Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: B+ | 73 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Birth of a Hero
By Monty Ashley | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 12.11.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The good news is that Oliver recovers from almost dying in the last episode. The bad news is that now he's having hallucinations where his dead friends show up and cause trouble. Shado shows up early, which kind of foreshadows the flashback scene later on when she dies. Then Slade shows up and beats Oliver up, which is a little weird, because like I say, he's a hallucination. And finally, Tommy shows up when Oliver's about to die so he can give him a rousing pep talk about being a hero.
Oliver tries to be a good citizen for once and tells the police about Cyrus Gold, the superpowered thief from last episode. But that just results in a lot of police getting killed when they try to confront him. Quentin Lance gets put in the hospital and his old partner gets killed. So that didn't go perfectly.
In the flashbacks, Dr. Ivo drags everyone out in the forest. Then, for no apparent reason, he makes Oliver decide whether he kills Sara and Shado. Oliver eventually chooses to save Sara, and Shado gets killed, thus allowing her to show up as a hallucinatory ghost.
Roy still has an arrow in the leg from Oliver shooting him, and Oliver appears somewhat embarrassed about it. After Oliver pulls the arrow out, Roy is feeling well enough to go break into a psychiatrist's office to try to steal a file relating to his dead friend, Max. Unfortunately for Roy, he gets grabbed by Cyrus. So he ends up strapped to a chair with Mirakuru being injected into his neck.
That's when Oliver breaks through the ceiling and blows up Brother Blood's lab. Cyrus gets killed, probably, although there's a decent change he's going to return as immortal corpse Solomon Grundy. Roy dies from the Mirakuru, but Oliver revives him, so maybe he has superpowers now. Brother Blood gets away, so he's free to run for mayor as Sebastian Blood. But it turns out he's got a boss, and it's Slade Wilson. He's not dead after all! But he has an eyepatch and a burning wish to stick an arrow through Oliver's eye.
And Barry Allen does a bunch of science things. He provides Oliver a proper mask because nobody can take this eye makeup seriously any longer, especially the way it vanishes every time Oliver returns to the Arrowlair. And then Barry decides he doesn't have a chance with Felicity, so he returns to Central City just in time for the particle accelerator to be turned on, blow up, and do unspecified things to his chemicals. But I will specify them: now he's The Flash. You'd think having an actual superhero around would be helpful, but he's probably going to be busy with his spinoff.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This episode is called "Three Ghosts," so I can only assume it's going to be a version of "A Christmas Carol" where Oliver learns the true meaning of Christmas. SPOILER: That is not the case.
As you might remember from the end of the last episode, Oliver is dying after being injected by a mysterious substance. Diggle and Felicity have kidnapped Barry Allen and brought him to the Arrowlair so he can figure out what to do. Machines start beeping a lot and Barry has Diggle start chest compressions, possibly because Diggle is a big, muscular dude who should be good at that sort of thing. Barry decides that Oliver's problem is that his blood is hyper-coagulated, so it's like he has maple syrup in his veins. He grabs some convenient rat poison, which worries Diggle. Barry claims that if he injects just enough rat poison, it'll thin out his blood enough to get it circulating again. I'm not sure how the rat poison is supposed to thin out his blood if the blood isn't circulating enough to get the rat poison throughout your system.
Oh! I just thought of a joke! "It makes sense that Oliver's blood is turning to maple syrup because Stephen Amell is such a wooden actor." Ha! I zinged him good! Anyway, Oliver sees a vision of Shado and reaches his hand out to her.
Later, Barry carefully takes a bandage from Oliver's neck. Then Oliver regains consciousness and grabs Barry around the throat, as you naturally do when you wake up. Everyone explains to Oliver that Barry saved his life, but he just whines about Barry being told about his secret identity. He even says he's considering murdering Barry with an arrow. Our hero, everybody! I like this show, but it has trouble with the dividing line between "intense" and "horrible jerk" sometimes. Like right now. Oliver yells about how he researched Felicity and Diggle before letting them in on his secret life, and Barry interrupts to say that he should really be thanking Felicity, not shouting at her. Oliver doesn't quite punch him. Then he gets a text from his mother so he has to go home. He tells the team (which I guess counts Barry) to start researching the bad guy, because he's probably about to start mass-producing the drug that gives superpowers. Barry claims that the bandage he took off Oliver's neck is going to magically recreate the superpowered thief's fingerprints. You know, with polymers. Oliver nods a little, and then he leaves. He's still wearing his Arrow gear.
But when Oliver gets home, he's properly clothed. Moira says Thea is locked in her room and won't talk to anyone. There's a Christmas tree in the room, and Oliver is surprised that it's Christmas. Everyone on this show watches local news all the time; so I guess he's just really good at tuning out the commercials. And the reports on Black Friday.