Arrow Recap: Season 5 Episode 20 “Underneath”

Circumstances motivate Oliver and Felicity to finally open up to each other in a stellar Arrow episode. Here’s our recap of “Underneath”.

Of the many struggles Arrow had last season, the most frustrating was its ham-fisted handling of Oliver and Felicity’s break-up. Maybe it makes sense on an intellectual level for Felicity to be upset about Oliver keeping his son a secret, but emotionally, the plot point rang false. After all, they endured together, why would that be the breaking point? In a show that puts its characters in life-and-death scenarios on the regular, an illegitimate kid seems so … banal.

All’s well that ends well, though. It turns out that separating Oliver and Felicity was the key to rejuvenating their relationship, which had lost its spark long before William became a thing. Not only are they fun again, unburdened by romantic histrionics, but the tension between them feels organic and exciting.

That tension comes to a head in “Underneath.” We pick up where the previous episode left off, with an explosion in the Arrow Cave. Oliver awakens to find the room plunged in darkness. As Felicity explains, the explosive created an electromagnetic pulse that ruined everything with an electrical circuit, including the bunker’s security and ventilation systems and the technology that Curtis devised to help her walk. This means 1) they’re trapped, 2) they have a limited supply of air, and 3) Felicity is paralyzed.

On the (theoretical) bright side, Prometheus is nowhere to be seen.

“Underneath” follows Oliver and Felicity’s efforts to get out. It’s not quite a bottle episode, since we also see the rest of Team Arrow’s efforts to rescue them from the outside, but it functions like one. The actual mechanics of the escape matter less than what they reveal about the characters.

Before the explosion, Oliver and Felicity engaged in a heated argument. Feeling betrayed by Oliver’s refusal to support her alliance with Helix, Felicity accused him of not trusting her. At first, the interruption offers a convenient excuse to avoid addressing their personal issues, as they try to come up with a plan. Oliver tries shooting the door, but it is made of an alloy engineered to withstand nuclear bombs. Then, he tries climbing the elevator shaft, ignoring Felicity’s warning that it is almost definitely booby-trapped.

She’s right, of course, and Oliver injures himself badly for his troubles. This, Felicity points out while stitching up his wound, shows yet more evidence of his lack of faith in her. With unconcealed reluctance, Oliver agrees to try her idea – less, we suspect, because he believes it will work than because he wants the conversation to end.

Unfortunately for him, her idea (using Oliver’s motorcycle to generate electricity) involves some downtime. While they wait, Felicity again demands to know why Oliver didn’t support her. How can he criticize her for teaming up with hackers when he teamed up with the Bratva, who, by any measure, care even less about ethics? “If you’re going to start saying yet again that it’s because you don’t want me to be like you,” she adds, “save your breath – particularly since we’re running out of oxygen.”

“It doesn’t make me a hypocrite,” Oliver says. “It makes me someone who doesn’t want-” He doesn’t have to finish the sentence for both of them to realize his mistake.

However, they don’t have time to ruminate on it, because the motorcycle explodes and punctures a pipe, leaking methane gas everywhere. It’s back to the blueprints.

Oliver remembers that there is a tunnel underneath the bunker. The problem is that accessing it would require blasting their way through, which isn’t the best idea when you’re in a room full of methane. Felicity uses calculations to figure out the location of a sealed door that should lead into the tunnel, and they rig it with a small explosive device.

“What if my math isn’t right?” Felicity asks.

“Are you still Felicity Smoak?” Oliver replies. “Your math is always right.” So, now he trusts her.

Sure enough, the door opens into a tunnel two stories below. But that only brings them to another dead end. Drained from blood loss, methane exposure, and carrying Felicity, Oliver collapses. At last, he says the words Felicity has been waiting to hear: “You were right.”

There, once again deep underground, Oliver confesses his secret – that his crusade was based on a lie. He’s overprotective of Felicity not because he doesn’t trust her, but because he doesn’t trust himself. Credit five seasons of writing for making the weight of this moment palpable. We, like Felicity, understand that for Oliver, revealing his identity (removing his mask, so to speak) is the ultimate sacrifice. It’s a kind of loss.

Felicity doesn’t try to convince Oliver that he is wrong; as she says, she knows him too well. But what does it mean that she loves him anyway? After all, while her trauma (her parents’ divorce, her boyfriend’s arrest, etc.) doesn’t compare to his, Felicity has developed her own defenses. She only commits to a relationship if she feels like she can fully trust the other person; that’s her sacrifice. Plus, she might be an innate optimist, but she is hardly immune to dark impulses, as her stint with Helix attests.

In other words, they’re perfect for each other.

Meanwhile, the others work to break into the bunker. The ensuing sequence would be unbearably stressful if it weren’t also inspiring. Everyone contributes in some way:

• Dinah suggests using hydrochloric acid to weaken the hatch door.
• Lyla obtains “improved” versions of Curtis’s T-spheres from A.R.G.U.S., which they use to create a breach.
• Felicity injects Oliver with adrenaline, giving him the energy to climb up the precarious ladder leading out of the ventilation shaft.
• Curtis uses his computer to control the air vents.
• Diggle meets Oliver and Felicity halfway up the ladder to support them.
• Rene pulls all three of them up with a rope.

It’s a beautiful display of teamwork (and the value of that salmon ladder).

In other news…

Diggle and Lyla continue to quarrel over her role in A.R.G.U.S. She points out that he engages in morally dubious activity of his own with Team Arrow. If Diggle can support Oliver, why not his wife? As a show of good faith, Lyla gives him a folder listing all the black ops she has signed off on as head of A.R.G.U.S. Eventually, Diggle concedes that he should trust her. As someone who depends heavily on clear-cut moral boundaries, he doesn’t have the best judgment when it comes to compromises.

The flashbacks take us 11 months ago, during the period between the fourth and fifth seasons. At Curtis’s urging, Oliver and Felicity spend a night in the Arrow Cave. It begins casually, with Chinese takeout and wine and Oliver teaching Felicity how to do the salmon ladder, and ends with them sleeping together. I may or may not have squealed with delight on my couch. The next morning, though, Felicity asserts that nothing has changed. Maybe one day, she’ll be ready to give their relationship another shot, but not yet.

In the final scene, Oliver’s son William (who now goes by the name Matthew) gets off the school bus. A man is standing there, and we know before seeing his face that it’s Adrian Chase. Uh oh.

Best line

Felicity, on the Arrow Cave: “Cisco was so good at turning this place into an impenetrable fortress, he turned it into an impenetrable death trap.”

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Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.