, Walter tells Felicity to a) call him Walter (which she does, in a mimicry of his accent, of course) and b) that he’ll talk to Moira about it, but Felicity doesn’t look so sure about that.

Things are not quiet on the Lance Homefront. Oliver visits Laurel in her hospital room. Dinah has come out of the future hiding to be there for her daughter, who Lance wants to throw in rehab. Laurel is having none of that. She swears she didn’t take any drugs before she collapsed. But that’s not exactly supported by the fact that she hallucinated seeing her sister. They put me on some serious painkillers after having some dental surgery and I only hallucinated a very friend daisy that chatted with me about the plots of three or four movies, most of which I think I made up. Hallucinating Sara Lance is way cooler, in my opinion.

But that’s okay because THE SALMON LADDER RETURNS. Sara’s the one going up and down this time (I’m told Caity Lotz actually managed a couple of rungs of that on her own, so I would like to add her to my ever-growing list of actresses I should not piss off), and Diggle and Felicity are perfect audience stand-ins as they just stand back and admire.

Uh…right. Plot. Sara wants to skip town, Oliver wants her to stick around, they argue, and it’s all interrupted when Lance calls in, wanting to speak to her. She meets him at the same diner as before and say what you will, I kind of love how much Lance loves his daughters. Also, I’m not crying, you’re crying. Shut up. Lance wants Sara to stick around, which she can’t do with the League hunting her, and Lance begs her to stay so they can start facing things together, as a family. Sara gives him a hug and leaves.

Outside of the diner, Oliver stands in plain sight but acts like he’s hiding (Oliver, baby, we need to talk about this), but before Sara can reach him, a NINJA DESCENDS FROM ABOVE. It’s all very tense and Oliver’s ready to put an arrow in the ninja after she takes off her facemask and approaches Sara with a gigantic knife. But plot twist: Sara and the ninja start making out instead!

While the commercials play, I do a little dance because I totally called that Sara talked about Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter the way one talks about an ex-girlfriend. It’s so nice to see subtext actually be text.

Anyway, the ninja and Sara share a moment and then the ninja’s all like, “And your boyfriend is standing ten feet behind me being a total creeper.” Man, does Oliver know how to make an entrance. Ninja introduces herself as Nyssa al Ghul, Heir to the Demon, and I wish my dad had a cool name, so I could be something other than Frea O’Scanlin, Heir to the Bostons. She’s there to collect Sara, which Oliver is having none of. He tries to bully Sara into not leaving, and like him, she’s not having any of it, either.

At the Queen Estate, Moira’s reading a paperback when Felicity comes to visit her. I immediately perk up because these are my queens, right here. And they don’t disappoint. Felicity confronts Moira Queen about the wire transfer from the Tempest shell company and that she put it together from Moira’s testimony that Robert Queen isn’t exactly her baby daddy for Thea. Moira points out that Felicity’s evil mastermindedness needs some work, as her entire plan is just to confront Moira in her living room. I’m on Moira’s side until Moira tries to use Felicity’s feelings for Oliver against her. She points out that Oliver will always hate Moira, but a small part of him will hate Felicity as well. I’m not saying one of them went to fetch him from an island, regularly sewed up his wounds, and saved his life after his mother shot him, but I’m totally saying that of the two of them, Felicity went to Lian Yu, Felicity gets to see him shirtless and bloody every week, and it was Felicity’s car he ended up in when Moira shot him.

Do not play chess with Felicity Smoak, Moira. You will lose.

On the rooftop of Old Loves, Nyssa and Sara are reminiscing about the past, particularly how Sara betrayed them all and sneaked out in the middle of the night. Always a heartwarming story. Sara tells Nyssa that she needed to keep her family safe and her soul—what’s left of it, at least—can’t take the killing anymore. Nyssa reminds her that took an oath and that she’s there to make sure Sara honors it. Sara asks if that’s the only reason Nyssa is there, and Nyssa gives us handy backstory, that she was the one that saved Sara and brought her into the league while Sara was waiting to die. Sara tells her that she was with her because she loved Nyssa, not because Nyssa saved her. It’s all very emotional and this ship is messed up, but I’m here for it. Also, Katrina Law was once on an episode of Chuck, I’m told, but it’s one of the ones I pretend doesn’t exist, so all I can say she’s pretty awesome and I hope she returns. Sara begs Nyssa to get Ra’s to release her from the League, something the League’s only done for Malcolm Merlyn (which they daily regret, apparently). In the end, Sara tells Nyssa to do what she has to do, and Nyssa reaches for her knife but is apparently unable to kill her girlfriend. Aw, heartbreak.

To the Foundry! Oliver is beating an old tire with a mallet! I don’t know why! Anyway, he’s fretting over Sara and tries to get Felicity’s attention, but she’s lost in thought. He doesn’t get a chance to pry it out of her, as Sara shows up and says she needs to leave and Diggle shows up and says Laurel was poisoned by snake venom. Sara’s family is still in danger, which is apparent when Dinah is snatched at the hospital.

Oliver and Sara race to get her back on Oliver’s motorcycle. There’s some cool comic book imagery going on in this scene: anger lines or no, I looooove Sara’s mask and the white-blond hair is iconic. She busts the windows of the getaway van with the sonic scream and Oliver gets her close enough to get on top of the van and see her mother, unconscious, inside. She gets dislodged and screams for real as the van gets away and Oliver looks conflicted.

After commercial, we come back to Sara and Oliver talking to Lance, who reacts to the news that his daughter’s girlfriend took his ex-wife to get her to come back to her with an understated “…Oh.” She gets a call from Nyssa, who totally equates Sara’s feelings about getting her mother kidnapped to Nyssa’s feelings about being left. Ah, the emotional manipulation. She gives Sara a day to come back and save her mother.

At the Foundry, Felicity uses her magic to track down the person who stole the snake venom used to poison Laurel. Oliver gets a call from Sebastian Blood and apologizes for standing him up on his date, but that’s okay, Sebastian has Moira there to warn away. Moira, of course, has the entirely appropriate reaction of “Bitch, please.” She makes for the most delicious villain.

Lance meets up with Sara in an alley somewhere and doesn’t really comment on her girdle/corset thing. Instead, he’s more interested in finding out where she met the Arrow. She wins the episode by snarking “Vigilante Club.” Can you imagine that group? Felicity would eventually have to take over as Treasurer, Secretary, Alumni Chair, and allll of the board members because vigilantes work OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM, DAMMIT, WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING CLUB. Meanwhile, Felicity gives them the hairy eyeball and they apologetically plunk down their membership dues and all of the things they were planning to use to prank the Flash. Nightwing is the worst offender.

Okay, sorry to derail what’s actually one of the most touching scenes in the entire episode, Lance and Sara bring up her bisexuality and she asks if he’s upset. He tells her that after what she’s been through, he feels better knowing there was somebody there that loved her. Guys, how has Lance become one of my favorite characters? He talks like an old west sheriff. Anyway, like the good hooded puppy he is, Oliver brings them one of Nyssa’s men, but the dude poisons himself before they can get Dinah’s location out of him. Do they hand out snake poison and cyanide as part of the minion’s union?

We arrive the next day, where Oliver’s set to introduce Moira at her press event. Things go awry for Moira because Oliver finally nags at Felicity until she tells him what’s up. Her answer is intriguing and telling at once: she asks him if he’s noticed that she talks a lot—he has—and if he’s also noticed that she doesn’t talk a lot about her family—he’s noticed that, too. And she tells him that her father abandoned her and her mother before she really knew him, and she’s always scared of losing somebody in her life. Oliver assures her that she won’t lose him (Hi, shippers, why are you on the floor crying? Can I join you?) and that she needs to tell him what’s bothering her. Which she does, and that means we get to see Oliver struggle to control his emotions about his mother’s deception WHILE ON CAMERA. It’s an incredibly magical scene, especially when he tells her while he’s hugging her that he knows, and we realize that Felicity has made her first giant enemy and that, ladies and gentlemen, is Moira Queen.

Meanwhile, Sara’s visiting her own grave (she was born in 1987, putting her a couple of years younger than Laurel and Oliver) when she gets a call from Nyssa that time’s up. Sara says that she’ll return with Nyssa if she lets her mother go. I’m a tiny bit more concerned about the weeping angel statue behind Sara and, oh yeah, the snake venom she’s holding in her hand. Sara, nooooo. Anyway, Lance is about to tell Laurel that Sara’s alive, but he gets a call from Sara telling him to meet her at the boat docks in 30 minutes and do not call the Arrow.

Too bad Oliver’s put a tracker on Sara, eh? While Felicity activates it, Diggle wonders why they should care that Sara’s gonna kill a badass assassin. She’s doing their work for them. Only, Oliver’s heard some things about Ra’s al Ghul and if even half of them are true, they will all pay if Sara kills the dude’s daughter.

Also, I have learned from experience that you do not kidnap Liam Neeson’s daughter, either. Just throwing that out there. For the record.

At the boat yards, Nyssa releases Dinah and Lance shows up. Dinah sees Sara again and it’s all very touching. Sara tells Lance to get Dinah out of there and unleash the fight scene from—wait, no, that’s Sara collapsing with gigantic pupils that do not mean good things. Turns out she wasn’t going to poison Nyssa. She was going to poison herself. Hey, when the person you love drinks snake venom to get away from you, maybe your relationship is a little toxic. And reacting to them dying by killing their entire family, too? You might have a problem, Nyssa. Luckily, Oliver shows up to get into an archery battle with Nyssa before she can off Lance and Dinah.

He tells Nyssa that he can still save her (presumably with the magic herbs he grabbed before he left), but instead Nyssa would rather get into a fight. I have learned from Hawkeye and Arrow that compound bows make good bludgeoning weapons. Oliver gets Nyssa into a chokehold, but Sara begs him not to kill her. He gives her the magic herbs, but it takes her awhile to wake up (“Not again!” which makes me super excited to see what happened on the island). Sara wakes up and begs Nyssa, “No more killing.” Nyssa releases her from her bond to Ra’s al Ghul. Oliver and Nyssa make tracks to get away before the cops show up…with Laurel, who looks somewhat aghast to see her younger sister alive.

Time for final show-downs! First up, Oliver and Moira. Oliver tells her they have no more relationship. He’ll pretend for Thea’s sake, but he’s done with the lying and the double-talk. It’s traumatic, but not as traumatic as things happening at the Lance household, where Dinah and Lance are excited to have their daughter back. Laurel, however, is angry (and drinking wine out of a water glass). She tells Sara that every single thing that’s gone wrong in their lives is her fault—she got on the boat with Oliver, she never told them she was alive even though it would have saved the Lances’ marriage, and she brought Nyssa to Starling City. She kicks Sara out.

Also in trouble is Sebastian Blood. Slade is not happy that Moira Queen is running for mayor. But he looks good in a button-up. Yes, I’m shallow.

Back to the Foundry, Sara shows up and she and Oliver work out their feelings, first on a training dummy and then on each other on the mat. Hopefully Felicity doesn’t also serve as the position of Janitor in Vigilante Club, you guys.

Oh, right, the Island plotline this week is actually prior to the island plotline, where we see Sara come home for the weekend and decide to go off with Laurel’s “frat boy boyfriend” on a yacht…and the emotional devastation that causes. They’re really doing their best to make Laurel come off as a Mean Girl. I’m enjoying this revision.

Arrow airs on the CW on Wednesdays at 8/7 c.

all screencaps courtesy of screencapped.net