With persistence (and plenty of violence), Team Arrow recruits its new Black Canary. Plus, Oliver’s flashbacks are actually pretty important!
At the end of last week’s episode, Oliver and Felicity agreed that the time has come to honor Laurel’s dying wish and pass on the mantle of Black Canary to someone else. Of course, saying is easier than doing, especially when you’re a secret team of vigilantes who break the law on a regular basis; you can’t exactly just put a job notice in the local paper.
Then, there’s the matter of finding someone worthy of following in Laurel’s footsteps. Felicity, Rory, Rene, and Curtis scour a database for viable candidates. They come up with an impressive-sounding list: a decorated CIA officer who’s a world champion in judo, an Air Force pilot who launched a program for impoverished kids, a former Army special ops soldier who opened a free health care clinic for the homeless. Oliver shoots down all of their suggestions. None of them feel right.
Oliver’s hesitation, it turns out, stems less from any uncertainty about the individual’s combat qualifications or moral standards than from an intuitive need to find someone that fits with the team dynamic.
When Curtis mentions Tina Boland, a legendary vigilante who protects crime victims, Oliver begrudgingly agrees to give her a chance. After all, she already has a version of the Canary Cry – one that’s more powerful and focused than Laurel’s; it must be destiny, Rory asserts. They locate her in Hub City, where we saw her demolish a couple of sleazy bar patrons in the last episode.
Right away, things take a turn for the worse. Tina greets Oliver, Rory, and Curtis, all in disguise, with a derisive quip: “Is there a costume warehouse having a fire sale that I don’t know about?” She declines the offer of a home and team, claiming that she prefers to work alone, and threatens bodily harm if they interfere with her again. She’s perfect, we think.
Some research reveals that Tina has a mission of her own. The episode’s cold open shows her three years ago in Central City, when the Flash’s infamous particle accelerator exploded, turning countless people into metahumans. At the time, she was a police officer working undercover to investigate a drug dealer named Sonus. When her cover was blown, Sonus killed her partner and lover, Vincent, and now, Tina wants revenge. (Oliver gets this information from Captain Singh in a fun, fleeting Flash crossover that involves Barry verifying the Green Arrow’s identity with a post-it reading, “He’s legit.”)
The team tracks Tina down several more times, and each time she runs away from them. Like Black Siren, she is unmoved by Oliver’s desire to rescue her from her trauma. She also refuses to give up her quest of vengeance, even though Sonus was also affected by the particle accelerator explosion and can control sonic waves, thus rendering her powers impotent.
At one point, Rene questions why they should bother chasing after Tina when she clearly wants nothing to do with them. It’s not worth putting their lives at risk by getting entangled in a fight between metahumans. But, Curtis observes, Rene isn’t the most emotionally stable human being either. That is the point of Team Arrow: it’s a second chance, an opportunity for troubled people to show their value.
In a last-ditch effort to gain Tina’s trust, Oliver reveals his true identity. He admits that he’s desperate to help her because he wants to prove – both to Prometheus and to himself – that he can do some good. Although she scoffs at this (“Don’t put your issues on me”), Tina finally agrees to let the team assist her in defeating Sonus as long as they leave her alone afterward. A faintly ludicrous rooftop ensues, culminating with Tina fatally shooting Sonus despite Oliver’s protests. She escapes again.
Some days later, Tina shows up at the mayor’s office. “I guess I thought I would feel different,” she confesses to Oliver. “I thought when I killed Sonus, I’d be liberated.” But, as Oliver knows all too well, trauma doesn’t work like that. We don’t get to rid ourselves of the past in an instant. It helps, though, to not be alone. They can be each other’s second chances.
Tina initiates their new relationship by revealing a secret: her identity. “Tina Boland” was just her undercover name. Her real name is Dinah Drake – a nod to the original Black Canary in the comics.
In other news…
While Oliver and company search for Tina, Felicity hacks into the NSA to obtain data that will exonerate Diggle. Predictably, the file been erased, but our resident computer wizard knows that nothing on the Internet is ever gone forever. Delving into the so-called dark web under the pseudonym “Ghost Fox Goddess”, she gets in touch with someone who wants to meet (“What’s ‘irl’?” Rory asks).
The stranger isn’t a Mr. Robot-like criminal mastermind, as Felicity feared, but an even peppier version of Felicity – glasses and all. She’s a “hacktivist”, like Felicity was in her anarchic, goth college days. In fact, she was inspired by Felicity, joining a hacktivist group called Helix that gathers information to use against politicians, corporations, and other powerful entities. She’s disappointed that her hero sold out by working at Palmer Tech and urges Felicity to return to the hacking world.
Ultimately, Felicity gets the file, which allows Diggle to be released on bail, but this encounter with her past unsettles her; she noticeably avoids talking to Oliver about the meeting.
In Oliver’s flashbacks, we find out that Talia has been keeping tabs on him. She recognized that the hood he wears belonged to someone she trained – Yao Fei, the man who helped Oliver on the island all the way back in season 1. Why, she asks, is he wasting his time hunting a Russian mobster? We nod in agreement.
Talia reminds Oliver of his original mission: his father’s notebook. He’s afraid to return home because that would mean confronting how he has changed in the last five years (“I am a monster”). Yet, if he gives his new self a separate identity, then he can distinguish that self from Oliver Queen. Talia hands him the hood and a bow and arrow and like that, he’s the Arrow.
Arrow probably didn’t need to take four-and-a-half seasons to reach this moment. It’s a pretty awesome moment, though.
Best line
Talia to Oliver: “You need to give the monster another identity. It’s only once you become someone else – something else – that you’re free to be Oliver Queen.”
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Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EST on The CW.