Last week’s episode of Arrow showed us Bratva in 2017 and 2012. We start off in 2012 where Talia and Oliver are having a little target practice on low level drug dealers. She tells Oliver the man who embraces the dark is never without sight.

Back in Star City Quentin returns and sets up an interview with Susan Williams to address his absence and his stint in rehab. Diggle is then released from prison after he was exonerated. Unfortunately Walker also released himself from prison. He and his team broke out of custody and stole a nuke to sell to the Russians. This then forced the team, including Dinah, to take off to Russia. Well, all of the team except Rene who is babysitting Quentin. Rene and Quentin practice interview questions. Quentin gets fired up after Rene mentions his late daughter Laurel, leaves and tells Rene to be gone by the time he gets back.

When the team arrives in Russia Oliver is not welcomed by Anatole; he is greeted with a fist to the face. A member of Bratva and former brother of Oliver’s, Alexi Lenov was killed by Slade because of Oliver. He broke his oath and is told to go home by Anatole.

Later on in the episode Oliver meets with Anatole to make amends. Anatole still owes him for killing Gregor. Oliver asks for Anatole’s help. He offers if Oliver will help him. Oliver refuses and so does Anatole.

Felicity with her new found courage and knowledge (Pandora Files) ropes Curtis and Rory into going under cover as Bratva to get a location on Walker and the nuke. Rory tells Felicity that he is worried about her and that she needs to use that powerful information wisely. As Uncle Ben once said “with great power comes great responsibility”.

The team finds Walker and Oliver, Diggle and Dinah go after him. Oliver and Diggle are ambushed by Walker and his men. Dinah saves them by using her powers and they take a man hostage. They torture him to get information on the buy. Diggle goes rogue and beats Walker’s man to a pulp without getting information from him. Oliver is then forced to take Anatole up on his offer in order to gain his help with Walker.

The episode then jumps back to 2012 where Oliver goes after the man who sold drugs to Thea in Starling City years ago. He kills all the dealers.

Jumping back to 2017 Dinah reminds Oliver that he has more to offer than his past mistakes. Oliver tells Felicity and Diggle that they need to remain good. Anatole arrives with information on the buy. The team goes on the move again.

Ragman and Dinah use their powers to neutralize Walker and his men and take back the nuke. The Bratva orders them to drop their weapons. Unfortunately the team discovers the bomb wasn’t in the van and that it is in a hanger and armed. Felicity has to shut it down or she will have another Haven Rock situation on her hands. Rory realizes the bomb can’t be disarmed so he wraps his rags and himself around the bomb to absorb the shock. He survives the blast and saves the day.

Diggle has Walker at gunpoint but he lets him live so that he can face trial.

The team celebrates Russian style with Bratva. Dinah becomes Anatole’s favorite American (sorry Diggle) because she can hold her vodka. Anatole then tells Oliver that his oath to Bratva is for life. It isn’t temporary.

The episode then jumps back to 2012 Russia again. This time Anatole is in a hospital bed after being beaten to a pulp because he questioned Gregor about his loyalty. Oliver offers to kill Gregor for him.

The team returns to Star City and Oliver finally seals the deal with Susan. Quentin also has his interview with Susan and all goes well because Rene told her to go easy on him. He told her a story of when Quentin told him he could be more than a thug when he was a kid and caught him tagging a building.

When Rory gets back to Star City his rags no longer work; they got destroyed in the blast. Therefore he decides to leave for now and asks Felicity to let the team know.

Felicity receives a text from Kojo and confirms that she plans to continue with Pandora. What trouble will she get herself into? Will she be able to get out of it? Who else is in those Pandora files?

Susan “The Snake” Williams is still looking into Oliver’s past in Russia. She is beginning to piece together that Oliver is The Green Arrow. What does this mean for their relationship? More importantly, what will she do with that information?

Next Week:

The team needs to change their approach to save the city.

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‘Arrow’ Recap: “What We Leave Behind”

The post ‘Arrow’ Recap: “Bratva” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

The past came back to haunt Oliver in the mid-season finale of Arrow. “What We Leave Behind” finally revealed who Prometheus is and brought back a beloved character.

In the previous episode we learned that Evelyn is working with Prometheus. In this episode we learn that she has been giving Prometheus intel not only on Oliver but the entire team. Evelyn brings Prometheus Oliver’s notebook (the one with his kill list back from when he was The Hood) and tells Prometheus she wants to be there when he kills Oliver; she wants to watch him die. Prometheus tells Evelyn he doesn’t wish to kill Oliver but he will uproot his life so much that he is going to wish he was dead. And boy did he live up to that promise in this episode.

After Felicity awkwardly introduced Billy as her boyfriend to Curtis and Oliver at the Mayor’s Christmas party, things really turned sour. Curtis gets into an argument with his husband Paul and then gets into a fist fight with Prometheus. He is seriously injured but his cover is blown. Not only does Prometheus know who he is but his husband now knows he is a vigilante and has been lying to him about it this whole time.

While he was being attacked by Prometheus Curtis was injected with Dycloserol. A man off Oliver’s list named Justin Claybourne, introduced the drug 4 years ago when Oliver was The Hood. Oliver went after this man and killed him when he would not lower the cost of the drug in order to save the community he purposely injected with tuberculosis. Oliver thinking Claybourne is Prometheus, heads back to the warehouse where he created the serum. There he ran into a trap from Prometheus. Wilddog and Evelyn are called to come to Oliver’s rescue and that is when Evelyn turns on them.

Evelyn helps Prometheus escape and Oliver informs the team of her betrayal. Rory warns Curtis about Evelyn and Paul overhears their phone call. Curtis finally comes clean and tells Paul he is working with The Green Arrow. Paul is then forced to give Curtis an ultimatum. Either he quits being a vigilante or their marriage is over. Unfortunately for Paul, Curtis has never felt more like himself then when he his Mr. Terrific. He can’t give up being a vigilante.

Billy, who doesn’t heed Felicity’s warning, goes off in search of evidence to bring in Prometheus. He can’t stop hunting the cop killer because it is who he is. Unfortunately for Billy, he is caught snooping around by Prometheus but not before he could send a picture of a baby to Felicity.

Prometheus takes Billy hostage and the SCPD is forced to go after him, this time with a shoot to kill order.

While Oliver and the team (with the help of Speedy, who seems to be coming out of retirement a lot) go out in search of Billy, Felicity runs the baby picture through facial recognition software. Turns out the baby and Prometheus are one in the same; they are the illegitimate son of Justin Claybourne. Prometheus is seeking vengeance for the murder of his father. Oliver finally puts the pieces of the puzzle together and goes back to the place where he murdered Prometheus’s father.

He arrives at the scene of the crime and discovers Prometheus is staging bodies exactly how Oliver left them 4 years earlier. The only difference is that Prometheus now stands in his father’s place. A battle begins and Prometheus leads Oliver into a room with mirrors. Oliver fires arrows into Prometheus’s chest only to realize he actually shot Billy. Prometheus pulled a play out of The Joker’s handbook and dressed Billy up in his suit and taped a weapon in his hand. Oliver had no way of knowing that it was Billy and reacted out of pure instinct. He returns to the arrowcave and tells Felicity that he accidently killed Billy. Felicity blames Prometheus and forgives Oliver, at least for now.

Oliver then tells the team that Prometheus said anyone Oliver goes near dies and that they should all get as far away from him as possible. The team refuses to leave his side.

At the close of the episode John gets a frantic call from Lyla and heads to their location only to be greeted by the feds. He was set up and is on his way back to prison.

After the team leaves Oliver is left alone in the arrowcave momentarily. As he nears the glass tubes where the suits are kept he is greeted by none other than Laurel Lance. How the hell is she still alive?!?!?!

Arrow returns Wednesday January 25^th, 2017.

To come on this season of Arrow:

Curtis will realize his full potential and the team will attempt another difficult Diggle prison escape.

Clip from the new episode coming Wednesday January 25^th:

For those that have the CW app (if you don’t download it, it’s free!), The CW has given app users an exclusive look into the next episode of Arrow which airs on Wednesday January 25^th:  Oliver is on a mission to find the Russian woman who trained both him and Prometheus. The team is slowly easing Laurel back into reality and filling her in on what she missed. Oliver gets Diggle a lawyer after he decides to fight his wrongful conviction.

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Prometheus Sends Oliver A Message, ‘Arrow’ Recap: “So It Begins”

The post ‘Arrow’ Recap: “What We Leave Behind” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Last night’s episode of ‘Arrow’ “So It Begins” slowly began to unravel clues as to who Prometheus is. The episode kicked off with Spartan (Diggle) and The Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) following Church’s cell phone to a message left by Prometheus. After finding the phone and listening to Prometheus breathe heavily into the other end of the line, all the torches in the building went out and flames on the floor displayed “And so it begins”.

Later in the episode we learned exactly what Prometheus was talking about. The menace killed a mother of two and continued to drop bodies throughout the episode. The team, well Oliver and Diggle, tried to work out a way to decode Prometheus’s message before a 5^th body turned up. Unsuccessful, Oliver once again learns that he can’t do this by himself and conjures up the team to take control of the chaos in an outdoor mall after Prometheus was apparently spotted there.

Riding down on Oliver’s line, which much be awesome, the team of Artemis (Evelyn Sharp), Mr. Terrific (Curtis Holt) and Wild Dog (Rene Ramirez) rescued civilians while Spartan, Oliver and Ragman (Rory Regan) disarmed other civilians. The team saves the city for the moment and heads back to the arrow-cave.

Back at headquarters Felicity enlisted the help of Curtis to decode what message Prometheus is trying to send Oliver. They discovered he is killing people whose names, specifically the letters in their names, rearrange to names on Oliver’s former kill list. Yet another thing Oliver didn’t disclose to his team. Rory, Rene and Curtis were mad but Evelyn took it hard. Oliver was the one who stopped her from seeking her revenge and killing the person who murdered her parents. However, the team had to temporarily overlook this deception and get back to work. Using the algorithm uncovered by Curtis and Felicity, the team was able to figure out who Prometheus may be targeting next. Each team member was then assigned to guard a person.

Trying to reach out to Evelyn, Felicity tried to get her to open up when she is on the subway for guard duty. Not wanting to hear Felicity anymore she turns off her com. This proved to be a huge mistake as Evelyn ran into Prometheus and was forced to fight him. Lucky for her Felicity tipped off Oliver and he arrived in the nick of time to save her and the man she was guarding. Unfortunately Prometheus escaped and left a present (a bomb) behind. Unable to disarm the bomb in time the three escaped the subway via parachute arrow before it exploded. Evelyn then chose to give Oliver a second chance after this incident; he did save her life after all.

In hopes of catching Prometheus, Felicity stole the throwing star left at the crime scene from Billy’s desk. She discovered that the throwing stars have a specific and rare type of alloy. Digging deeper Felicity determined that Prometheus gathered the arrows from Oliver’s murders in previous years and melted them down in order to make his own weapons. The only way that he could have had access to that was if he had access to the SCPD weapons vault. Therefore, unveiling that he is a member of the SCPD.

Later on she came clean to Billy about taking the throwing star and the fact that she works for The Green Arrow, hence her late nights and frequent disappearances. Billy told her she is a criminal but accepts it and her because it’s for a good cause. That went much better than anyone thought.

Later on Lance was visited by Prometheus; he woke up after an alcohol induced blackout with a cut on his arm and a throwing star on his coffee table. Why didn’t Prometheus kill him? Does he know Prometheus? Is this a warning of his impending death?

“So It Begins” also showed us the beginning of Bratva’s war with Konstantin Kovar. In Russia, Anatoly taught Oliver how to make a bomb. The two are ambushed by Kovar’s men moments after Oliver almost blows himself up. Kovar has declared war against Bratva and Oliver was forced to go undercover as his former playboy self to blow up Kovar’s new casino.

Oliver and Ishmael Gregor are captured by Kovar when trying to blow up his casino. Gregor was killed but Oliver is left alive. Could Kovar or a relative of his be Prometheus exacting his revenge on Oliver? If so, what did Oliver do to Kovar?

Next Week:

A new vigilante arrives and starts killing people. Like the team really needs this now.

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‘Arrow’ Recap: “Penance”

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Everyone in the arrow-verse is seeking penance. Oliver for all the people he has killed, Felicity for all the people she blew up, Lance for his alcoholism, Diggle for killing his brother… the list goes on and on. This week’s episode of ‘Arrow’ taught us a great lesson. We have to keep the guilt from our past mistakes from swallowing us up in whatever way we can.

Oliver has made a lot of mistakes and a lot of tough choices along the way. “Penance” revealed Oliver’s third and final test in his initiation to Bratva. Oliver gets himself put in a Russian prison for the night in order to get information on Constantine from Pyotr Friedkin. After threatening Friedkin’s family he is able to get the information he needs. Friedkin asks him to kill him shortly after. Oliver completes the deed and is finally initiated into Bratva. “[with Russian accent] Welcome to Bratva Oliver.”

Back in Star City Oliver goes to talk to Rory who hasn’t shown up for training since Felicity told him the truth about Havenrock. Rory tells Oliver that he has to leave the team. He understands what Felicity did wasn’t her fault but he can’t bare the constant reminder. Later on in “Penance” Felicity talks to Rory and it still results in the same conclusion. He won’t come back to the team. Therefore, Felicity must make a tough call and sends the team after Church when Oliver goes rogue to save Diggle.

Church stole a device and rigged to blow up the evidence vault. He and his crew then take ceased weapons and then proceed to obliterate the vault. The DA and Lance escape with their lives all while Oliver and the team are brawling. They thought they could stop Oliver from breaking out Diggle. That was their first mistake. Rule one, do not get in Oliver’s way.

Oliver then steals a molecular device from palmer tech and with the help of Lyla heads to the military prison where Diggle is being held. Unfortunately the mission does not goes as planned and Lyla tells Oliver to abort the mission. Mr. Queen is having none of that and attacks a guard in order to get all the prisoners returned to their cells. He then uses the anti-molecular device to break Diggle out of prison. However the two run into trouble when they reach the extraction point but that doesn’t stop them. Harness + Lyla flying a military plane = mission success.

Back in Star City Church is at ACU (Anti-Crime Unit) headquarters trying to take out every person in the building. Felicity makes another difficult call and sends the team in after him. Lucky for her Rory comes back and helps the team goes after church.

At ACU headquarters the team blows up the building to save the ACU members. Rory uses himself as a shield and absorbs the blast. Curtis is stabbed in the back and Wild Dog takes on Church to allow the team to get to safety. Church and crew takes him hostage as Quentin saves the rest of the team. They are forced to leave Wild Dog behind.

Back at the arrow-cave Felicity can’t find Wild Dog using her tracking system. Unbeknownst to her he is being tortured for information in a warehouse. Rory calms her down and tells her that they will find him. He also promises to help keep the guilt from this and Havenrock from swallowing her up if she promises to do the same for him.

Next Week:

The team sets off to find Wild Dog.

Church learns that Oliver is The Green Arrow.

Mayor Oliver Queen is shot.

Another enemy arises.

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‘Arrow’ Recap: “A Matter of Trust”

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The post ‘Arrow’ Recap: “Penance” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Trust has been a major theme in the last two episodes of Arrow. After recruiting a new team, Oliver quickly loses said team due to his inability to trust them and vice versa. His Bratva (Russian) style training tactics didn’t really help either. Only able to trust himself, Oliver is forced to face Ragman, the lone survivor of Havenrock who is out for revenge.

Amartech, the company offering to help with a health event for Mayor Queen has been doing some dirty dealing. One of which was giving Damien Dhark the bombs that blew up Havenrock. Hence why Ragman is slowly taking out members of the company. The CEO gets a taste of his fury when she is meeting up with Tobias Church. Oliver joins in the fight and let’s Church almost kill him in hopes of recruiting Ragman to team arrow. He is successful as Ragman saves his life.

After Church’s encounter with The Green Arrow, Prometheus confronts Church and tells him to lay off The Green Arrow; he wants him for himself.

We also got to see Diggle in action. Unfortunately he and his unit are ambushed by his lieutenant who are stealing the last known bomb. The young solider is killed and Diggle is taken hostage. He is then thrown into a cell with Floyd Lawten aka Deadshot. Well a hallucination of Deadshot.

Lyla visits Diggle and he tells her he isn’t well. He feels he deserves to be punished for killing his brother and clearly has severe PTSD because of it. Lyla then turns to Oliver for help; she wants him to break Diggle out of prison.

Mayor Queen hires Quentin as Deputy Mayor and that causes a political frenzy. Luckily Thea is there to handle it on Oliver’s behalf and puts that reporter in her place. Putting his trust in Quentin, Oliver realizes he needs to do the same with the new team.

Team Arrow assemble!… errr suit up. I’m gonna leave the catch phrases to Mr. Queen.

The team: Oliver, Evenlyn Sharp (Starfire), Curtis Holt (Fair Play), Rene Ramirez (Wilddog) and Rory Regan (Ragman) team up to take down Derrick Samson played by Cody Rhodes. Samson is a stardust dealer who was first attacked by Sharp and Wilddog and falls into chemicals becoming practically indestructible. The stardust drug mixed with the chemicals changed his body composition giving him enhanced strength and the inability to feel pain. Samson steals a molecular device in order to make everyone else like him and take back Star City from Church.

In action Curtis is saved by Rory when he is trying to disassemble a bomb. The Green Arrow also figures out how to make Samson immobile; he slices his tendons. Score 1 for new team arrow! As a reward Oliver shows the recruits the arrow cave.

This episode also showed us how Oliver gained his definition of trust. We are taken back to Russia where Oliver is mid-initiation into Bratva. He gets the team of guys he is with to work together to ring the bell. Next thing he knows they are all shot and killed. Oliver is then asked to trust Bratva and Anatole. He hesitates but later learns that all the recruits except himself were criminals who escaped justice. Oliver is then cut on his back by his Bratva brothers showing his trust in them not to kill him with his back turned.

Felicity puts her faith and trust in Rory not to kill her when she tells him the truth about Havenrock. She was the one who diverted the bomb from a highly populated area to the smaller region of Havenrock. Rory looked heart broken when he told her. Will this be too much for him? Will he leave team arrow? Will he seek revenge against Felicity even though it wasn’t her fault?

Felicity’s other half Billy Malone (Detective Malone) summons the Green Arrow with a fake B&E radio call. He then goes on to tell Oliver about Prometheus.

There was a lot of great comic relief in this episode. Curtis provided most of it a usual but Felicity and Oliver had some zingy one-liners. Especially the mention of hockey masks. Great TMNT Casey Jones reference.

Next Week

Oliver attempts to break Diggle out of prison but the new team is preventing him from doing so.

Church is planning something big and the team goes after him.

SIDEBAR: CROSSOVER PALOOZA (aka Flash-Arrow-Legends-Supergirl crossover) IS COMING!

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