The fallout from the season 5 finale of Arrow is a winding tale. Season 6 starts off five months after the explosions rocked Lian Yu. Green Arrow and the team attack a boat under the control of Alex Faust, a seemingly minor annoyance.
Faust gives Green Arrow a spiel about mayors paying terrorists before launching a missile at Star City. GA pins him to a wall, but the missile is already in flight. There’s no worry though, Mister Terrific’s T-sphere blows it up before it reaches its destination.
We travel back to Lian Yu to see Deathstroke run off after Samantha and Thea. Samantha is looking for William, and Thea is trying to watch out for her.
https://youtu.be/deXXnf1k3k0
In the present, Felicity brings food to the Cave. Diggle and Rene find an excuse to leave, with Oliver and Felicity, left alone. Oliver asks her if she would like to join him and William for dinner. She declines, but she says later.
While the rest of the Arrowverse has been touchy-feely, Arrow has been sticking to its morose roots. I’m not knocking it, even though Felicity and Oliver have been through a lot together, they aren’t getting mushy. That would be out of character. Their feelings can be seen in the way Oliver smiles and Felicity grins.
Once again in Lian Yu, Oliver and William are on the island. William drops a bombshell and lets Oliver know he knows he’s his dad.
William has a new nanny, the same one that watched over Oliver; Raisa. Oliver checks in on William, who’s playing video games and blows off eating so he can sleep.
In Star City, Dinah Drake interrogates Faust and roughs him up a bit. Officer Goodwin tells Dinah that Quentin Lance missed an appointment as Deputy Mayor. She heads out to find him but tells Goodwin to get Faust a drink.
Dinah finds Quentin at a bar, a place he shouldn’t be. He talks about how he can’t speak with his sponsor because of the things that happened on Lian Yu. Things Quentin did.
Faust gets his soda and knocks loose a tooth, pulling it out. There are explosives in the tooth and he needed the soda to activate it. He blows a hole in the wall to escape and then Black Siren shows up. She proceeds to blow up the SCPD as they leave.
Oliver, Quentin, and Rene are at the aftermath the next morning. Dinah shows up with a video of Black Siren. Dinah informs them that Black Siren should be dead. None of them have any idea as to why she’s working with Faust.
Switch to Lian Yu, Oliver finds Deathstroke who leads him to a body. It’s Samantha and it’s hard to tell if she’s alive or dead in the short time we see her.
In the Mayor’s office, Oliver and Quentin discuss Black Siren. Quentin says that Dinah didn’t exactly tell the truth about her fate. He thinks Siren is after him.
The team tracks Black Siren. Canary finds her and the two face off. Oliver and the team show up to take down Siren’s lackeys. Diggle freezes in the middle of a firefight and can’t pull the trigger. As a result, Rene is hit in the chest and falls from the overpass. GA swoops in and catches him before he falls to his death, but he’s hurt bad enough to be put in the hospital.
Black Siren got away and the team rethinks Quentin’s assessment that she’s after him. They start searching for her again.
A quick scene with Oliver over Samantha on Lian Yu.
Black Canary and Spartan go to Black Siren’s last known whereabouts. The two argue over him freezing up during the fight. That’s when they discover the explosives in the building. I think Black Siren and Faust may be trying to compensate for something. Who needs that many explosives?
On the island, Quentin and Dinah are in a temple looking for Black Siren. They find her as she attacks them.
Oliver tries to find out what’s going on with William. William tells Oliver that he’s the bad man that made him lose his mother.
Felicity has figured out where the attack will take place. Then Quentin relates what happened to Dinah and him on the island. He shot Black Siren to save Dinah, but he thinks he killed his daughter.
Curtis enters and displays his new bomb detectors. The only problem is that someone will have to stay in the cave and monitor the readouts. Diggle volunteers so he can, “take one for the team.” This shows beyond a doubt that something is wrong with him. Diggle is not the type to sit at HQ and not be in the thick of things.
Flashback to Lian Yu as Samantha dies in Oliver’s arms.
At the Police Cadet’s graduation ceremony, Curtis is in a server’s uniform as he walks by Felicity. He tells her to call him “Mister Terrific,” but she says only if he’s wearing the suit.
Oliver gives a speech about the good the city is doing because of the police and cadets.
Quentin and Oliver argue about Black Siren and the fact that she’s not Laurel. Quentin tells Oliver that the parallel realities are crap. (This from a man that apparently believes in ghosts…) They discuss fatherhood and how Oliver thinks he’s a bad father. Quentin gives some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten myself as a father; just love him.
Black Siren attacks the cave, with (gasp) more explosives. Spartan runs down a tunnel to escape but has to fight Siren’s mercenaries. He freezes up again and has a gun inches from his face. Green Arrow shows up and saves the day. Spartan does get in a few good licks, so he’s not totally crushed by his time on Lian Yu.
https://youtu.be/WgignNhezsM
The team shows up using some mannequins as fodder. Siren and Canary face off again, with no clear winner. I’m betting this is going to happen all season. They discover bombs have been placed all over the Cave.
Siren and Faust are cornered, but she sets off the explosives and they make a run for it. Quentin stops Siren in the hall or tries to. She psychs him out, using the daughter angle and escapes.
Team Arrow knows the bombs were a ruse, but they can’t figure out what Siren wanted. They had thought it was something at the graduation, but the worst thing that happened was food poisoning.
Oliver goes to the hospital to see Rene, who’s trying to leave. Oliver tells him he got him another hearing for custody of his daughter. As he leaves, Oliver goes to another room. Thea is there and has been since their return from the island.
Slade walks in and tells Oliver that he’s going to look for his son. Slade tells Oliver to be patient with William. It’s a short scene, but it’s packed with chemistry between the former foes. They wish each other luck.
https://youtu.be/k4hXXFBA1e4
Diggle, in the Cave, flashes back to the island. There are explosions, but he’s brought out of it when Dinah approaches him. She confronts him about not firing his weapon. Curtis tells them what Dinah stole; a prototype T-sphere.
In the temple where she was shot, Siren is helped to her feet by a mysterious man. This has to be Michael Emerson’s character. I think this debunks my Vigilante theory, but that’s okay, mystery is good.
Oliver talks to William again and tells him he’ll always be there for him. He invites him to watch a baseball game and William seems to let his guard down a little.
The last scene is a TV news report showing evidence of Oliver as Green Arrow.
It was a great episode without all the mushy emotions of the rest of the Arrowverse. The emotions were still there, they weren’t overt but were powerful.
