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The team splits up this week, as Oliver tries to track down Slade, and Diggle goes off to take charge of his own mission. Oliver doesn't do very well at his task, which is surprising to me. I guess I expected that a billionaire with a superhacker would be able to find a one-eyed Australian without too much difficulty, but all Oliver accomplishes is getting thrown out of the local branch of the Bratva. And even that seems iffy, because his Bratva contact turns up with one of Slade's arrows through his eyes. Oliver's real arc is that he starts out trying to push Sara away for her own safety, but he ends up letting her join him in planning to fight Slade.
The real star of the show this week is Diggle. He hooks up with the Suicide Squad, which has always been one of my favorite comic book concepts. This time out, the Squad consists of Floyd Lawton (Deadshot, the man who killed Diggle's brother), Shrapnel (the bomber from six episodes ago) and Bronze Tiger (big guy with metal claws and China White's sometimes-bodyguard). They're being supervised by Lyla Michaels, Diggle's ex-wife who he's now sleeping with. And above her is Amanda Waller. The Suicide Squad is a group of captured bad guys who get sent on dangerous missions because it doesn't matter if they killed. And if they try to sneak off, there's a remote-control bomb in their heads.
There are other potential Squad members (we clearly hear Tara Strong as Harley Quinn, although nobody's entirely convinced the character will really be on the show as anything but an off-screen voice), but that's the team for this mission. Diggle joins them and they go to Markovia to get some deadly nerve agent from a bad guy named Gholem Qadir. The first part of the mission goes all right, although Shrapnel tries to drive off, so Amanda Waller blows his head up. This makes Diggle question who the bad guys really are. And then when it turns out that Waller's plan is to just stand Deadshot to the nerve agent so she can target him with a predator drone strike, he rebels. The nerve agent still gets destroyed, but Deadshot lives and it's not as clean a job as Waller was hoping. Diggle is unhappy with Lyla's involvement, but he doesn't want to lose her again. We also get to see flashbacks where Diggle first starts liking Lyla in Kandahar. And Ben Browder is there!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Oliver is asleep. Then he wakes up (which is good, because otherwise this would be a pretty boring episode) and sits up suddenly. He thinks Sara is asleep to him, but it's really Shado. Her head is bloody, and she says, "Murder." Ghosts are always talking like that. Then Oliver wakes up for real, because that was a dream sequence. He and Sara appear to be sleeping on a bed in the Arrowlair. He couldn't get an apartment or something? He gets out of bed and makes a call in Russian.
A sign in Russian welcomes us an auto body shop or something. There are a lot of cars around the place, anyway. Oliver's here to talk to Alexei, the local Bratva guy. Oliver wants Alexei to find Slade Wilson, who he describes as being rich, Australian, and one-eyed. The Russian wants a favor first, because there's someone who owes him money. And this week, the Bratva works on a system of interlocking favors. Oliver says he doesn't have time, but Alexei insists. Two goons flank Oliver, and he says, "Okay." Then he wallops the goons and points a gun at Alexei. Oliver says, "I know exactly how this brotherhood works, and right now, it works for me." Then in subtitled Russian, he asks, "Do we understand one another?"
Oliver's on his way back to his motorcycle when Sara pops up behind him to ask when he last slept. It was when he found out that Slade was alive, which was a couple of days ago. Oliver claims he's not scared. He's just going to kill Slade and make sure he stays dead. And he doesn't want to do any talking about it.
Diggle is in his car. Well, somebody's car, anyway. I guess I shouldn't make assumptions. The last time we saw him, he was getting whopped over the head by Slade's men, but he seems fine now. Felicity brings him some hot cocoa as a way of revealing to the audience that he's watching over her because of the threat of Slade. He's increased the security on Moira, told Roy to watch Thea, and is letting Sara watch Laurel. Felicity describes Diggle's decision to just park outside her apartment as being "like that lacrosse player my freshman year in college." She tells him not to bother guarding her, because "If Slade wants to kill me, he can. There's nothing you can do to stop him. " So her plan is to just get killed if this is her week to be the victim? Diggle gets a text that says, "Ostrander Hotel. Room 1141. Now." It might be of interest to you that John Ostrander was an important writer of the comic book Suicide Squad. And that's the title of this episode!