After a brief period of celebration at the end of the last episode, Felicity and co received a surprise visit from Damien Darhk himself! He was visibly pissed after Anarchy aka Lonnie Machin killed his wife and Rubicon being suspended. He is out for revenge and is willing to burn the whole world to see his plan through. How can Team Arrow defeat Darhk at his most powerful and out for blood?
Here’s our recap and review!
Darhk doesn’t waste time with pleasantries, he throws Curtis across the room with his magic and then pulls Donna across the room to hold her by the throat. He starts drawing the life force out of her until he is rudely interrupted by Oliver and John!
Oliver tries to buy his friends some time buy firing an explosive arrow at Darhk but this is quickly stopped in mid air and Darhk even contains the explosion using his powers. Darhk calls in some of his Ghosts to pin Oliver and John down so Oliver jumps off the balcony to drop fist Darhk!
Darhk uses his favourite trick and freezes Oliver in place and starts drawing his life force out until Thea arrives and threatens to kill Darhk’s daughter if he doesn’t let her friends go. He agrees, then uses a flash/smoke grenade to escape with his daughter. The Team quickly realise that Darhk has taken the Rubicon laptop!
Oliver tells Felicity that the hope she had in him is now not enough to combat Darhk’s magic, they need something more. Before they can figure out what this needs to be, Felicity manages to track the laptop to the old HIVE HQ. When Oliver and co arrive at this location they see that all 15,000 + nuclear missiles across the world have been launched all at once!
Several things happen from this point;
Lyla and ARGUS find the Nexus and try to take Darhk down ignoring Oliver’s warnings, instead the entire strike team get killed, further powering Darhk!
Felicity has broken through the first wall of missile protection and can start to hack them but is interrupted by some Ghosts attacking the Arrow cave! The whole team fight back, with some assistance from Malcolm Merlyn and are ultimately successful, although the cave is trashed!
Oliver has lost hope and thinks he needs to do things differently. That is until Curtis gets up off the table where he has been recovering from his Darhk inflicted injuries and gives him a pep talk! He thinks he needs to give the city it’s hope back.
Oliver goes out into the city, without his Arrow hood and gives a speech to the people, if they stand together they can survive this crisis just like they have before. The people start agreeing with him but then are distracted by the sight of a missile coming over the horizon straight to towards the city.
Felicity and Curtis realise that if the missile gets close enough they can hack it directly and try and divert it. Getting to the top of a building and using some kind of camera to send a computer signal at the missile, the pair successfully hack it and send it over the nearby mountain range.
Lyla takes the codes they obtained from the missile and transfers them to the other city’s in danger so they can try the same thing.
Oliver decides enough is enough and goes to confront Darhk. John wants to go with him but Oliver tells him he needs to stay behind to keep things going and fight should he fail, but Oliver also says that he is not going to die tonight!
John finally confesses to Lyla that he didn’t kill Andy in self defence, it was necessary to stop him hurting others. Lyla understands, it was the fog of war and needed to be done. John doesn’t feel comforted by his wife’s support, if anything it makes him feel worse!
Oliver faces Darhk in the streets of Star City. Clearly superior, Darhk uses his powers to throw Oliver around until the people around them come to his aid. Darhk knocks them all back with a magic blast but then Oliver rises up and tells him that the hope of the people and the city will defeat Darhk.
Oliver fires an Arrow at Darhk which cuts his face! He no longer has powers (for some reason), then our hero fights back!
The rest of the Team have tracked the Rubicon laptop and find Felicity’s ex boyfriend Cooper keeping the system active. He is now no longer a willing participant in Darhk’s plans. Darhk is keeping a bullet lodged in him, inches from death, telling him that if he doesn’t keep Rubicon active he will kill him.
Felicity manages to appeal to the good inside him, when they were younger they wanted to save the world, now is his chance! Moving away from the computer Darhk senses his slave has rebelled and kills him from a huge distance! Felicity now has access to Rubicon.
Damien Darhk is now backed up by a small army of Ghosts and a huge fight begins against Oliver and the people of Star City. You will be forgiven if you think you have seen this fight before because it is very reminiscent of the street battle in The Dark Knight Rises between Batman and Bane.
The rest of Team Arrow arrive to help, including Lance who was supposed to be taking Donna away from the city to safety. As with all superhero boss fights, it appears that Darhk is getting the upper hand, he is a former member of the League of Assassins so has extensive training! But after a comical exchange of punches Oliver over powers Darhk.
Damien is confident that Oliver won’t kill him as he hasn’t before. Oliver says that all the other times he has faced an enemy like this he has had a choice, he didn’t have to kill them, but this time he has no choice. He stabs Darhk with an arrow, ending the fight for good.
Oh and Felicity and co have been unable to stop the missiles but they inverted their horizons causing all the missiles to fly into space! The City is safe!
Now the clean up begins and the team members start to go their separate ways.
Lance and Donna are leaving town, Lance has been officially fired from the SCPD.
Thea quits the team before she loses any more of herself, maybe she hasn’t overcome her bloodlust yet, after all she did threaten to kill a child!
We are now left with the old gang of Oliver, John and Felicity, however John is still struggling with Andy’s death.Oliver says he needs John to keep him in line but John realises he hasn’t been able to do that for himself lately He needs to take some time away and it looks like he is going back to the army as we see him leave Lyla and Sara whilst wearing his uniform.
Oliver thinks that his darkness has infected those around him. Everyone now has their demons and own battles to fight but Felicity reassures him that he is the one that gave the city it’s hope back. If he needed further confirmation of this, he soon gets a phonecall.
It is City Hall, following the death of Mayor Adams, and that Oliver got 40 % of the votes in the election even though he was no longer running, City Hall have appointed him as temporary Mayor and swears him in!
The final shot we get is of Mayor Queen and Felicity in the trashed Arrow cave, both determined to continue their fight to save this city. Will Oliver now fight in the light?
The final episode brings it’s own flashbacks.
Reiter has confronted Oliver and Diane and quickly shoots Oliver. Trying to distract him, Oliver draws his attention to a small plane leaving the island with some of the escaped prisoners. Reaching out his hand Reiter uses his powers to destroy the plane!
Diane is enraged and attacks! Reiter starts drawing the life force from Diane but she turns it back on him and Oliver is able to take him down with a knife! That was easy!
Diane is now filled with so much darkness and tries to kill Oliver before she snaps out of it. She knows there is no way she can fight it and pleads with Oliver to kill her. She makes him promise he will go to her family in Russia and tell them what happened, and he snaps her neck! He didn’t even hesitate!
There are still some prisoners on the island and they see what Oliver just did. He manages to convince them he had to do it and tells them there is another way off the island. Oliver calls Amanda Waller to bring them home. He now realises that sometime killing is the only path through the darkness.
Waller has brought his crate containing his bow and other items from earlier in the show. ARGUS have taken the idol to something called ‘The Slab’. Waller tries to recruit Oliver but he says he has a promise to keep! Off to Russia!
Here’s a few things that jumped out at me:
- When the Arrow cave is trashed only the Canary manikin falls over, nice symbolism!
- Apparently Star City has a mountain range! Where did the missile Felicity diverted go?!
- Even though she hates him and he has done terrible things to her repeatedly, Thea save Malcolm’s life again!
- Felicity is the villain this season! She has left thousands of bodies in her wake! And basically convinced her ex-boyfriend to kill himself!
- Oliver really needs to learn how to keep hold of his bow!
- How does hope stop actual magic?! Darhk was super-powered but it gets instantly removed as soon as the people decide to fight back!
- What is the Slab?
It was an average finale to a disappointing season. The season went on for too long, too many filler episode and little story-lines that did nothing to forward the plot. Just like with The Flash, the first third of the season was set up for Legends of Tomorrow and I think they forgot to build a proper story into Arrow itself.
Neil McDonagh was excellent as Damien Darhk but he didn’t actually do much. I understand that most of the time he was working behind the scenes with secret and deadly plans but that’s not what we want from a main villain!
I feel like the season just copied the last couple of episodes from season 2, having a bad guy with an army fighting the city. It would have been different if Darhk had retained his powers so Oliver had to overcome them, but no.
It is interesting to see that Team Arrow has dissolved and it is only Oliver and Felicity left. I’m really looking forward to seeing the Mayor Queen story as this was a fantastic arc in the comics. Who will be the season 5 villain? I think they need to go back to having real villains, crime bosses or non-super powered bad guys! The show struggled as soon as it introduced magic! Arrow built it’s reputation on realism and destroyed it this season.
And don’t get me started on the flashbacks! Now that Oliver is going to Russia and presumably will be getting his Bratva contacts, there will very little time between the flashbacks and when he got rescued!
He has to go to Russia, then get back to island alone, live like a hermit, grow a huge beard and set traps all across the island, all before getting rescued! Chant with me…No more flashbacks! No more flashbacks!
What did you think of the episode? Let us know in the comments below.
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