Arrow, Season 4, Episode 7: Brotherhood
Yeah, Andy Diggle's not dead, and is working for HIVE. And may or may not be brainwashed or zombified, considering the things both stated outright and implied in this episode. Is this going to be a running theme, dead siblings being brought back to life? Though for Andy Diggle, his death may just be a false one. Maybe he was already part of HIVE from the beginning and just faked his death in Afganisthan. Or he was recruited into HIVE after his 'death', the way Oliver was recruited by Amanda Waller in last season's flashback scenes. I dunno. It's something that I honestly guessed when we had such a big Andy Diggle focus for the episodes in this season, and when some random HIVE mook didn't shoot Diggle dead back in episode 2 or 3 or whatever, well... it is definitely a well-done plot twist, though.
One of the main points of conflict in this episode is Diggle refusing to accept that his brother could be redeemed and insisting that the man that was Andy Diggle is dead. Oliver, meanwhile, is the voice of redemption and kept insisting that Andy Diggle could be coerced, or HIVE could be mind-controlling him or something, though he admits to Diggle that part of it is because he needs to believe that everyone can be redeemed. It leads to a couple more Oliver-Diggle conflict scenes, though at least it's part of a new conflict instead of a rehash of earlier scenes. We get an absolutely heartwarming "I came here for my brother... the green one." line from Diggle, we get basically everyone helping Oliver get Andy back, no questions asked, and that even includes people like Ray Palmer who I don't think has even an exchange of words with Diggle, ever.
It's all good stuff, even if it's not one that's really gripping to me. Diggle not wanting to at least entertain the chance of his brother being mind-controlled felt a bit odd, and him just insisting that his brother is beyond redemption.
But we're finally delving into the HIVE/Darhk plotline, and we start the episode off relatively benign, with them fighting the ghosts, learning that their DNA strands has been degraded by some kind of weird nonexistent chemical that Ray manages to track to a certain company and all that, and Diggle manages to unmask one of the Ghosts in the process, finding, well, Andy Diggle, in the flesh and blood.
Quentin Lance, meanwhile, is not in good favours with Damien Darhk because he quite rightly thinks that Darhk calling him last episode (which led Team Arrow to rescue Ray from him) is a trick. Now Quentin sees a conveniently placed piece of paper with 'Dock Whatever' written in large letters which I honestly thought was going to be a trap for our heroes, though Darhk might've just intentionally left it at a place and time that Quentin would be in a place to see said intel and put two and two together. Either way, I think Quentin Lance's tenure as a mole within HIVE might be in jeopardy. Do love how this was done relatively subtly, though.
We also see some creepier things that HIVE did. We have Darhk making a huge deal about how the HIVE Ghosts take these pills that changes their DNA... and makes them absolutely compliant to Darhk's orders. Now this obviously isn't absolute because we saw some HIVE troops talk back against Darhk before, but still. He also says the ominous line about how 'you are ghosts, you don't know how right you are', which might imply that they aren't in any records thanks to the virus Quentin planted, plus the whole DNA-degrader thing... but considering Andy is supposedly dead and we're dealing with mysticism here, are they technically zombies? It might seem a bit too far-fetched for Arrow. Maybe in Constantine, but still.
Prospective-mayor Oliver is confronted by Damien Darhk at one point, who tells him to back off from restoring the bay because HIVE needs it, Darhk pulling his 'join us or suffer the consequences' talk. Both Diggle and Felicity tell him off for being an idiot for
Ray also gets a bit more to do than just throw around wisecracks, though like Sara he goes off for some soul-searching at the end of the episode. He did get a couple of nice, platonic-friendship moments with Felicity which is cool.
But perhaps the one person to get the most focus other than Diggle in this episode is Thea Queen, unexpectedly. We have the odd distraction of her dating Alex Davis, who, like Darhk, doesn't want Oliver to reform the bay. We already have Thea's boyfriend turning out to be evil and part of a big organization, so I don't think Alex Davis is anything but a red herring, but hey. We have Thea beating the crap out of a creep in a club, going back to her old bloodlust, and Malcolm Merlyn, Mr. Father of the Year, shows up and basically tells Thea to murder a pedophile. Which honestly isn't a bad plan, but I guess I'm more sadistic than Thea.
Thea gets an absolutely awesome action scene with Andy that just goes non-stop as they go into a lift and then back out, a scene that's absolutely well-shot. As a side-note, Atom just pulling an Iron Man and swooping in full armour and beating dudes up back-to-back with the Green Arrow is also brilliant as well.
I thought it was odd that after Thea beat Andy up, she's all like 'I need backup in dragging Andy back', and then she just strolls around on her own while Laurel apparently is dragging Andy offscreen. She does manage to meet Damien Darhk, who has gained 'teleport behind your enemy' among his long repertoire of unexplained mystical powers. He tries to use death touch... and Thea's Lazarus Pit thing apparently protected her from it, because Darhk's skin suddenly lights up like those Extremis dudes from Iron Man 3, and as she confides to Merlyn later on, it apparently sated her bloodlust as well. Interesting!
In the flashback, apparently the dude that Oliver killed last episode is the lady (Taiana)'s brother. Drama! Reiter uses mystic branches and twigs as a lie diviner. Oliver whips a dude. It's a good thing this takes so much screentime.
A bit of an uneven episode, but a brilliant one for both Diggle and Thea, and some great moments for Oliver as well. The drama gets to be a bit much for a bit, but it's understandable under the circumstances. Sadly we're reaching the mid-season break, tough, so we'll be bereft of episodes for a while.
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