Arrow - S3E11 - Midnight City
Previously on Arrow, ‘Left Behind’
The episode opens on Oliver dreaming that he actually made the sensible decision and stayed in Starling making out with Felicity, instead of going off on an ineffectual suicide mission. Of course, this doesn’t last long and soon he’s shocked awake by the image of himself getting stabbed through the chest. He wakes up in the cabin. Apparently Maseo and Tatsu’s marriage is not as good as it once was, and Maseo is planning on heading back to the league. Maseo warns Oliver that things are not going so well in Starling City in his absence.
Laurel is definitely only the third best crime fighter in her family (although we’ve never seen Dinah’s moves, so Laurel may well be fourth). She manages to save a woman in an alleyway, but finds herself losing the fight with her attacker. Roy arrives in the nick of time and takes the guy out. They head back to the Foundry and Roy sits Laurel down to give her some stiches and a lecture. It’s a bit rich to hear him telling someone not to try to be a vigilante without adequate training, given that he spent the first season and a half following Oliver around like a puppy and getting scolded for the exact same thing. That said, Laurel really needs to get her act together.
Ugh, the jerk DJ dude that Thea kissed that one time is back. He is still a jerk. Merlyn comes by Verdant to see Thea, and tells her that she has no choice but to leave Starling with him. She refuses, telling him that she won’t leave until she knows what’s happened to her brother.
Brick attacks the mayor’s office while Ray, Felicity, Laurel, and her dad are there for a meeting. They come out unscathed, but Brick makes of with some hostages.
Laurel manages to capture one of Brick’s men in the attack, and she is a hell of a lot more scary in corrupt DA mode than she is as the Canary. She manages to get the man to talk.
Roy goes to visit Merlyn. He tells him that Thea will get to the truth about what happened to Sara eventually. Here’s a fun thought Roy, why don’t you tell her? No? Okay.
Ray and Felicity have a heart to heart as she cleans him up after the fight. She seems to be coming around to the helping with his budding vigilantism.
Laurel and Roy head out to ambush Brick and save the hostages. Laurel falls over impressively quickly, and it all goes downhill from there. Roy puts an arrow in Brick, and as punishment he shoots one of the hostages in the head. Brick calls in to the mayor’s office and tells her that he’ll kill the hostages unless she agrees to meet with him. He also quotes Shakespeare, because I guess that something that British people do?
Ugh, Merlyn really does lay on the victim complex a bit thick. He talks to Thea as though Tommy’s death was something that was done to him, and not the direct consequence of him murdering hundreds of people. Please wake up and realise how terrible he is please Thea.
Felicity goes to see Laurel and they both wallow in sadness for a little bit. These girls really need a holiday. Laurel is ready to quit the vigilante business, but Felicity convinces her otherwise, telling her that they don’t do it for the people they’ve lost, they do it for the people who are still alive.
The mayor, Captain Lance, and Ray go to meet with Brick. Since when did businessmen start coming to hostage negotiations? I guess it just seemed less weird when Oliver used to get way too involved in city business. Brick tells them that they have to get all of their people out of the Glades if they want the hostages to survive.
In the cabin, Maseo is about to leave when members of the League arrive. He tries to bluff his way past them, but they realise that Oliver is there, and Maseo and Tatsu have to kill them.
Roy is sitting around feeling sad about the hostage that got killed in the fight earlier. Diggle always knows what to do, and pulls out the vodka to toast to Oliver. Before we have a chance to see what kind of drunk Diggle would be, Felicity and Laurel arrive to convince them that they should go after Brick. They call up Captain Lance to get information out of him, and decide for some absurd reason to use a voice changer to sound like Sara. Could Felicity not just have asked him? I mean, it’s one thing to keep Sara’s death from him, but to impersonate her? Not okay. At least it works, and they are able to figure out Brick’s location.
In what may be one of the show’s funniest exchanges, Felicity goes to Ray to borrow his helicopter, and is surprised to learn that they don’t have keys.
They arrive in the helicopter and manage to get the hostage out but Laurel gets trapped in with Brick. In what I’ll admit is a pretty cool move, she smashes through the window to get back to the helicopter and escape.
Laurel goes to see her dad, and promptly loses all of the cool points that she just gained by pretending to be Sara. This is so far from okay, just tell the man the truth already! The people on this show really love their convoluted secret keeping.
On the subject of people who really should stop lying to their family members, Merlyn catches up with Thea. She tells him that they shouldn’t leave town, and should instead stay and hold their ground. Baby Thea’s all grown up!
Felicity swings by the office and tells Ray that she’ll help him with his crusade, because with her help maybe he won’t die.
Thea runs in to Jerky DJ and Verdant. She lets slip that she won’t be leaving town, and he promptly calls up Maseo to let him know. Thank God, he’s a member of the League. Now he’s not only more interesting, but he’ll probably end up getting punched in his smug face! A girl can dream.
