TV - Arrow Season 3, Episode 8
How do you top the geek fest fun that was Flash vs. Arrow? How do you even start to compare the episodes? The Flash has set out to be fun since its inception but Arrow has always had a darker, mean streak to it. This week in fact Oliver Queen sums it really well himself stating to Barry Allen “You live in Central City where it's sunny all the time, and your enemies get cute nicknames. You're not in Central City. I live in a city where my best friend was murdered, where a woman that I loved was shot full of arrows and sent tumbling off a rooftop. Where my mother was murdered right in front of me.” And that is very much the point. Yes Barry has faced death and adversity but nowhere near as much as Arrow has crammed in, so fun is great but it’s different. Different doesn’t always mean bad though.
Arrow, Arsenal and Diggle are surrounding a house they believe is the hiding place of the boomerang killer, Digger Harkness. The doors are set with explosives so Roy and Oliver shoot them with arrows and, as the smoke of the explosions clears, they enter the house but find no killer, just an A.R.G.U.S. assault squad who warn Oliver to stay away.
Caitlin and Cisco turn up at Palmer Technologies pretending to be on holiday but really they want to see the Arrow Cave (I knew I wasn’t the only one who called it that) and beg Felicity to take them. Diggle goes to see his girlfriend Lyla at A.R.G.U.S. headquarters to question her about the identity and mission of the boomerang killer. The killer enters the building using a false I.D. and starts immediately killing people and, during the battle, Diggle and Lyla are pinned down. Enter Arrow and Arsenal who fight with the killer. Roy goes down and, just as Oliver is about to get boomeranged, The Flash rushes in and saves him but the killer gets away.
Lyla explains to the team that Digger Harkness was part of the suicide squad but, when a mission he was on failed, she had to kill or “sanitise” the team using an explosive implanted in their heads but something went wrong and the explosives expert Harkness had survived and was now seeking revenge. Cisco works out that a petty criminal who had been arrested a while ago by Captain Lance had produced the boomerangs for Harkness and Felicity traces a mobile phone to a warehouse. The Flash gets there first and ties up everyone but Harkness is not there. Arrow starts to torture information from one of the captives, sparking the first of a few rows with Barry over methods and morals, but the entire exercise was a trap formed by Harkness who had reversed the phone trace to discover Lyla’s whereabouts.
Felicity traces Harkness to the train station with facial recognition software and The Flash and Arrow go to take him down. Harkness explains he has five bombs, all linked, dotted all over Starling City. To stop the carnage all five bombs must be dismantled simultaneously so The Flash rushes various members of the backroom team to the bomb sites so they can cut the wires at the same time and avert disaster. When Lyla wakes up she and Diggle get engaged and the team of Cisco and Caitlin present Oliver with a new hood. Caitlin promises to do the DNA test needed by Felicity to trace Sara’s killer. The Flash and Arrow go off to an undisclosed location to see who really would win a fight.
Yes this episode was different to the past crossover. There was nowhere near as many geek boy moments, Felicity kept her top on, but the slightly darker edge was commented on and dealt with throughout the episode. Oliver faced his past tortuous departures in the Amanda Waller flashbacks and Barry kept on at Oliver to make him realise he hadn’t survived by losing his humanity but by keeping it, and I like a morality tale. I also like fight scenes and this week’s were as great as they had been all season. I have loved both the crossover episodes and really look forward to more at a later date.
Image - IMDb.
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