After enduring four days of torture at the hands of Adrian Chase aka Prometheus, Oliver returned to the arrowcave. There he was greeted by Felicity and Diggle and made the decision to disband the team. As we all know this did not go over well and the team still continued to defend the city without Oliver.

At the beginning of the episode Oliver had completely given up on taking down Chase. The fact that Adrian continued to taunt him at the mayor’s office only reinforced that idea. The man even handed Oliver a knife, saying the only way to kill him would be in broad daylight. That is if Oliver was to do the job himself, which he wasn’t planning on doing. Oliver reached out to his old friend Anatole, who brought along his Bratva brothers to Star City, to have Adrian eliminated.

Meanwhile Felicity was working on her own plan to take down Chase. Helix kindly provided her with the video of Chase as Prometheus unmasking himself. Unfortunately the video was pixelated due to technology Chase was using and Felicity needed direct physical access to Chase’s tech in order to decode it. Luckily for her, Curtis snooped on her laptop and figured out exactly what she needed to decode Chase’s tech. He and his blueberries (metal balls) got the information and hand delivered it to Felicity and Helix.

The Bratva then began wreaking havoc in Star City. First they began by taking diabetes drugs in order to create another street drug to sell in Russia. Their plans were almost foiled by Team Arrow. Diggle then questioned Oliver’s morals and called him out for being a sellout. Oliver then told Diggle to stay out of it. Bratva will kill Chase and the team will remain disbanded.

Later on in the episode Diggle continued to press the issue of the Bratva being in Star City but Oliver was having none of it. Oliver told Diggle about his crusade being a cover for his murdering spree and says to stay far away from him, Chase, the crusade and the Bratva. Diggle being the hard-headed man he is goes against Oliver’s wishes. He wanted to bring in Chase the right way and save Oliver’s soul.

The Bratva then made their move on Chase and so did the team. The team managed to save Chase from the Bratva ambush. Unfortunately this got Chase put into the witness protection program and therefore untouchable, especially for the Bratva. Oliver showed up at Diggle’s place shortly after and punched him in the face for interfering. Diggle then told Oliver to stop pushing him away; he knows who he is and it doesn’t matter to him. He still believes Oliver can atone for his sins just like he did. Oliver just needs to work to be the man who deserves to wear the hood. The man Diggle knows Oliver can be.

Back at Helix headquarters Felicity and Curtis are unmasked by Helix members; they know she is Overwatch and that he is Mr. Terrific. Unfortunately the tech Curtis collected was not enough to unmask Chase on video. Therefore, Felicity and Chase needed to break into Kord (the same place Chase got his technology from) to decode Chase’s face in the video. They are successful and are able to unscramble Adrian’s face.

Unfortunately for Oliver and the rest of the team, the Bratva wasn’t leaving Star City without their 2^nd part of the deal. Oliver refused to give it to them and became an enemy of the brotherhood. He then reassembled the team in order to take down the Bratva. Anatole was prepared for Oliver and the team and took hostages in order to get the drugs they needed. This forced the team to split up. Spartan, Dinah and Wild Dog were on hostage duty while Oliver took on the Bratva and Anatole by himself. After freeing the hostages, Oliver sounded the alarms and forced everyone out of the building.

Oliver and the team returned to a newly restored arrowcave, minus Oliver’s Green Arrow suit. He then had a brief meeting with Anatole before the Bratva left Star City. In that meeting he told Anatole that he is no better than Gregor. Anatole then went on to say he became who he had to become in order to keep the Bratva together and himself alive. Sounds vaguely familiar to Oliver’s reasoning behind his crusade in the very first season.

Oliver returned to the arrowcave and Felicity informs the team that they have video of Chase as Prometheus. The team immediately brought it to SCPD and they attempted to round up Chase. Unfortunately he killed his federal details and escaped before he could be brought into custody by SCPD.

NEXT WEEK:

Diggle and Oliver attempt to get Felicity out of Helix but she isn’t going down without a fight. Felicity believes her involvement with Helix is the only chance they have at capturing Chase aka Prometheus.

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The post Felicity dives deeper into Helix – ‘Arrow’ Recap: “Disbanded” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

On this week’s Arrow, the team was on the hunt for a new Black Canary. They found their new vigilante in Central City. Turns out she is a Meta Human with the same abilities as Black Canary from Earth 2.

Tina Bowlen aka Dinah Drake got her powers on the night the particle excelorator exploded in Central City. She and her partner/lover were caught during an undercover sting operation and were taken hostage. Her boyfriend was shot and the particle excelorator exploded when she was screaming in agony. After the incident Dinah quit CCPD and began her quest to avenge her boyfriend’s death. Unfortunately when the team arrived she wanted nothing to do with them and promised to kill them if they got in her way.

Back at the military prison Adrian informed Diggle of a pending case against Walker, the man who is trying to get him killed. Unfortunately Adrian discovered that Walker has friends in high places and got the case slow-rolled so he won’t get the information in time for Diggle to be exonerated. Thank God the team has Felicity.

Felicity successfully hacked the NSA site only to discover that the file on Walker had been permanently erased. However, she didn’t give up and hit up the dark web for the information she needed. When on the dark web she was hacked by Kojo Sledgehammer (played by Kacey Rohl whom you may recognize from Hannibal or Wayward Pines), a huge fan of Felicity during her activist days. Kojo’s hacktivist group Helix gives Felicity the file she needs on top of information that can take down other politicians and high government executives hoping that Felicity will return to the hacktivist community.

The Pandora Files Felicity is given got Diggle released from jail on bail and allowed Adrian to file a motion for his exoneration.

Oliver refused to give up on Dinah and had Curtis create a sonic dampener to suppress her powers and attempt to talk to her. Once again this was a no go and Oliver was forced to take action after she killed one of the guys working for Sonus, another Meta Human who has the ability to control sonic waves and the man who shot Dinah’s partner. Sonus was also connected to Tobias Church and sold Slide (a drug) to children. Team Arrow offers their help to take down Sonus but Dinah wants to do it herself.  Oliver even gave her his road to redemption speech but that didn’t faze her.

Curtis adjusted the sonic dampener to suppress Sonus’s powers and Dinah killed him. Some other cool moments from this battle included: Oliver’s helicopter ride where he hooked on to the copter and shot arrows at Sonus’s men and then proceeded to blow said helicopter up after he was done playing with it. Later on Dinah visited Mayor Oliver Queen and took him up on his offer to join Team Arrow.

In “Second Chances” we also got to see how Oliver got his back in Russia. Talia al Ghul rescued Oliver from his captors and informed him that the hood he wears is from one of her former students Yao Fei Gulong; the man Oliver met on the island. Talia offered up information on Kovar to Oliver if he would hear out her offer. She is the one who trained Oliver to use the bow and arrow and who taught him to give the monster inside him an identity. This is where his famous opening slogan “I had to become someone else, something else” came from along with his first Green Arrow suit and bow.

Next Week:

Oliver and the team head to Russia in 2017 to stop a nuclear arms dealer

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The post A Second Chance For Black Canary – ‘Arrow’ Recap: “Second Chances” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

The midseason finale of Arrow left us with the return of the beloved Laurel Lance or so we thought. In the opening scenes of “Who Are You?” Laurel tells Oliver that she teleported through the Waverider and that Sarah and The Legends saved her. They brought her back to Oliver’s present and gave her a second chance without causing an aberration.

Later in the episode we find out that this Laurel is not the Laurel from Oliver’s world. She is Black Siren from Earth 2. Thanks to Felicity’s detective work we find out that their DNA does in fact match but when she calls STAR labs to see if Black Siren is still caged in, she learns from Cisco that Prometheus broke her out the night before.

Word spreads quickly and Prometheus founds out about her failure. He proceeds to choke her for defying his orders when she used her powers against Team Arrow.

While this is going on Oliver visits Diggle in prison and pulls a favor with D.A.  Adrian Chase who is now Diggle’s new attorney.

Oliver is then contacted by Black Siren once again and assembles the team to capture her. Felicity then puts the team on another line and orders them to attack when Black Siren moves toward Oliver. However, they do manage to capture once again and bring her back to the arrow-cave. This time Felicity deliberately lets her go. She gives Black Siren a tracker via the water she gave her and sets Black Siren free in hopes it will lead her to Prometheus…. Which it does.

Curtis aka Mr. Terrific recreates a mobile damper in order to combat Black Siren’s abilities and subdue her. It works and Felicity punches her in the face telling Ollie “I kept my wrist straight”. Don’t you just love when she is in the field?

Unfortunately Prometheus was able to evade capture once more but the team sends Black Siren to A.R.G.U.S. where Oliver can keep an eye on her just in case she does have a glimmer of the Laurel he once loved somewhere inside her. Oliver then tells the team that they need to find a new Black Canary and train her.

Back on the military base the D.A. literally uses his face to save Diggle’s life and prevent him from being transported. D.A. He tells Diggle to punch him in the face in order to serve him with another indictment and keep him in his jurisdiction.

We also got flashbacks of Oliver in Russia in Wednesday’s (January 25^th). In the final moments of this episode we saw Talia Al Ghul rescue Oliver Queen from his captors.

Next Week:

The team finds a new Black Canary and she is feisty.

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Arrow — “Legacy” — Image AR501a_0060b — Pictured: Prometheus — Photo: Bettina Strauss/The CW — © 2016 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Season 5 of Arrow premiered last night [Wednesday October 5^th]. “Legacy” showed us the many faces of Oliver Queen: Oliver Queen as the Green Arrow, Oliver Queen as Star City’s Mayor and Oliver Queen as an assassin in Russia. We’ll start off discussing Oliver Queen as the Green Arrow.

Star City is being run by a solo Green Arrow, armed with new arrows, specifically a bomb decoder or computer and a parachute. There are also new emerging vigilantes trying to help our hooded hero, however Mr. Queen doesn’t want to create a new Team Arrow. He believes Thea and Diggle will come back.

Later in the episode Oliver must come to terms with the fact that Team Arrow is no more. Luckily for Oliver, Felicity has been looking into the new vigilantes popping up all over the city. She convinces Oliver to recruit and train them after Curtis is attacked by two thugs doing re-con. Curtis also demands to join Team Arrow to which Oliver agrees.

This couldn’t come at a better time as a new sharp shooter has just arrived in Star City. Meet Prometheus (not related to the DC Comic characters, this is Arrow’s own original character). Prometheus has an axe to grind with Oliver and will be stirring up some trouble in Star City for the vigilante. The question remains who is this villain and what did Oliver do to piss him off? As season 5 is tied to season 1, could this be a character we have seen before or could this be Mr. Kover? The man Oliver is seeking in Russia.

“Legacy” gave us another look into Oliver’s past. This time he is in Russia in some sort of fight club, killing for sport. On the hunt for a Mr. Kover, Oliver kills a man during a fight and is captured by Bratva. Thankfully an old friend and member of Bratva, Anatole, comes to Oliver’s aid and stops him from being killed. Oliver is then brought into another fight by Anatole and begins his initiation into Bratva. That is if he survives the 7-on-1 match.

Mayor Oliver Queen also did some bidding in this episode. He called out SCPD for being corrupt during their gala and said he was hesitant about setting up an Anti-Crime Initiative (a task force of sorts) within the department because of it. Now that Captain Lance no longer runs the unit, corruption and crime within in the force has increased significantly. Fortunately Captain Lance makes his return to Star City in time to see his daughter’s, Laurel “The Black Canary” Lance, commemorative statue. However, he is in no shape to run the department or anything else for that matter. Lance has once again fallen off the wagon after Donna Smoak left him. Oliver does convince Lance to come to the ceremony but it is quickly cut short thanks to Tobias Church and crew; they open fire at the service and take Oliver hostage in hopes to drag out the Green Arrow. If they only knew they had him in their possession already.

Oliver insults Church and gets himself isolated from the group. An SCPD officer takes him to a separate room and punches him in the face a few times. Oliver warns the officer about the dangers of hitting him again. The officer laughs as he believes the mayor to be zipped tied to the chair. Oliver shows the officer his now free hands and proceeds to kill the officer in order to keep his secret. Thea aka Speedy briefly comes out of retirement to help her brother only to arrive when he is killing the SCPD officer. Needless to say she was not pleased.

The duo escape and come back to where Oliver was held in order to rescue the other hostages taken by Church. This time Oliver has back up in the form of Speedy and 4 brave and loyal SCPD officers, hand selected by Detective Malone; a man Lance knows is squeaky clean, he doesn’t even double park, and trust worthy. After successfully saving the hostages and escaping before the building blew up, Oliver announces the start of the ACI, which is to be led by Detective Malone.

Church also gathers all of Star City’s criminals for a meeting, asking them to assemble and work together as one under one chain of command, presumably him. However, it seems like his reign of this team won’t last too long, especially with Prometheus in town. It won’t be long before he comes knocking on their door.

Other exciting things “Legacy” brought us:

We finally learned what Laurel made Oliver promise: “Please don’t let me be the last canary, that way a part of me will always be out there with you.” AWWWWW!!!!!!!

Felicity has a new man, ACI team member Officer Benton.

New CG which looks amazing and really added to the episode overall.

Next Week:

Training day for the new recruits

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