Hey, everybody! It’s Baby Allen! I mean, Barry Allen!!
We open with a break in at the Queen Consolidated Applied Sciences warehouse. Two guards get taken out by a seemingly superpowered person. Felicity welcomes Moira back to the Queen offices in her awesome awkward fashion but Isabel isn’t happy to see her. The city isn’t going to like this, she tries to warn Oliver but they quickly learn of the break in and head to the warehouse. Quentin, no longer a detective, can’t help sound like a detective as he explains what he thinks happened. Security cameras show just one man, which no one believes is the case when a new guy shows up claiming it really was just one thief. “Do your parents know you’re here?” asks Oliver rightfully and thus begins the fantastic slew of quips from him.
This new guy introduces himself as Barry Allen, a crime scene investigator from the Central City Police Department. He claims they’ve had a similar case back home and shows them all, police and civilians alike, a photo of a corpse. Barry explains the man had his neck broken with one hand, which is impressive because that’s really hard to do. “I guess you don’t know how hard it is to break someone’s neck,” he says to Oliver. Ahem. Moving on. He tells them an industrial centrifuge was stolen, a Kord product, and he and Felicity bond over the knowledge of what a centrifuge is.
While Felicity shares footage from other cameras showing the thief lifting the giant centrifuge singlehandedly, Barry shows up. Forensic science isn’t my forte, says Felicity, insisting, “We need him. Hehe. Diggle suggests Oliver knows more about this than Barry. And he does. But why would he tell Diggle that. Not like it could help in the overall solving of this case or anything.
Felicity and Barry start “experimenting together” and find clues from the thief’s tracks (sugar). Barry inquires about the Vigilante, seeing as how Felicity has been saved by him, and all she can muster is “he was green.” Well, that’s interesting, says Barry, “Black would be better for stealth and urban camouflage. I think he trained in a forest or jungle environment!” Felicity tries to avoid eye contact as he goes on to suggest the Vigilante use a different material for his arrows because he’ll have better penetration. Felicity replies, “Maybe he thinks he penetrates just fine.”
There aren’t enough wink GIFs on the internet for this episode.
Anyway, Barry goes on to give her a bit of his background story. Saying he’s interested in the Vigilanted because his mother was murdered when he was 11 and he wonders if she could have been saved if he was around then.
Moira is finally back at home and Oliver suggests “now that all the bad stuff is behind us, let’s throw a party!” As Moira shifts uncomfortably. Later that day, Moira gets a visit from Malcolm. You killed your son, you can’t have my daughter, she tells him. “Our daughter,” he corrects her. He says he actually left Starling and Tommy because he felt bad about their affair and that’s how he wound up in Nanda Parbat. He suggests she tell Thea the truth, and soon.
Barry and Felicity fill in Oliver about what they’ve discovered and they realize there’s a sugar refinery close which had a truck stolen recently which just got used to rob a blood bank. Barry gets nervous when talking about the similar case in Central City while Diggle once again asks Oliver to fill him in so he knows what the hell they are fighting, and Oliver once again shuts down. Arrow catches up to the thief and the truck and we get a series of some pretty great stunts. The short fight ends as Oliver gets a sample of the man’s blood.
Back at the Arrow Lair, Oliver finally explains he’s seen men with abilities like this before on the island. He corrects himself when he says “we” with “I” which, come on, and talks about the Japanese WWII military project. He claims Dr. Ivo is dead while explaining he wanted to test the serum on people. Everyone injected with the serum is dead, he says, I burned the last one. Felicity and Barry get to work on finding out who is currently trying to make more of this serum as Diggle tells Oliver, “I think our Miss Smoke is smitten,” in the most middle-school adorable fashion. Also he checked in on Barry, who is not who he says he is.
In a lab, Barry is touching a variety of dangerous substances while it thunders outside. Nice nod to his origin story. “Nitric acid next to hydrazine? Permanganates on top of acetone?” He tells Felicity how dangerous it all is and she’s all, “well then don’t touch them, idiot.” They start flirting even more and once there’s a confusion as to whether or not she and Oliver involve she says, “I do not like Oliver,” and then invites Barry as he plus one to Moira’s party.
Meanwhile, Sin has an emergency, her friend Max has been missing a week, so she asks Roy for help thinking he can get the Vigilante involved. Thea comes along for the ride as they check out Max’s apartment. There are drawings of Brother Blood’s mask everywhere. They realize he went missing the same day as the blood drive Sebastian Blood was holding and head out to investigate more but are spotted by one of Blood’s bad cops.
We get another S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator story on the news and find out Barry thinks it’s super cool. Felicity basically calls him an idiot again. I love these two. But just then, Oliver outs him as an assistant whose bosses don’t know he’s in Starling. Oliver also reveals Barry’s mom was murdered by his father, but Barry insists he’s innocent. They didn’t believe me when I told them something like a tornado came into our house, he explains, I saw a person in that blur. His father tried to fight it and Barry suddenly found himself 20 blocks away. His dad is serving a life sentence for it. He leaves but Felicity isn’t pissed at Barry for lying, she’s pissed at Oliver. “We lie too.”
But now it’s party time! Felicity looks freaking ADORABLE. And Roy is wearing a BOW TIE. Unfortunately, hardly anyone showed up for the party. Moira doesn’t mind much though, she expected it. Oliver called Barry for Felicity’s sake but won’t stop with his jabs, “FYI, they will card him at the bar.” And then they have an adorable middle-school dance while Oliver does shots with Isabel. Moira comes over for a chat and immedidately goes to work throwing burns at Isabel. NO SERIOUSLY THOUGH, WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE HER? Just because someone isn’t overly friendly doesn’t make them a terrible human being.
A little while later, Moira asks some random dude if he made contact, he tells her the information was gratefully accepted. Oliver is all, “who the heck is that random dude?” Nothing to worry about. Uh huh, right, mom. Moira seems like she wants to tell Thea the truth but doesn’t. Roy got a call from Sin at the party and rushed out without Thea. She found Max. Dead. Which is exactly what Sebastian wanted to happen for some reason. The cops are saying Max overdosed but Sin insists he didn’t do drugs and Roy takes a picture of the body, with blood coming from his eyes, for proof.
Barry eventually gets caught by his boss, who tells him to get back to Central City if he wants to keep his job. He and Felicity have found out a sedative, ketamine, is needed to make this super serum work. NOW KISS. They don’t. Sigh. At the Arrow Lair they go about locating the ketamine which just happens to be at an ARGUS disaster bunker of relief supplies. Felicity explains the thief’s muscle density almost the same as concrete, so his arrows aren’t going to cut it. He’s all, don’t worry, I’ve handled this before, but they also realize Roy needs his assistance before he can wrap up the case.
Arrow gets his update from Roy and notices the blood from the eyes is similar to what he’s seen before. Roy says being his eyes and ears isn’t good enough anymore. Fine, says Arrow, then we’re done. When Roy insists he and his friends will go it alone, Arrow whispers, “I can slow you down,” annnnnnnd shoots him in the leg. Clean through. Roy looks at the now bloody arrow sticking through his leg…a red arrow. SYMBOLISM!
Malcolm visits Moira again and asks if she’s prepared Thea. Her answer? No. You will never talk to her. I am through being afraid of you. “Even the vigilante couldn’t kill me,” he says. “No, but I know someone who can…Ra’s al Ghul.” OH SNAP, THAT’S WHO SHE WAS SENDING MESSAGES TO!!?? I didn’t know about him or the league of assassins until you mentioned Nanda Parbat, she explains, so thanks for that. “You told Ra’s I was still alive?” YUP and he wants to kill you himself. Now run. Heee!
BIG FIGHT TIME as Arrow catches up with the super thief at the ARGUS building. But it doesn’t last too long as Arrow falls on some medical equipment and gets stuck with a few needles, getting knocked out. Felicity and Diggle find him but the needles only had codes on them and Felicity can’t access the information. She stops Diggle from calling 911, but insists the two of them can’t save him. Hmm, I wonder who can? Barry misses the last train back to Central City and while waiting for the next one he gets hit with a tranquilizer dart. He wakes up…in the Arrow Lair!!!! “Please save my friend,” pleads Felicity. Yesssssssss.
Our flashbacks this week had the island crew following the coordinates on the hosen and finding the submarine. Slade is really not doing well. Luckily, they find the drug but Sara informs them they need to give him a sedative first or else he’ll die. Of course there’s no sedative. They decide to try it, since he’ll die anyway, and Slade tells Shado he’s sorry for not telling her how he really feels. Awkward Oliver is awkward. After the injection, Slade starts bleeding from eyes and seemingly dies. Oliver and Shado share their grief as the bad guys break in.
This was a really fun episode for me, much like the Smallville episodes that featured other DC heroes always were. Even though Barry isn’t quite Barry, the dynamic between him and Oliver was fantastic and I’m sorry we won’t get much more of it. Of course, the same could be said about the budding relationship between Barry and Felicity. Though I was very happy with the character they created and the delivery by Grant Gustin so I will definitely be tuning in for The Flash series when it premieres. While I’m still annoyed constantly at Oliver’s clamming up when important things need to be revealed, I was extremely pleased by Moira getting in on the action big time.
What did you think of the episode?
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