Arrow S04 & Ep18 Recap


This is the Arrow season 4 and Ep 18-specific Recap. The Roundtable Discussion of Ep 18 can be found here. Comments are disabled in this recap, so head over to the discussion to join in there!

Warning: this is spoiler territory. If you aren’t caught up on Arrow, you have been warned!
Previously on Arrow:
Season four started out with our fair city renamed to Star City in Ray Palmer’s honor. We got a new baddie in Damien Darhk who’s really cramping everyone’s style, especially when he murders city leadership and then makes Captain Lance work for him. Oliver gets yanked back from his retirement bliss to fight H.I.V.E. This season sees Ollie propose to his lady love, run for Star City mayor, try to help his bloodlust-crazed resurrected sister, get buddy-buddy with Malcolm Merlyn, and team up with two other DC heroes, Constantine and Vixen. Oh yeah, and there’s that whole thing about his son in Central City. Eeesh. There’s also a mysterious funeral that teases a major death.
We also see Sara Lance get resurrected into a raging murder beast, and Ray Palmer sending creepy messages from beyond the grave to Felicity’s phone. Turns out Sara and Ray come back only long enough to go away again as Legends of Tomorrow. Guys, we hardly knew ye—well, okay, we knew you pretty well I guess. This season we also get cutie Curtis action, and when Felicity is paralyzed by Darhk’s goons, even Curtis’s husband gets screentime.
That’s right, Felicity is in a wheelchair, and helping Team Arrow from the Arrowcave, with her Ă¼ber tech! Apparently “Oracle is taken” (stop teasing, DC), but it doesn’t even matter what you call her, because Curtis comes up with a miracle cure within like two episodes anyway! (Okay, more like five episodes, but still).
This season also saw the return of Cupid, stupid! Roy Harper briefly pops in, and we also get a pretty decent Bug-Eyed Bandit return that allows Curtis to shine. Diggle’s brother Andy is still alive, and Felicity walks out of Oliver’s life because his baby mama made him pinky-swear to secrecy. Malcolm hates Oliver again, the League of Assassins has been disbanded by Nyssa, Darhk is temporarily imprisoned and on trial, and his wife wins the mayoral campaign that Oliver dropped out of. Also, Amanda Waller gets killed. Stupidly. Thanks, DC movieverse!
Oh yeah, and there are a bunch of flashbacks of Lian Yu and an ugly-as-sin magic idol.
Eleven-Fifty-Nine recap: Team Arrow gets set up for failure on a H.I.V.E. raid, and the ugly idol is stolen and taken back to Darhk. Oliver’s spidey sense is tingling about Andy, but of course John gets incensed that his bro would be suspected of foul deeds. No season of Arrow is complete without John Diggle being pissed at Oliver Queen.
Laurel gets offered the District Attorney job by the new skeevie mayor, but before she can accept, Darhk incites a prison riot. Surprising absolutely no one who was paying attention, Andy turns on Team Arrow and sides with Darhk. Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to Oliver when it matters? *sigh*
With his magic restored, Damien gets stabby with poor Laurel to pay back Quentin Lance’s treachery, and then escapes. Laurel flatlines at the hospital and Paul Blackthorne delivers one of his best performances in the span of like ten seconds.
Lian Yu flashbacks have Oliver burying Reiter alive in the tunnels with the ugly idol.


Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.