This week’s Arrow can accurately be summed up in a few small words: it’s a Die Hard movie with bees. You can thank Felicity for that little nugget of knowledge when her old The Flash nemesis Brie Larvan (Emily Kinney) returned to enact some pun-riddled revenge. Seriously, this girl loves herself a good bee pun. Let’s recap “Beacon of Hope,” which should be renamed “Bee-con of Hope,” am I right, or am I right? (Raise your hand if you got tired of all the bee puns 10 minutes in to the episode. Everyone’s hand should be raised.)
(Editor’s note: this post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of Arrow, so stop reading now if you haven’t seen it yet.)
But first, the big revelation of the week: at some point in the past few years, Oliver read the Harry Potter books! And didn’t see any of the movies. Shockingly enough, he’s a Harry Potter book purist! Color me impressed. He also told Team Arrow not to treat Felicity like Voldemort even though she’s not on the team anymore. But he was clearly not doing well without Felicity, so Laurel tried to help him through the breakup. She was pretty well suited for that, since she caused him the same kind of heartbreak years ago. What an appropriately inappropriate person to confide in about his canceled engagement.
In Iron Heights prison, villain Brie Larvan was somehow granted 30 minutes of internet time per week. That seems like a terrible idea. Like, really terrible. Because with that small amount of screen time, she was able to break out of prison and used her robotic bee swarm to threaten the Palmer Tech board and force them to give her Felicity’s bio-stimulant microchip (the one that’s in her spine), since it’s the only one in existence. Of course, Thea and Donna picked the wrong day to drop by to take Felicity to lunch, and they all got trapped inside Palmer Tech.
Curtis, who was home with a cold, saw Larvan’s bee swarm on the news, and used Ray Palmer’s old phone to track Team Arrow to their secret lair. After passing out both from excitement and illness, and needing an I.V. to rehydrate, he became “the taller, more dude-like version of Felicity” for Team Arrow, according to Diggle, and that could not be a more accurate description. He hacked into one of Brie’s bees and managed to relay a message to Felicity, Donna, and Thea that Team Arrow was on the way, but then the bees transformed into an exoskeleton supersoldier and one of them stung Oliver.
Just kidding, it didn’t just “sting” him. It went inside him, and started replicating itself in his body. Ew! Curtis figured out that Laurel’s canary cry would disrupt the bees’ frequency, and surprisingly, it worked. Curtis was psyched that they got a win, but then Oliver freaked out on him. He yelled about how they need to do their job perfectly or people will die. He wanted Curtis to realize that working on Team Arrow and doing what they do is not a good, happy life. Laurel pulled him aside to talk him down, but he told her the only reason he got back into this life was for Felicity and without her, he doesn’t have hope that they can do what they set out to do: save the city.
Inside Palmer Tech, Felicity and Thea managed to get to where the board was being held hostage and sent them to safety with Donna, while they faced off with Brie. She then revealed why she wants Felicity’s chip: she has a tumor in her spine, and the only way to cure herself is the microchip. Felicity told her where the chip blueprints were, and while she was gone, Thea tried to convince Felicity to come back to Team Arrow, but she said she’s officially done. And when Brie got the blueprints off Palmer Tech’s computers, she recognized the coding and realized that Felicity was the one who sent her to prison in the first place. So, time for revenge!
Thankfully, Curtis, bolstered by Oliver’s angry motivating speech, came up with a way to stop the bees by loading an arrow with a computer virus that would kill all the drones. So Oliver suited up and went off to try and save the day. But emphasis on the word “try.” He fought the bee exoskeleton dude, but it was Felicity who actually saved the day by electrocuting it (get ’em, girl!). A pissed off Brie then shot Oliver point blank in the shoulder, but Curtis got control of the bees again and made them all attack Brie. She overdosed on toxins from the bees and ended up in a coma.
Back in the Arrow Lair, Oliver congratulated Curtis on a job well done and apologized for yelling earlier. Laurel was impressed with his maturity, and he told her he will try to be a beacon of hope from now on. Back at home, Curtis apologized to his husband for putting himself in harm’s way, and he made Curtis some soup to help his cold. They officially have become the cutest couple on this show. Only because there’s pretty much no other couple left standing. How depressing, right?!
And once all the action died down, Felicity told Thea that instead of re-joining Team Arrow, she’s going to try and remake/rebuild Palmer Tech into a beacon of hope and develop Curtis’ chip to help more people like her walk again. Is Felicity really done with Team Arrow for good?! She seems perfectly happy without the vigilante action in her life, and Curtis seems like he can pick up the I.T. slack in her absence but Team Arrow without Overwatch is just plain sad.
Meanwhile, Malcolm visited Damien Dahrk in prison to tell him that HIVE is still moving forward with their Genesis plans … but without Dahrk. You see, without his magic, his “coworkers” have no use or interest in working with him anymore. To make his day even worse, three inmates attacked Damien with a shiv. Damien then threatened one of the inmates’ grandmothers, and so he made the blackmailed inmate kill his friends instead. But Malcolm wasn’t kidding about moving forward on the outside without Dahrk; he then met with Diggle’s brother Andy. Apparently, Andy never really went good, and now he’s HIVE’s “ace in the hole.” Uh oh. I sense more Diggle family drama in the future.
And in this week’s island flashbacks that seem to be moving the plot forward slower and slower as each episode goes by: Baron Reiter revealed to Oliver and Taiana that he can harness the magic of the island and the magic of killing someone to make himself strong and seemingly immortal. He knocked out Taiana, and fought Oliver, but his magic ran out. He wants to kill more people and use the magic totem to get more power. And that’s it.
What did you think of “Beacon of Hope,” Arrow fans? Are you as over the island flashbacks as I am? Tweet me your thoughts at @SydneyBucksbaum!
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Images: The CW
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
