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Up until this episode, everyone in the world of Arrow was a regular person. Sure, some of them could snatch arrows out of the sky or hack the Internets, but they were all basically human-powered. But now something new has been added: super-strength! Someone went to a Q Consolidated warehouse, kicked in a titanium door and carried off an industrial centrifuge. Good heavens! Nobody can believe it, but a young CSI scientist named Barry Allen has travelled from Central City to promise that it's true.
Felicity and Barry immediately hit it off (because the attractive geeks always get paired off; just ask Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and soon he's standing on a precarious ladder to shelves of dangerous chemicals in a lightning storm. But he does not, in fact, turn into The Flash the way all the comic book fans were hoping. And it turns out he's just a CSI assistant who's obsessed with crimes committed by people who seem to have superpowers.
Said superpowers are just like the ones caused by the Mirakuru serum back on the island. But you can't take it without a powerful sedative, and now Slade's dead. That's a shame. The current round of magical serums has been created by Alderman Sebastian "Brother" Blood, and he's also overdosing homeless people. This gets the attention of Sin, who enlists the aid of Roy, who tries to get Oliver involved. But Oliver shoots Roy in the leg, which is kind of the end of that.
Meanwhile, Moira Queen has come back from prison. Oliver tries his best to enact some public relations, but the only move he knows is to throw a lavish party, and nobody's interested in coming. Malcolm Merlyn insists that she tell Thea who he father is, but she sets Ra's al Ghul after him instead. So Malcolm leaves and we won't see him again until Sweeps.
Eventually, Felicity figures out that the superpowered thief is going to steal some ketamine from medical storage and Oliver goes there to fight him. It does not go well and Oliver loses the fight. Diggle and Felicity find him with two hypodermics of mystery drugs in his leg, so they have no choice but to call Barry Allen back from the train station to help them. Cliffhanger!
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open on Q Consolidated at night. There's lightning in the skies. And we're in a warehouse that's actually being used for something for a change. Two security guards are drawn to a large door, which gets knocked down by something that must be very strong indeed. They're quickly disposed of by whoever (or whatever) broke in. We only see boots, so it's anyone's guess which plot strand is being developed here. I'm going to guess that it's Cyrus, who's all hopped up on whatever concoction Brother Blood has made.
Oliver walks Moira into the CEO's office, and Felicity welcomes her awkwardly. The Queens pass through and join a board meeting that's already in progress. We never see the beginnings of meetings on this show. People are always breezing into them partway through, messing up the agenda. Isabel Rochev is running things, and she's not happy to see Moira back in the building. She takes a moment to talk to Oliver privately, so she can insist that letting Moira run things again sends a bad message. Because she was acquitted by a jury, not "the community." Diggle comes in to tell Oliver about the break-in.
Elsewhere! Somebody gets out of a train in the rain, covering his head with a magazine called "Science Showcase" that has a cover story worrying about whether the Particle Accelerator will be safe. People sure talk about particle accelerators a lot on this show.
Enough of this mysterious person. To the warehouse! Diggle claims that the door was made out of "expanded reinforced titanium," although it looked a lot like corrugated steel to me. Officer Lance speculates that maybe it was knocked down by a forklift or something.
The guy in the rain gets splashed by a taxi.
Officer Lance asks Oliver what the intruder (or intruders) might have been looking for. Oliver isn't amused by Lance's suggestion that there might have been an extra earthquake machine around the place. A warehouse worker has security footage, and it has only one person. A twitchy guy comes over to announce that he's here. He's Barry Allen, of the Central City CSI. He's working a case with similar elements. He believes one very strong person ripped through that door. And he has a picture of a dead guard showing that his neck was broken with one hand. And he thinks the thing that was stolen was a specific industrial centrifuge. It was ripped out of the ground over here. Felicity explains a centrifuge and then gets swoony about Barry also knowing science things. Barry shows everyone that there are footsteps leading to the door. Footsteps that have sunk into the concrete because someone was carrying something incredibly heavy.