Recap / Arrow S 2 E 3 Broken Dolls

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On the island, Oliver and Slade venture off to find out where their latest intruders came from, leaving Shado to examine the corpse with her pre-med background. The guys climb to higher ground, where they spot the ship offshore. It begins firing onto the island. Oliver is knocked out from an explosion, briefly glimpsing Slade on fire, and wakes up in a prison cell on the ship.

Picking up with the Hood surrounded by cops, the Canary bursts in with a supersonic device. She saves him and disappears. The Hood asks Roy to track her down. Roy finds Sin, one of the Canary’s associates, who leads him to the Canary in her clock tower. Thea brings her mom a change of clothes for the pre-trial hearing, where DA Donner reveals he’s seeking the death penalty.

Quentin arrives at the crime scene of a suffocated girl staged like a doll. He recognizes the M.O. as that of Barton Mathis, a man he put away years ago. Detective Hilton warns Quentin to stay away from this case or he’ll be arrested. Using Felicity to get in touch with the Hood, Quentin tells him about Mathis, unaware that Mathis is abducting another girl. After a little coercion, Mathis’ former attorney directs the Hood and Quentin to a room where Quentin receives a call from Mathis as he’s in the middle of murder. They’re unable to save the girl.

Quentin and the Hood find the victims’ connection: a specific skin cream. Felicity offers herself as bait and is almost snatched by Mathis, but he’s scared off. Quentin is arrested for obstruction; Laurel gets the charges dropped. Mathis then abducts both Lances. As Mathis prepares to suffocate Laurel with her father watching, the Hood drops in, followed by Canary and her bo staff. The Hood plans to send Mathis to prison, but Canary has another plan: death. Laurel admits to her father that she feels guilty for Tommy’s death because he was there trying to save her. The Canary receives a shrouded visitor who says Ra’s Al Ghul wants her. She declines and kills him.

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Tropes Applying to This Episode

• Adaptation Origin Connection: Dollmaker's backstory is connected with Quentin Lance rather than with Jim Gordon as the cop he had a grudge against, which fits the move from Batman to Green Arrow.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Quentin for the life of the second victim and his own daughter.
• Annoying Arrows: Mathis shrugs off an arrow in the back.
• Arch-Enemy: Dollmaker for Quentin. The feeling is very mutual.
• Arc Number: "52" shows up a couple of times: Officer Lance's callsign is DC-52, Mathis rents room 52 at a hotel, and Oliver asks Thea to change to channel 52 when he needs to see some plot-relevant news about Officer Lance.
• Anti-Climactic Unmasking: For a moment it looks like the Dark Archer has returned, only for him to remove his hood and voice changer to reveal himself as an unknown Asian man who is quickly taken out by the Canary.
• The Anticipator: Quentin and the Arrow track down where they think the Dollmaker will be, only to find a telephone that rings the moment they enter the room. Quentin is then forced to listen as the Dollmaker kills a woman with Felicity unable to trace the call's location.
• The Bait
  • Felicity buys the skin cream the Dollmaker uses to select his victims in an effort to draw him out. It works but the Dollmaker escapes.
  • The lawyer mentions his client's obsession with The Bisque Museum, but the Dollmaker anticipates they'll follow up this clue and leaves a taunting message for Quentin to find.
• Beard of Evil: The goatee adds to the Dollmaker's creepiness.
• Big Damn Heroes: The Canary smashes through the skylight with requisite Three-Point Landing to rescue Ollie from the cops surrounding him. Later the Arrow arrives Just in Time to save Laurel from a horrible death.
• Brick Joke: The Arrow says, "Nice mask" on seeing the Canary's Domino Mask. He'll end up getting one just like it.
• Buffy Speak: Oliver refers to Canary's sonic device as a sonic...thing.
• Call-Back:
  • When Felicity can't hack into the private lab because they've taken their system off-line due to her previous hacking, Oliver says they'll just do what they did for "the Merlyn job". Cut to the Arrow taking out a security guard with a dart to the neck.
  Arrow: Tranq dart. He'll be out for thirty-six minutes.
  Quentin: Yeah...(rubs neck) I remember.
  • When the others object to Felicity being The Bait, she points out it's no more dangerous than jumping out of a plane onto Lian-Yu or infiltrating a mob casino.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Laurel tries to tell her father not to go after Mathis because he's just using his guilt to justify a vendetta. This is subverted when he turns it around and notes that she's doing the same thing with the Arrow.
• Catchphrase: "You have such beautiful skin..."
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Quentin uses "The Arrow" to describe the vigilante for the first time. Justified as Oliver would have told him his new moniker.
• The Commissioner Gordon: Interestingly, Quentin Lance, who is not even a detective anymore, has become this to the Arrow, while his daughter has taken his old position as the hardline Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist. The switch doesn't go unnoticed.
• Creepy Doll: As Felicity says, porcelain dolls are creepy enough on their own. Then Barton Mathis comes along and makes it worse by making them out of people.
• Crucified Hero Shot: The Inverted version of the normal trope — right as Dollmaker's about to kill the Canary, Oliver shoots him with two arrows (at once!), and he ends up with his arms outstretched, kind of pinned by the arrows.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Dollmaker kills his victims by pouring a polymer down their throats, essentially slowly drowning them while they're helpless and strapped to a table.
• Danger Takes A Back Seat: The first victim has the usual Cat Scare jumping at shadows, before getting into the car with her abductor lurking in the back seat.
• Death by Adaptation: The Dollmaker didn't die in the comics or any adaptation, but he gets killed the Canary.
• Dark Action Girl: The Canary isn't just another vigilante copycat; Oliver recognizes that she has the proper training. Unlike the Arrow however she doesn't have a Thou Shalt Not Kill rule; when the Arrow has the Dollmaker pinned and helpless, she gives him the Coup de Grâce.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Moira tells her lawyer that she has a secret she is willing to risk facing the death penalty over rather than have her children find out the truth.
  • Sin's androgynous look and the fact that she's living with the Canary gives them an Ambiguously Gay vibe. While it turns out they have an entirely different relationship, it does hint at the later reveal of the Canary's bisexuality.
  • On seeing the text message on Roy's phone from Thea saying that Laurel has been kidnapped, the Canary tells Sin to let him go and rushes off to save her. It's only in the next episode that we discover why.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The glasses on Dollmaker merely add to the creepy effect.
• Guilt Complex: Quentin's earlier drive to save the Dollmaker's victims took place a few months after Sara was Lost at Sea. Laurel's hatred for Arrow's failure to save Tommy is fueled by her guilt over how her own actions caused Tommy to be there in the first place. Moira is implied to be a Death Seeker, being unruffled by the prosecutor seeking the death penalty for the 502 victims of the Undertaking.
• Has a Type: Roy's search for the mysterious female vigilante leads to him gaining information from Glades citizen in exchange for expensive wine:
  Roy: I'm looking for someone. A blonde, likes black leather.
  Hoss: Sounds like your type.
  Roy: And beats the crap out of guys with a bo staff.
  Hoss: That still sounds like your type.
• Hourglass Plot: Lampshaded by Laurel, who notes that before, she was the Friend on the Force and her father was the Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist.
• I'll Kill You!: Quentin yells this at Mathis when the latter is about to turn Laurel into a doll, with Quentin Forced to Watch.
• Immediate Sequel: From last week's cliffhanger, with the Arrow surrounded by a SWAT Team and Laurel telling him to Put Down Your Bow And Step Away.
• It's Personal: Dollmaker's feud towards Quentin stems from the fact that he locked Dollmaker up for decades. The feeling is very mutual.
  Quentin: I am the one who put you away. She (Laurel) has nothing to do with it!
  Mathis: She has everything to do with it! She's your world, she's your very soul! You know, I could kill you, I could maim you, I could slice you up into a thousand pieces, but if your soul remains intact, what have I won? Huh? Nothing!
  Quentin: I will kill you, you son of a bitch! I will kill you!
• Leitmotif: Dollmaker has a creepy tinkling piece of theme music.
• Love Is a Weakness: Slade tries to convince Oliver that his emotional attachment to Shado is a distraction when he has to concentrate on his own survival.
• Misblamed: In-universe. Quentin Lance calls out his daughter on the idea of the Arrow being unable to save Tommy's life, because a man with a bow and arrow isn't going to be able to prevent a building from falling on top of someone.
• The Nicknamer: Sin dubs Roy Harper 'Abercrombie' in reference to his male model looks.
• Not in the Face!: Roy objects when the Canary whacks him with her bo staff, as he doesn't want Thea to know he's still carrying on with his vigilante activities.
  Roy: Not my face! I have a disapproving girlfriend.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Laurel realizes that if she hadn't gone to CNRI, Tommy would still be alive, so it's not the Arrow's fault at all.
  • It's All My Fault: As a result.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Jean Loring (Moira’s lawyer) is a character from DC Comics. For a while, she was married to Ray Palmer, a.k.a. The Atom.
  • The boat at the end in the island flashback says “AMAZO” on the back.
  • Black Canary's canary cry appears as a device that sets off a large scale sonic scream.
  • Metamorpho Chemical is a reference to the DC Comics character Metamorpho.
  • Quentin Lance’s middle name is “Larry.” “Larry Lance” is the name of Dinah Laurel Lance’s father in the original comic books.
  • The clock tower that housed Canary and Sin is a homage to the Birds of Prey comic books, which are largely featured around a clock tower.
  • The number 52 appears three more times: the hotel room number Mathis sets up as a Mind Screw for Lance, Lance's call sign (DC52), and the news channel Oliver turns to to learn about the Lances' kidnapping.
• Nothing Good Ever Happens In A Parking Garage: The first victim is left on display there, and later Quentin and Laurel are abducted right out of the police garage.
• Never Split the Party: Slade takes Oliver on a reconnaissance to find out where the men they killed came from, despite his misgivings about leaving Shado in the crashed airplane to examine the skeleton they found. They climb up high enough to see the Amazo sailing off shore, only to see it launch missiles on Shado's location. Oliver and Slade rush back down only to get caught in the explosions, with Slade last seen writhing in flames, Oliver captured, and Shado's fate unknown.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Turns out the same girl who can shoot arrows, kick ass and reprogram a surface-to-air missile in midflight is also a pre-med, so Shado stays behind in the airplane to examine the skeleton they retrieved from the cave.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Oliver has no problem torturing a lawyer who represented the Dollmaker, never mind that doing so is his job, not a crime.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: In the comics, Dollmaker is a Batman villain. He's also a personal enemy of Jim Gordon, rather than Quentin Lance.
• Serial Killer: Barton Mathis killed eight young women before he was arrested, then killed two more after he escaped. His M.O. is young, beautiful women with porcelain skin.
• Shell-Shock Silence: Island!Oliver gets stunned by the rocket explosions, catches a glimpse of Slade thrashing about in agony with his hands on fire, then passes out.
• Shout-Out: After the Arrow injures Mathis' lawyer, and Quentin objects to the violence:
  Arrow: He'll live.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Except when he's screaming at Quentin Lance just before he's about to kill Laurel, Dollmaker speaks only in whispers.
• Sonic Stunner: The Canary uses her sonic thing to make the SWAT team grab their ears and shatter every window, then she grabs Oliver and they jump out the window.
• So Proud of You: When Quentin expresses amazement at Felicity's instant hacking abilities, we see Oliver smile under his hood.
• Tap on the Head:
  • Canary turns Roy out like a light. He wakes up a few minutes later no worse for wear.
  • Averted when Felicity gets her head smacked against a concrete block; Diggle stays with her to render first aid.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Quentin is introduced buying a hot dog only to throw it away on receiving a radio call about a body being found. He's puzzled when the call is cancelled and turns up anyway, only to find his old nemesis is back in business.
• Tuckerization: The Dollmaker's lawyer is Tony Daniel, a reference to the comic book creator Tony Daniel who created the third take on the Dollmaker.
• Villainous Breakdown: Mathis' begins when he starts screaming at Quentin at the climax.
• Wham Shot: The Canary is confronted by a man dressed like the Dark Archer, who gives his own Wham Line in regards to who is referenced in it.
  Hooded Man: Ra's al Ghul has ordered your return.
• Would Hit a Girl: Aside from doing his criminal M.O., Dollmaker showed no signs of restraint when fighting The Canary.
• You Know Too Much: The Canary asks the man in the Dark Archer outfit to return to whoever sent him and say he never found her. When he refuses, she kills him.

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