Arrow Recap | The Ties That Blind

Photo credit: THE CW/DC Entertainment

This episode of Arrow was jam packed and intense from beginning to end. It played as sort of a cat and mouse episode: Diaz kept trying to kill Oliver and his family and friends, and they kept escaping.

We start with each of Oliver’s family and friends doing their own things: Oliver, Felicity, and William are having dinner together. Diggle and Lyla are at a doctor's appointment, and the doctor reveals that Diggle’s arm is healed and he won’t even need Felicity’s chip that was helping him. Rene and his daughter are enjoying some hockey, Curtis and his boyfriend are hanging out, and Dinah is beating up someone who works for Diaz to get answers out of him.

A little bit of time goes by, and suddenly Oliver gets a text from Anatoly telling him to get out of his house ASAP. Within seconds, we see Diaz’s men come down on rope and start shooting up the house. More of Diaz’s men also shoot up the places where everyone else is with the intent to kill Oliver and his friends once and for all.

Everyone gets out safe, except for Curtis’ boyfriend who gets shot and has to go into surgery immediately (he does end up surviving the shot). Oliver wants to place William and Felicity into ARGUS protective custody, but Felicity refuses and stays with Oliver. Raisa and William leave.

Everyone meets up at Helix to devise a plan to stop Diaz that very night, because team Arrow’s bunker got torched by Diaz’s men.

Oliver finds Anatoly again and discovers Diaz’s next move and base of operation. Anatoly says he’ll talk with Diaz and see what’s up. Anatoly and Diaz, along with a few men, go on the move later. Construction workers stop them, and we learn it’s a trap by Team Arrow. Gun fire and fighting commence, and Curtis decides to chase after Diaz. He punches him a few times, and Diaz then punches and stabs Curtis. We see Diaz stop, grab a necklace, and run.

Back at Helix, we find out that Curtis is in care and very easily could’ve bled out, and the team discusses the necklace Diaz was so attached to. We also see Diaz accuse Anatoly of setting them up, and Anatoly convinces Diaz that it was Quadrant member Lydia Cassamento who set them up. So Diaz kills her. He also kills another member of the Quadrant to send a message.

Lyla says she will go meet with Diaz and that they will not deny a meeting with her. Felicity decides to go with her to get files uploaded off the computers. Throughout the episode, we see Oliver and Felicity struggling with each other and fighting, and Oliver really wants her top stop putting her life on the line. Lyla gives Felicity some advice about it.

When Lyla goes into the police station, she plants a device on a computer that then helps Felicity upload the files. We then see that Diaz’s hacker notices that someone is encrypting their files, and their plan is unravelled. Gunfire begins again as Diggle and Oliver run in to help Lyla, while Felicity also runs in to continue the upload and nearly gets shot in the head by Diaz.

Back at Helix, Diggle and Oliver share a conversation, and Diggle tries to get Oliver to see that Felicity did the right thing. Suddenly there’s an alert, and Diaz and his men arrive at Helix. Diaz throws tear gas into Helix, and Oliver tells everyone to leave ASAP.

Felicity keeps wanting to stay until all the files are uploaded so they could have information to defeat Diaz, but Oliver convinces her they’ll find another way to take him down and that they need to go now. As they struggle to leave, they are met by Diaz, and Diaz and Oliver have a little fight. Oliver uses an explosive to get Diaz, and it knocks him out. Felicity and Oliver finally escape and are met by the rest of Team Arrow who made it out okay and were waiting for them.

Next they go to ARGUS. Lyla reveals that after Helix blows up, the ARGUS forensics team went to see if they would get Diaz’s body, but he wasn’t there.

Felicity and Oliver talk with a nervous and scared William and assure him that everything will be okay. They both also have a conversation, and Oliver realizes he needs to relax and let Felicity help more often.

The end of the episode is a sort of shock, because Oliver goes to Prosecutor Sharp’s office and asks for her help in the fight against Diaz. In the process he admits to being the Green Arrow, and we are left with a cliffhanger as to what else she says.

Next week is the season finale! What do you think will happen? Will everyone make it out alive?
 

Karin Abcarians

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Karin Abcarians is a journalist, a tv show junkie, movie junkie, an avid book lover, and a dog lover with a dog named after Dexter Morgan from the show Dexter. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the greatest film ever made in her opinion. She has a milk allergy and lives life on the edge because just about everything on earth has milk. She has a superhero alter ego called BatKarin. She lives in California and is currently a college student, attending California State University Northridge, and will be graduating in May of 2018 with a Bachelors in