ARROW: “This is Your Sword” {Recap}

Given that everything in the last few weeks of Arrow has been doom and gloom about Oliver becoming Ra’s Al Ghul, it comes as a shock when in the first act of this week’s episode we learn that Oliver’s playing a con on Ra’s Al Ghul. So all that emotional pain from last week means what exactly? Are we supposed to think of how broken everyone was as a false memory that we should forget with time? Are we meant to trust Oliver now that he’s faking all of this work for Ra’s? Because if Merlyn tells Oliver that he was too convincing, it was a damn good con.

Right now, is it possible to hug all of Team Arrow for being indignant and frustrated at Merlyn’s decision to play the intermediary. Maybe it will all be forgiven now that Tatsu Yamashiro has arrived in Starling City to tell the team how in danger everyone is.

Thankfully while all of this insanity is going on, Thea’s trying for something more like normal by going to visit Roy out in his new town. But Roy won’t take her offer to give him a way to be Arsenal and runs off, leaving Thea to go back to Starling City and face everything she’s been trying to run from.

But back to the Oliver’s not brainwashed side, Team Arrow, Merlyn and Tatsu are back off to go fight Al Sal-Him and maybe stop the wedding to Nyssa. Team Expanded Arrow does a decent job of trying to tackle the security of where they are, and Tatsu does a great job at killing her husband so that he can be released from his prison. That’s what the episode needed – more angst about relationships and how people can hurt each other while trying to protect them at the same time.

In that same way that Merlyn has to be the center of everything, is telling Ra’s that Oliver’s been betraying him right before the wedding a good idea? Or are we just going to watch more people die at the hands of Ra’s before Oliver can escape and get back to being in Starling and protecting his friends and city?

Wait, that hope was too soon, as Oliver, or Al Sal-Him, or whoever he is just decided to try and kill Team Arrow in a cell. Then he can marry Nyssa and everything might be the worst for everyone we care about on this show. At least until next week.

Arrow airs Wednesdays on The CW.