‘Arrow’ Recap: Friend Turned Enemy
Warning: This recap for the “Checkmate” episode of Arrow contains spoilers.
His secret is out, but that doesn’t make Prometheus any less of a threat. In fact, it moves his endgame forward, and an old friend joins the fight against the Green Arrow. Oliver ends the episode in chains, and that means dark times ahead for all of Team Arrow.
The plot
Oliver goes to Nanda Parbat, and Talia tells him that Prometheus is Adrian Chase; she’s delighted to tell him because she wants him to suffer for killing her father. He confronts Chase in a parking garage but is unable to take him down because Chase has Susan Williams. Oliver escapes the SCPD at Chase’s house, where he meets Chase’s wife, Doris (Parveen Dosanjh), who doesn’t believe her husband is a killer. Felicity uncovers Chase’s real name — Simon Morrison — and gives the info to Captain Pike (Adrian Holmes) in hopes of taking Prometheus down that way, but Pike is stabbed and put into a coma. Felicity asks Helix for help finding Susan, but they ask her to do some hacking in return. The team rescues Susan, and Oliver surprises Chase by bringing Dori. She asks him to stop, but Chase stabs her instead. In the ensuing chaos, Talia attacks Oliver, and she and Chase kidnap him. Oliver wakes up in shackles.
The flashback
Oliver, Viktor (Mike Dopud), and Anatoly have lost the laptop with the proof of Gregor’s embezzlement, so their only option is to kill him. Oliver puts on the hood to separate himself from the actions of his darker side as they assault Gregor’s stronghold, leaving the gangster at Oliver’s mercy.
Diggle’s fireside chats
Prometheus is as good a fighter as Green Arrow, but his real strength is his ability to get inside Oliver’s head. Ollie’s an act first, brood later kind of guy, and by blocking him from taking action, Chase is letting him tear himself apart with guilt. If it weren’t for Diggle, he would have torn himself apart long ago. Twice, Oliver tries to renounce his humanity this episode, and Diggle has to remind him that the whole point of protecting people is moot if you can’t be human doing it. It borders on the repetitive, but that may just be a sign of how good Chase is at his job.
Terrific balls
Curtis’s T-Spheres have finally achieved their proper level of comic book power, zipping through walls and tracking down people. Like Dinah’s canary cry, they let the show acknowledge that it exists in a superpowered world without turning Arrow‘s Star City into The Flash‘s Central City. At the end of the day, Dinah’s cry isn’t any more powerful than Oliver’s arrows, and the T-Spheres are roughly as effective as Felicity’s hacking; nobody’s time traveling here, but it makes the show feel more cohesive with the rest of the CW’s DC universe.
Quiverful of thoughts
*In the comics, Vigilante is Adrian Chase. So if Chase is Prometheus, then who is Vigilante? It could be literally anybody — including a nobody we’ve never met — but structurally, it would make sense for it to be Billy Malone. How? No idea, but his coming back would clear Green Arrow’s name and also make up for him being such a sap earlier in the season.
*You guys: Oliver’s a really bad mayor. Well-intentioned, sure, but handing the cops information from unvetted sources and demanding they pursue that intel to take down the DA or possibly lose their job? Good guy, great vigilante, bad mayor.
*Felicity redirected some Homeland Security drones covering the U.S. border for Helix. Was that a throwaway plot-point or will this come back to bite Team Arrow in the butt later?
*Far and away the evilest thing about Prometheus: After being exposed, he still forces Quentin and Rene to do paperwork. Does his cruelty know no bounds?
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.
