Recap / Arrow S 2 E 2 Identity

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On the island, Slade discovers a map and a photo on the deceased. Shado washes off Oliver’s bloody hands and comforts him in his time of questioning if darkness lies inside him. Slade interrupts their bonding to lead them to the rock depicted in the photo. There, they enter a cave filled with sixty-year-old skeletons and Japanese swords. Oliver discovers the hosen shaped like an arrowhead.

Roy, listening in on a police scanner, darts to the scene of a FEMA truck being attacked by China White and her men. Roy’s efforts are thwarted. He’s taken into custody, but Laurel won’t press charges. Thea and Oliver pick him up, and he tells Oliver that FEMA medical transports are being hijacked on their way to the Glades. Felicity, although she’s furious about her cover as Oliver’s assistant, finds that another FEMA shipment is on the move. At the truck, Oliver fights with China White and her new partner, the Bronze Tiger, before the police interrupt.

After suggesting a double date, Oliver learns that Diggle and Carly have called it quits. Oliver and Diggle skip out on their benefit thrown with Sebastian Blood, an alderman vocal about his disdain for how people treat the Glades, in order to stop another attack on FEMA; Blood turns this into an attack on how the elites don't care about the plights of the poor. China White climbs aboard the truck that Diggle took over, while Oliver takes down the Bronze Tiger. Helping Diggle out, Oliver pins China White to a pole, where she’s arrested.

The Hood approaches Roy and agrees to use him as eyes and ears in the Glades, giving Roy a red arrow as a way to set up a meeting. To win over Thea, who gave him the ultimatum that he give up his heroic dreams or give up being with her, Roy lies about his choice. The Hood makes a second appearance at Laurel’s office, but this time, she set a trap. He’s unable to escape the swarm of police.

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Tropes Applying to This Episode

• Answer Cut: Roy asks Oliver, "What does it take to make you angry?" Flashback to Oliver looking at his bloody hands after beating to death the man who threatened Shado.
• The Anticipator: After his first visit, Laurel had a feeling that the Vigilante would turn up again, so has the police waiting in ambush.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: China White throws two throwing knives through a tempered glass windshield to kill the two FEMA men in the truck.
• Artistic License – Law: A prosecutor like Laurel shouldn't be allowed to go on a police mission, especially if the goal is to arrest a dangerous vigilante.
• Berserk Button: Never ask Felicity to make you coffee.
• Blood Knight: In the Deleted Scene, China White offers to bring Bronze Tiger in on the Triads' Evil Plan to take over the Glades, but he's only interested in fighting the Arrow.
• The Bus Came Back: China White's Season 2 debut, after being absent since "Dead To Rights". She's eager for a rematch.
• Camera Spoofing: Felicity diverts the Anti-Vigilante Taskforce by hacking in CCTV footage of the Hood from last year, sending them racing off in the wrong direction.
• Car Fu: Roy tries to take down the motorcycle hijackers in his car, knocking down one but the other empties his machine pistol and causes him to crash.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Thea gives Roy the hozen her brother gave her, shortly before a flashback to Lian Yu shows where Oliver found it—in a cave with the skeletal remains of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers. The skeletons in the cave are noticeably misshapen.
  • Roy is confused as to whether his decision to stay with Thea means he's supposed to keep the hozen or give it back to her, but he apparently did the latter as Thea passes it on to her nephew who uses it as proof of his identity when meeting Roy Harper years later.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Oliver surrounded by cops armed with automatic weapons aimed at his chest.
• Downtime Downgrade: Turns out Oliver and Laurel aren't the only ones who broke up over the summer. Dig and Carly did, too, because Diggle could not give up his obsession over Deadshot.
• Color Motif: Roy wears a red hoodie, drives a red car and has a souvenir red arrow.
• The Dragon: China White has Bronze Tiger backing her up for the inevitable confrontation with the Emerald Archer. So next time Oliver brings Diggle along as well, so he can stop the hijacking while Oliver battles Bronze Tiger.
• Facial Dialogue
  • Slade doesn't look happy at seeing Oliver and Shado post-coitus.
  • After dismissing Oliver as a wimp last season, we see the surprised look on Roy's face when Oliver grabs his arm and he realises just how strong he is.
• Fanservice: A Deleted Scene has China White reclining on a bed in Black Bra and Panties, watching a shirtless Bronze Tiger work out with his claws on a metal sparring dummy. When he expresses frustration at the Arrow's choice to run away from the police instead of fight, she offers to relieve his frustration in another way.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Thea presents Roy with the hozen (symbolizing connection) and a severance check, saying he can keep one or the other—her or his vigilante activities. Roy seems ready to give up Thea until the Vigilante helps him Take a Third Option.
• Girl Friday: Felicity is aghast at the idea of being Oliver's secretary, to which he clarifies she is his "executive assistant". He mentions the trope by name when he says he needs a "Girl Wednesday" in order to keep their cover intact, or people will start wondering why he's spending so much time with the IT girl.
• Half-Truth: Roy tells Thea he's given up being a vigilante, but doesn't mention it's because he's been recruited for Team Arrow in a different capacity.
• Heroic Wannabe: Roy barely avoids serious damage or arrest when he crashes his car pursuing the Triad hijackers. Recognizing Roy's anger and determination to put things right, but knowing he doesn't have the years of Training from Hell, Oliver in his Hood guise recruits Roy as his eyes-and-ears in the Glades. He tells Roy to stick the red arrow in the alley wall outside Verdant if he finds anything of interest.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • Alderman Blood and a crowd of hecklers rip into Oliver Queen after encountering him at Glades Memorial, as he's just a wealthy playboy whose family helped build the earthquake machine that devastated their homes and killed hundreds of people. He tries to show his good intentions by hosting a charity benefit, but he has to abandon it to stop a hijacking, and his failure to appear is used by Blood as proof that The Beautiful Elite doesn't care.
  • China White taunts Oliver that even if he's stopped killing people, he'll always be a criminal to the police, never a hero. Meanwhile the police are going all out to catch him, with Laurel leading the charge and Quentin no longer in a position to help.
• He's Back!: Averted; Oliver finds that getting back in the game is a lot more difficult than he thought. He no longer has the List to give motivation and direction, he now has responsibilities and PR concerns as the CEO of Queen Consolidated, and he no longer has sympathizers in the justice system to give him covert support.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Near the end of the episode, Dig says that he and Oliver's conversation is "getting dangerously close to hug territory", so he's going to "fall back".
• Idiot Ball:
  • Despite the constant attacks on all the shipments (and their drivers), FEMA continues to roll them out in single trucks with few security measures.
  • Oliver's blind spot for Laurel hasn't gotten any better. He makes a second nighttime visit to her office even after she makes her hatred for the Vigilante clear, in the hope his actions stopping the weapons heist have caused her to have a change of heart. It hasn't.
• Improvised Weapon: Oliver uses one of his bugging arrows to electrocute Bronze Tiger when he tries to cut it out with his claws.
• Insane Troll Logic: Laurel reveals why she now is on an anti-Arrow crusade. It's because she blames him for not saving Tommy's life, never mind that Tommy was already mortally wounded by the time he got there. Given that Oliver has his own guilt issues about Tommy's death, he's unable to defend himself without revealing who he is.
• Intimate Psychotherapy: Shado helping Oliver break out of his Heroic BSoD winds up with them having sex.
• It's All About Me: Felicity calls out Oliver on this with respect to how he doesn't realise that Diggle is no longer with Carly. He apologizes by the end of the episode.
• Laser Sight: On the SWAT Team submachine guns in the Cliffhanger.
• Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: Laurel doesn't like how Blood is getting stuck into Oliver, yet is leading the charge to bring down the Vigilante.
• Long Bus Trip: Diggle mentions that he broke up with Carly while Oliver was away, and we don't see her again even though she should still be working at Big Belly Burger.
• The Lopsided Arm of the Law: The SCPD are far too busy trying to catch The Arrow to bother themselves with the Triads hijacking FEMA supply trucks destined for a hospital in the severely-damaged Glades. Apparently the police seldom go in there anyway, having written the Glades off as a lost cause.
• Multi Shot: Oliver fires two arrows to take down two hijackers simultaneously. The awesomeness of the move is undercut by Bronze Tiger making his debut to effortlessly slice apart any arrow fired at him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Oliver goes into a thousand-yard stare post-viciously beating Shado's captor to death.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: When Oliver wants a private word with Roy, knowing how her overprotective brother carried on last year Thea quips to Roy, "I'll always think of you fondly." Ironically by recruiting Roy as the Vigilante's information source in the Glades, he inadvertently saves their relationship, as Thea had threatened to break up with Roy if he kept on trying to emulate the Vigilante.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When Roy is reprimanded by Laurel about how he just happens to have one of the vigilante's arrows, he notes that the guy prefers green ones, whereas he has a red one. Roy's comic alter ego, in some instances, is Red Arrow.
  • China White refers to the Hood as "the Emerald Archer", one of his comic counterpart's most popular nicknames in- and out- of universe.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Oliver recognises that Roy's anger over the state of things, and his belief that he's the only one who cares about putting things right, is no different from how he was at the start of the series.
• Oh, Crap!: Oliver discovers that Laurel has sold him out and he's surrounded by a SWAT Team.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Oliver catches this from Blood, and the Vigilante catches this from Laurel.
• That Came Out Wrong: Felicity as per usual. This time, she cuts herself off before she finishes.
  Oliver: If I'm going to be Oliver Queen CEO, then I can't very well travel down 18 floors every time you and I need to discuss how we spend our nights!
  Felicity: And I love spending the night with you— three, two, one...
• Tempting Fate: Oliver shoots an arrow into Bronze Tiger's shoulder.
  Bronze Tiger: That hurt, but it won't stop me. (arrow electrocutes him)
  Oliver: That will.
• Third-Person Person: Oliver is late for the charity event.
  Oliver: Oh, I'm just lucky Oliver Queen has a reputation for not showing up on time.
  Diggle: You know, I've been meaning to tell you, it really weirds me out to no end the way you refer to yourself in the third person like that.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Slade recognizes that Oliver has this after his Unstoppable Rage killing in the previous episode. He suggests that Shado help him out of it so it won't tear him up inside.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: When Oliver sits defeated in his office while Blood verbally attacks him on TV, Felicity sets a cup of coffee on his desk.
  Felicity: Once.
• Sarcastic Confession: When Thea is surprised over how her brother can turn up in her nightclub without her seeing him enter, Oliver tells Thea he had a secret passage constructed when Verdant was first built.
• Self Stitching: Oliver after getting shot in the leg by the police taskforce.
• Wolverine Claws: Bronze Tiger. He's looking forward to using them on the Vigilante.
• Workout Fanservice: Given that the audience was deprived of it in the last episode, Oliver's return to vigilantism is celebrated by our hero working out. A deleted scene has a shirtless Bronze Tiger working out as well.
• You, Get Me Coffee: Felicity refuses to do this as Oliver's secretary over the entire episode. Except near the very end. Once.