Now that we are in the home stretch of ‘Arrow’ Season 4, it is nice to see the show start to pull many different storylines from the season together to add to the final episodes, and remind us what a journey we have been on this season.
Jumping in, now that Darhk has control of Rubicon, he wastes no time in setting his evil plan in motion, using Rubicon to hack into every nuclear warhead on the planet, and starting the countdown to setting them all off, which will occur in about 21 hours. The Quiver Crew meanwhile is waiting to see if Felicity is able to hack into Rubicon itself and diffuse the situation, but she informs them that the code used in the device is something that no one on earth knows better than her father, the Calculator (aka Noah), so they will need to enlist him in order to stop Darhk’s armageddon. Unfortunately for them, Darhk is well aware of the Calculator’s prowess, and he sends his own men, led by Tommy Brickwell (the minor villain from last season who terrorized Star City until the Green Arrow returned) and Murmer to take down the Calculator.
Felicity and company think they have found her father at a hidden facility, but according to security cameras they find there, her dad fled right before Brick and his men arrived, and the only clue Felicity has to her father’s new whereabouts is the name Ravenspur, which Felicity suspects is something her mom might know something about. After an uncomfortable conversation about Ravenspur which is actually a cabin Donna frequented with Felicity’s father, a place where Felicity might have been conceived in fact, Felicity escapes the conversation and sends the team to find the Calculator at the Ravenspur cabin. They arrive just in time to save Noah from Brick and the ghosts, with Felicity herself picking up her father in the team van and hurrying him back to her loft. Unfortunately, Noah says he needs a better set up to hack Rubicon, as well as a piece of tech from Palmer Tech, a company that Felicity has just been fired from due to her controversial idea to give away the spinal chip for free, and because of her inability to focus on the job due to her work with Team Arrow.
So the team needs to break into Palmer Tech to get the software they need, and fortunately for them, both Felicity and Oliver know the building pretty well. They make it up to the R&D lab fairly easily, but their time is limited, and Felicity has been locked out of the storage facility holding the tools they need. Luckily, Noah has another idea, and he begins wirelessly copying the software onto his own portable hard drive device, the only downside being that it is a relatively slow process, and guards are on the way. He escapes with Felicity before being spotted, but he only gets about 90% of the software. However, he and Felicity are confident they can rebuild the rest and stop Rubicon in time. 
The only problem now is that they need a server farm in order to have the processing power to fight Rubicon, which means the team, with the help of Lyla and ARGUS, will be taking over a government facility so the hackers can get to work.
Meanwhile, former Captain Lance and Donna Smoak’s relationship is a little rocky, as she discovers an affidavit that will allow Lance to rejoin the force as long as he states he had no idea that Laurel was the Black Canary. As he had already told Donna that he knew of his daughter’s nighttime activities, she is not cool with the idea of him lying just to get his job back, especially if it in any way taints the legacy his daughter left behind. Lance tries to hide behind the idea that it is just a little white lie, but Donna tells him no lie is small, and that after dating Noah, she cannot be with someone so ok with lying. At the end of the day, Lance does sign the form, but he amends it to state that he knew about Laurel being the Black Canary, and while he was not ok with it at first, he soon came to appreciate all the good Laurel was doing as a vigilante.
Thea meanwhile, is visited down in the Ark by Malcolm Merlyn, who comes spouting the same reasons he always gives for getting into these nefarious situations, “I was just trying to protect my daughter.” Malcolm basically states that once he knew that Darhk’s plan was inevitable (and not much different from the Undertaking, although on a much larger scale), he did his best to save Thea and get her into the Ark, and that he sees the world as insane, and in need of a cleansing, which is exactly what Darhk plans to do. Unfortunately, the Ark is currently in danger, as Lonnie Mitcham (aka Anarchy) has been spotted in the hidden dome, and it seems his plan is to destroy the air regulators giving oxygen to the Ark, thus ruining their chance for salvation after the nuclear apocalypse. Merlyn is hoping that Thea might be able to talk the man down as they have the history (she is the one responsible for the scarring on Anarchy’s face), and she goes to confront Mitcham as he sabotages the primary air regulator. As she attempts to talk him down, even offering her help if he wants to go after Darhk, Merlyn interferes, shooting at Mitcham and then pointing out to Thea that the explosives had already been set, and Anarchy was going to set them off no matter what she said. As Merlyn disarms the explosives, Thea chases Mitcham outside and they duel, with Alex getting in the way and being attacked and potentially killed by Anarchy (I think he’s dead, but the show was a little vague). Anarchy toys with Thea, telling her she needs to stop being defined by the men she is around, and she follows that by kicking his ass, even taking hold of his primary stun staff/ nunchuck weapon and using it to take down the twisted villain.
In tonight’s flashbacks, Oliver and Tatiana are on the move, trying to help was many prisoners escape before Reiter’s men can organize themselves, and Oliver is horrified when he finds out that Reiter escaped their explosion, and still has the totem. Oliver sends Tatiana to a plane that a map shows as being ready on the island, claiming that he alone must face Reiter (only a monster can take out a monster), and she reluctantly leaves Oliver to his task. Oliver battles Reiter, but no matter what he does, whether it be shoot, stab or punch, Reiter is able to easily shrug off every attack. Tatiana returns and saves Oliver, and they grab the idol and run, knowing that Reiter will not be far behind. As they struggle to make their way to the plane, Tatiana calls out that something strange is happening with the totem, and suddenly her eyes begin glowing, and it seems that some of the totem’s power might now be flowing through her.
In the present, ARGUS and Team Arrow are guarding Noah and Felicity as they hack into Rubicon. Unfortunately, right when they began, Noah accidentally set off a failsafe in Rubicon, thus letting HIVE know where the hackers are, which means ARGUS, the Green Arrow and Spartan will need to defend the facility to give Felicity and her father the time needed to save the world. In no time Brick and Murmer arrive with their Ghost squad, laying into the ARGUS agents. Oliver takes on Brick and after a heated battle finally manages to subdue the man, but he is too late to stop Murmer from making his way into the computer room and shooting Noah. They quickly subdue Murmer following that, but time is running out. Felicity and Noah (who was only shot in the arm, and Diggle says the bullet went clean through) have managed to shut down all of the nuclear missiles save one, which has already launched, and is on its way to Monument Point (in the US), and they have no way of stopping it, especially when they have to continue to shut down further attempts by Rubicon to relaunch the other missiles. In the end, Felicity decides to try to trick the missile by changing the GPS coordinates of Monument Point, but the idea comes a tad too late. Instead of having the missile land somewhere safely devoid of civilians, Felicity merely shifts the missile to land on the small town of Havenrock. As is pointed out to her, Havensrock only had about ten thousand residents, which is arguably better than the millions who would have died in Monument Point, but it is clear that all of those deaths are still going to weigh heavily on Felicity’s mind.
Meanwhile, the team has finally located the Star City Nexus room, which is located beneath City Hall (hence why Ruve Adams wanted the Mayorship, so they could have access to City Hall in this time of crisis), and they know that Darhk will be in the Nexus absorbing the power from all of the deaths the nuclear missile caused. Dig and Oliver race to the room to try to stop Darhk, but they arrive too late, and the villain is fully charged with over ten thousand deaths. The world might be safe from more nuclear missiles, but Darhk is now more deadly than ever, and he has his sights trained on Oliver.
BOW-STRING THEORIES:
– I honestly cannot believe a missile hit anywhere in the US, and with the fall-out, I’m guessing it will be more than just ten-thousand dead by the end of it. I wonder if there’s any chance they can magically (or using the Flash) go back and prevent that missile from landing.
– What exactly can Darhk do now with all that extra power? He was already immortal, could not be harmed, and had all of that crazy telekinesis. What can he do now that will make him that much scarier? Can he suck the life out of like hundreds of people at once?
– My theory that Merlyn might have been working with Oliver all along is out the window, I now just want to see Thea (or maybe Anarchy) kill the man and be done with him, his character stopped being interesting a long time ago.
Getting closer and closer to a finale, and I think the show is doing much better at building stakes and making us care than they were last year, and I cannot wait to see how Oliver and company will finally take out Darhk at the end of the season. See you back here next week!
Nick is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, who belongs to the privileged few who enjoyed the ending to ‘Lost.’ For more of Nick’s thoughts and articles, follow him on Twitter.
