Warning: this recap contains major spoilers from this week’s episode of Arrow, “So It Begins.” It is a recap, after all! Don’t say we didn’t warn you …
Team Arrow got one step closer to figuring out the identity of Prometheus. After the mysterious hooded villain had been keeping in the shadows all season, he finally made his M.O. known in the appropriately titled “So It Begins.” After setting up an elaborate prank to let Oliver know “so it begins” (literally those words were written in flames, so Prometheus clearly has a flair for the dramatic), Oliver decided not to tell the other new recruits about the growing threat of Prometheus. Dig agreed since one of them (cough, Wild Dog) already gave up Oliver’s secret identity to a gangster. They didn’t believe the new team could handle this just yet. However, Felicity thought they should clue in the new team members, especially when Prometheus started killing more and more seemingly random people.
To try and figure out who Prometheus is, Dig told Felicity to steal one of Prometheus’ throwing stars from evidence at the SCPD. In other words, from her new boyfriend Billy Malone/Detective Boyfriend. That was a little bit of an issue since he was starting to suspect that she wasn’t being truthful about her work and her friends with him. But she stole it anyway! Not a good way to keep a healthy relationship, Felicity. Even Oliver knew that, and that’s saying something!
As for Oliver’s love life, now that he knew about Felicity’s new boyfriend, he was ready to move on with someone new as well. Too bad he picked ruthless reporter Susan Williams as the new object of his affections, because unknown to him, she had just discovered one of his many deep secrets: he was in Russia when he was supposedly stranded on Lian Yu for five years. She also incited a city-wide panic by reporting on the “throwing star killer” a.k.a. Prometheus, causing a riot that Team Arrow had to stop and clean up. That meant Oliver finally clued in his new recruits about this new threat, but they were salty that they weren’t told about him earlier.
However, their hurt feelings were put on the backburner when Curtis and Felicity realized that Prometheus was killing people whose names were anagrams for names on Oliver’s season one List—the people that he killed as the Hood way back when he first returned to Star City. Whoa, twist! What an awesome way to bring things full circle. I love it. The new recruits, however, were all shocked, horrified and disgusted to hear about Oliver’s past as the Hood and the Arrow before he became Green Arrow, and Ragman even went so far to say that Prometheus was sending a message that the Green Arrow is the true serial killer here. Ouch.
The new recruits met up to discuss their issues with Oliver hiding his past and only sharing new information with his A Team a.k.a. Original Team Arrow. The recruit who took it the hardest: Evelyn. Meanwhile, Dig had a heart-to-heart with Oliver after the way the recruits reacted to his past really got to him. Dig helped him see he’s not the same person he used to be when he had the List, and only kills as a last resort now as opposed to the first resort, meaning he has evolved and grown in the past four years. But they all had to pause in their processing of feelings when Felicity figured out six potential new Prometheus victims in the city, so Team Arrow suited up and split up to guard each one.
Evelyn’s target was the unlucky next victim of Prometheus, and she engaged him in a brutal fight in a subway car while the rest of Team Arrow arrived. Prometheus escaped, but blew up the train after he left. Oliver, Evelyn, and the target managed to get to safety just in time though. Success! As Mayor, Oliver helped put the six potential victims into witness protection until they caught Prometheus, and Evelyn later reconciled with Oliver.
As for Felicity’s romantic issues, she decided to come clean to Detective Boyfriend about her working for the Green Arrow after seeing how Oliver once again tried to hide secrets from his team, and to her surprise, he actually took it really well! I think he kind of fanboyed about it for a bit, too. However, something not taken well is the news that Prometheus has been using throwing stars made from metal from Oliver’s arrows that he had used over the past four years. Felicity and Oliver then realized that Prometheus has access to the SCPD lockup if he’s using arrows from past crimes, meaning he’s a member of the SCPD. That is really, really not good.
Meanwhile, Thea wanted to put together a music and arts festival to generate revenue for Star City, and Oliver gave her the go ahead to work on it with Deputy Mayor Lance. But after the recovering alcoholic kept disappearing and showing up late, she started to suspect the worst, and went through his office and found a bottle of booze. Uh-oh. Turns out that Lance never actually recovered, and he’d been drinking this entire time. While Lance tried to get Thea to give up on him, she refused, and decided to go with him to an AA meeting to help him actually recover this time. But when the camera flashed to him at the very end of the episode, his arm had a deep gash in it, and he had one of Prometheus’ throwing stars on his table. There’s no way he’s Prometheus … right?!
And in this week’s Russian flashback, Kovar (Oliver’s target) declared war against the Bratva. He attacked a Bratva bar to warn them to stay away from his new casino, and so Oliver’s superiors told him to pretend to be an interested investor in the casino using his old identity as “rich playboy” to get into Kovar’s inner circle. It almost worked until Oliver got caught and knocked out. He woke up tied to a chair in front of Kovar. Ladies and gentleman, Dolph Londgren has arrived!
What did you think of this week’s Arrow? Tweet me your thoughts at @SydneyBucksbaum!
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
Images: The CW
