Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: A- | 47 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Return of Slade
By Monty Ashley | Season 2 | Episode 15 | Aired on 03.05.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.As you might remember, the last episode ended with Slade Wilson in the Queens' living room, confronting Oliver to his face. Oliver tries to gently suggest to his mother that this guy is up to no good, but since he's been fighting with her, she just assumes he's being a jerk for no reason. It's not entirely unlike Oliver to be a jerk, you know. When Moira leaves the room, Oliver and Slade consider fighting, but they're interrupted by Thea, who ends up leading a tour of the Queens' extensive collection of nineteenth-century landscape paintings. Honestly, it's not the most action-packed sequence you've ever seen.
However, the island flashbacks take up a lot of the episode, and they're packed with as much as action as you could want. Oliver has been practicing his key skills (archery, running around and pull-ups), so he purposely gets himself captured and taken about the Amazo. Once there, he sends Ivo's men on a wild goose chase to the engine room so he can beat up some guards. Sara and Slade hang-glide onto the ship and start causing trouble. Slade kills a bunch of guards while wearing his cool Deathstroke mask, and Sara frees all the prisoners. This includes the Russian guy from the Bratva, a new guy named Reverend Thomas Flynn and a jerk named Henrik who seems to hold a grudge against Sara for being one of Dr. Ivo's minions. But he only chokes her nearly to death, so it's fine.
Oliver eventually corners Dr. Ivo, but he can't bring himself to kill the evil doctor. This lets Ivo tell Slade that Oliver is sort of responsible for Shado's death, and Slade goes predictably crazy. He beats up Oliver in a Mirakuru-fueled frenzy. Everyone else we care about escapes to the island, but Slade takes command of the ship by killing the old captain and chopping off Ivo's hand. He promises not to kill Oliver until he's brought him to the depths of despair.
And that brings us back to the modern day. Oliver manages to alert everyone in the Arrowlair that Slade is in his house, and Sara tells everyone that Slade is going to kill Oliver's whole family. So Diggle takes up a sniper position while Roy tries to get Moira and Thea away from Slade. Just as he's starting with that plan, Sara comes in with a knife. There's a four-way staredown that's actually pretty cool, and then Slade leaves in an extremely fancy car, promising to come back and do something cool later. Then we learn that he was putting secret cameras all over Castle Queen. The joke's on him, though, because 90% of those cameras were in rooms we've never seen before and will never see again. He could have just bugged the one living room and been done with it.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This episode had a three-minute trailer. How often does an episode in the middle of the season get special promotion? It's not even sweeps!
So let's see if this episode lives up to the slight amount of hype it received. Oliver isn't good at pretending not to know who Slade is, although the way he's gritting his teeth and growling his dialogue could easily be confused for just being the way he talks to his mother these days anyway. Slade's excuse for being here is that he donated to Moira's campaign because she's "pro-business." I wouldn't think a billionaire would need a lot of campaign donations just to run for mayor. She's also got the backing of the city's largest bank. Moira and Slade were discussing ways to fix the wage gap when Oliver walked in, even though that's never come up on the show before. And it seems more like something Sebastian Blood would be worried about, rather than the billionaire "pro-business" candidate. Slade talks about "how difficult it is to pick yourself back up when others have written you off." Oliver is just vibrating with unhappiness. A servant who doesn't get to appear on screen brings in a cart with some "Ruether Rum" on it. We don't know what that is, but Slade makes a big deal out of it being Australian. Oliver eyeballs the pile of ice on the cart, which has a convenient icepick. Slade offers a toast to friendship and looks Oliver in the eyes. Just one eye at a time, however, because Slade has that eye patch. He walks over to a model ship and asks if the Queens spend much time on the water. Moira carefully reminds him of that shipwreck that killed Robert and tore the family apart. Oliver claims he doesn't like talking about the shipwreck or his time on the island.
Hey! It's a flashback to that very island! Oliver is running around and shooting arrows into trees. He's not quite hitting the bull's-eye, though. He's also doing pull-ups with some difficulty. But as he continues to run and jump, he starts getting better at everything and he's soon hitting the bulls eye every time. Slade's there to compliment him, but Oliver is pretty hard on himself, saying the trees are stationary. It's nice to see him actually learning things on the island. Eventually, he's going to have to build himself one of those salmon ladder things.
In the plane hideout, Slade and Oliver go over Ivo's capabilities. They know he has grenade launchers, but probably not night-vision goggles. Sara is mixing up something that tastes awful that she promises will work. But we don't learn what it does right away so it can be a surprise later. Remember this scene and promise to be surprised later. She and Oliver sneak out of the plane so Oliver can speculate about Mirakuru being a miracle drug that could save humanity. They're only five feet from the plane, so Slade can hear everything. They all agree to destroy the Mirakuru to keep it out of Ivo's hands. So we see the box in the middle of a bonfire. That can't be safe, can it? If you have a dangerous and unstable drug, I feel like burning it and inhaling the smoke might have unexpected side effects.