Welcome to the Legion!

andy

Legion contributor Andrea Levine is recapping and reviewing Arrow for us this season. Follow her on Twitter @wysefyre!

A.W.O.L begins sweetly. Diggle and Lyla are enjoying a date night, but it’s interrupted when an A.R.G.U.S agent, Alan Chang shows up and tells Lyla to get in touch with Waller. Before he can go into detail, a van arrives and opens fire. Diggle is wounded and Chang is taken.

A little while later, Laurel arrives at a crime scene, antagonizes the SCPD into giving her a moment alone with the body. Diggle joins her, identifies the body as Chang’s and discovers he was tortured to death and his eye was removed.

Lyla and Diggle go to A.R.G.U.S and talk to Waller. She stonewalls them, but secretly slips Lyla a flash drive, containing info about what Chang was working on.

the diggles

The intel discusses a unit of  US Army Special Forces turned war profiteers named Shadowspire. A.R.G.U.S took them down and it appears they want payback. Diggle goes to talk to Andy about it. The first question is how many evil organizations is Andy associated with? If there’s more than these two, I’m out. Andy was never like Diggle. Diggle takes it hard, finding out Andy pretended to be a completely different person with him. But he pretended because he didn’t Diggle to be disappointed in him, so maybe there’s hope for Andy. He even offers up a little info. Shadowspire will most likely be holed up at the nearest freeport.

The closest one is Pacific Freeport and it shows signs of serious security upgrades. They don’t know how to bypass everything, so Oliver calls Felicity. She’s reluctant, but since she’s also knee-deep in her own issues, she takes the opportunity to get out of her head and help the team.

Felicity gets them in, and they split up. Laurel and Thea go in search of the two other A.R.G.U.S agents who had been working with Chang, but they’re dead. Oliver and Diggle try to hold off the Shadowspire agents, but they get separated and Diggle is captured. It’s then he learns the man spearheading this mission is his old Lieutenant, Joyner. Before Joyner can discover who Diggle is, Oliver gets to him and they bail.

waller meets andy

Diggle and Lyla take Andy to A.R.G.U.S so Waller can debrief him on Shadowspire. Waller thinks they’re after railguns, but Andy knows Shadowspire is all about misdirection. Team Arrow is alerted and goes in search of the railguns, while Diggle stays with Andy as Waller and Lyla go to the control room to look for intel.

They don’t need to work too hard, because Shadowspire comes to them. Using Chang’s missing eyeball, they gain access to A.R.G.U.S and take Waller, Lyla, and all the other agents hostage. Joyner wants the access codes to Rubicon. Waller refuses, so he shoots a man. He’s willing to kill everyone in the room for those codes.

Thanks to some quick thinking by Lyla, she alerts Diggle to the situation. Phones are being jammed, but because occasionally Diggle listens to Felicity when she goes on a tech rant, he is able to get a message out to Oliver. Oliver gathers the team and they head to A.R.G.U.S. However, they’re not going to get there quickly enough, so Andy begs Diggle to trust him.

Joyner once again asks Waller to give up the codes, but she refuses. She will never give up the codes, no matter how many people he kills. Lyla vouches for her, so Joyner puts a bullet in Waller’s head, and asks Lyla for the codes.

John’s communication is discovered, and a couple of Shadowspire agents go to investigate. They find Andy alone. He taken to Joyner, who is surprised, but not unpleased to see him. Andy sells out Diggle and Lyla. He tells Joyner to find Diggle and use him to get Lyla to give up the codes.

Diggle’s captured, and gun is put to his head. He gives Lyla the okay about giving up the codes.

Team Arrow gets to A.R.G.U.S, and Felicity directs them in. The team takes out the agents, Oliver goes to find Diggle and Lyla, Laurel and Thea go to the sub-basement, where Rubicon is supposedly being held, and Felicity does her best to block the codes from working.

Joyner is pissed it’s taking so long. He threatens Diggle again, only this time, Andy jumps in and goes for Joyner’s gun. Oliver arrives and a fight breaks out. Shadowspire is taken down. Rubicon, whatever it is, is safe.

Diggle decides it’s time to try and trust Andy again. Instead of putting him back in his cell at the Arrow Cave, Diggle brings Andy home to stay with him and Lyla and to meet his niece, Sara.

gothlicity 2

Felicity spends most of this episode wallowing in self-doubt. It’s understandable. She’s just suffered a catastrophic injury and her whole life has changed. I don’t like seeing Felicity hurting, but I like how her issues manifest in the form of her alter ego, Gothlicity.

Gothlicity spends most of her time taunting Felicity, saying she’s been hiding who she really is for the past five years. The true Felicity is Gothlicity. She was never meant to be a superhero. But Felicity realizes this isn’t true. She wants to help people, and she can. Not only that, but as she tells him, neither she nor Oliver are to blame for what happened. The blame resides solely with one person, a man with “an extremely on-the-nose and alliterative name,” and they’re going to stop him. And just like that, she is back in the game.

At the end of the episode, she shows Oliver a photo of Gothlicity. He’s a little surprised, but I think he secretly digs it. She burns the photo to prove that she is no longer that person. Oliver promises they will do whatever they can to find a way for her to walk again.

Other points of interest

~ This week’s flashback is Diggle-centric. We go back to Afghanistan, Helmand Province, 2005, where Diggle and Andy are stationed together. They go on a mission with Lt. Joyner to stop an opium shipment destined for the Taliban. Things get a little dicey, but thanks to the quick thinking of Diggle and the brave rashness of Andy, they’re successful and capture the opium. Andy and Diggle are given guard duty of the opium, and Lt. Joyner suggests maybe they skim a little off the top. Andy says no, and John’s really proud of him for going straight, but later on, Diggle sees Andy talking to Joyner and gets suspicious. Andy swears he wasn’t up to anything and needs to be trusted. Diggle apologizes. Sometime later, Andy goes to see Joyner. Joyner gives him an additional cut for the opium, because his boss was able to trade it for something extra special. It’s a map to a place of immeasurable power, but so many people keep disappearing, it’s called Purgatory, but we know it as Lian Yu, because the Shadowspire boss is none other than Baron Reiter.

~ Felicity reading The Shining makes my Stephen King loving heart super happy.

~ Laurel and Oliver have a heart-to-heart over Felicity. Since Laurel is the only other person around who’s dated Oliver, she gives him some sage advice — don’t be too hard on yourself. She knows how guilty he’s feeling. It was a nice moment for them because they were training and talking, and this was a good reminder of what their relationship really is. Laurel needs to be given more to do.

laurel oliver

~ Felicity and Oliver share a sweet moment about how much they’ve grown. In the past, Felicity would have stolen Rubicon and released it into the world as a political statement and Oliver would have snapped Joyner’s neck. Gotta love growth and progress.

~ Biggest news of all – Felicity finally has a codename – Overwatch. Because Oracle was taken. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, but I’m glad she finally has the name. And it’s certainly better than her suggestion of “Hot Wheels

Do we think Andy has turned a corner to walk on the side of good? Will he be an anti-hero, walking the seedier sides of life and relaying that info to Team Arrow? Will he turn bad again? Or will he eventually go off like Sara or maybe even reunite with his family? I like that we have a real wild card in the mix. Is Amanda Waller really dead? Or is this just DC’s way of getting her out of the picture so she can move on to other things, such as the Suicide Squad? What do you think of Felicity’s new codename?  Until next week….

About author View all posts

Andrea Levine

Andrea Levine is an East Coast based geek, who has more fandoms than she cares to admit. When she isn't talking about the latest geeky news, she's obsessing over musical theater. Her dream is to successfully bring geekdom and musical theater together (I'm looking at you, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark). You can read more of her exploits as Wysefyre over at [insertgeekhere].