Arrow has found a new candidate for mayor of Star City, and it’s none other than the Green Arrow himself! But what on earth inspired Oliver to put down his bow in favor of a suit and tie? Let’s get right into season four, episode 2, “The Candidate.”
When the hour begins, Team Arrow is really on their game searching for a bomb and taking out the ghosts guarding it. This is one well-oiled machine, people! But Oliver is still worried about Thea’s rage in the field, while she doesn’t think anything’s wrong. Of course, we all know where this is heading.
Back in the Arrow lair, Felicity tells Oliver that it’s officially her first day back on the job as CEO of Palmer Tech, and to celebrate, he packs her a lunch (!) and gives her a new love fern (!!), officially cementing his role as the house husband (without the actual marriage… although, give it time. We all saw that ring). That sound you hear? Fans everywhere are swooning.
In Oliver’s loft, he and Thea have a meal with their mother’s friend Jessica Danforth and her daughter Madison, during which Jessica declares her intentions of running for mayor of Star City. But Oliver and Thea are right to warn her against it – at the press conference announcing her run, a guy named Lonnie Machin tries to kidnap and kill her. Oliver buys the truck Lonnie touched while making his getaway, but the prints are all wonky. Ss in, Felicity thinks he cut off his fingertips and played mix-and-match to hide his true identity. Gross!
At her first Palmer Tech board meeting, Felicity is shocked to learn that the company is not doing well at all financially, but an employee, Curtis Holt, has an idea on how to save the company: fire a bunch of people. But she’s not interested in putting people out of work.
When Felicity brings Curtis in to reprimand him for his heartlessness, he reveals that he actually came up with the algorithm that figured out which people to fire instead as a way to get company-wide raises, and his boss made him use it for evil instead. Awww, he’s just a softy at heart! But they still end up having to fire a bunch of people, and they do not like it. Even worse: his name was on the list. Ouch.
Meanwhile, during their stake out the police precinct in Lonnie hit it up to finish the job, Diggle finally confides in Laurel about his knowledge of Damien Dahrk’s HIVE. Nice timing. It only took him about two years to do it!
It turns out that Lonnie was, no surprises here, hired to kill Jessica by none other than Damien Dahrk! They meet up and Damien tells him he failed to impress his “organization,” the same group who wants Star City to die so it can be reborn. But Lonnie won’t take no for an answer and claims he’s not done yet, and he promises Damien that in the end, Jessica Danforth will not run for mayor.
Too bad for him, since Felicity figures out where he’s been hiding, and Oliver and Thea go to question possible witnesses. However, she gets a little too into the questioning and breaks some guy’s arm without hesitation, alerting Oliver that he wasn’t wrong to worry about her.
Back at the Arrow lair, Oliver confronts Thea over the way she’s been fighting – not to disarm, but to cripple – and confesses to everyone how Malcolm warned him that people don’t come back from the pit the same. She freaks out and attacks him, and it’s clear that he was right. When Laurel asks Thea about it later, Thea tells her all about the Lazarus Pit, and it gives Laurel an idea about how to save her sister.
Later, when Oliver tries to get Jessica to drop out of the race again, she lets him know she’s doing this for her daughter… which makes him realize Madison is not safe either. But he realizes this too late, as her police detail are all dead, and she’s missing. Lonnie is proud of himself for kidnapping Jessica’s daughter, but Damien tells him that there are some lines you don’t cross. That’s why he gives Lance the address of where Lonnie is keeping Madison, but only after letting him know once again that his own daughter is in danger if Lance doesn’t follow Damien’s orders.
Lance immediately calls Oliver and tells him the address, and Team Arrow infiltrates Lonnie’s hideout. Diggle get Madison to safety, while Oliver and Thea go after Lonnie. But after pushing him into gasoline, she uses his own shock stick and lights him on fire, again without any hesitation, and she realizes that Oliver was right about her.
Back at the precinct, Madison is reunited with her mother, and Jessica tells everyone she’s withdrawing her candidacy after it put her family in danger. That inspires Oliver to decide to run for mayor himself, so he can inspire in the light, while also being able to take care of himself if anyone came after him in the shadows. Mayor Oliver?! Hey, it could work!
Felicity calls another emergency board meeting, and this time tells everyone she’s re-hired everyone she already fired, including Curtis, who had been working on a new project that will revolutionize technology and save the company from financial ruin. The board is skeptic but tell her that they needs to present it in six months at the shareholders meeting. The issue is, she made that whole story up, hoping that Curtis really did have something up his sleeve. Looks like they’ve got some work to do!
Back at Laurel’s, Oliver apologizes to Thea for keeping the secret about the Pit from her, and Laurel tells Oliver she’s taking Thea away for a spa getaway for a few days, leaving Star City in Oliver and Diggle’s hands. But she was lying to Oliver: she wants to take Thea to Nanda Parbat to get help from the League, both for Thea and Sara. And so they go right to Sara’s grave and dig her up, and she. Looks. Gnarly. Yikes. Who wants to bet that bringing someone back who has been dead for almost a year is going to be rough.
Meanwhile, while the ambulance was taking Lonnie to the hospital so he could get treated for his severe burns, he somehow managed to get up off the gurney and kill all the paramedics and then usedhis own blood to write the symbol for “anarchy” on the wall. And just like that, Anarky is born!
In the flashbacks this week, Oliver kills the man who had him at gunpoint after he parachuted onto Lian Yu, and gets orders from ARGUS to “infiltrate” and “make them trust you.” He then finds a group of people being held hostage by soldiers, farming some kind of roses? We’re actually not really sure what’s going on here. But Oliver ends up landing the job of the man he killed, and he cleans up so much he looks like the Oliver in the present! He’s taking his orders seriously, and bullies the farmers in order to get the other soldiers to trust him. What is going on?
What did you think of this week’s Arrow? What is the deal with Lian Yu’s flower farm? Is Laurel insane for wanting to put her sister through the Lazarus Pit after watching Thea go through it? What is Anarky going to do next? Hit the comments section below to weigh in now!
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