While Oliver struggles to adjust to the changes to the team caused by his absence, Merlyn insists that it's time to tell Thea the truth.
- All Up to You: Roy is busy with Chase, so Laurel has to go with Oliver to take on Count Vertigo in his lab. Then Oliver has to stop and free the lab chemists the Count has chained up before they burn to death, leaving Laurel to take on the Count herself despite him hitting her with another dose of Vertigo. She overcomes the drug using Heroic Willpower, finally earning the respect of Oliver when he catches up with her (which Laurel sees as a hallucination of Sara smiling in approval).
- And Your Little Dog, Too!: Waller is impressed with Oliver's ability to resist waterboarding, but then threatens to have Thea die of a fatal drug overdose if he doesn't reveal where Maseo and his family went. Oliver folds.
- Anger Born of Worry: Oliver snaps at Thea when she comes down to the Arrowcave while Laurel is injured.
- Arc Words: "Home" has been mentioned quite a few times.
- Batman Gambit: Maseo knows that Oliver might get captured, so he lied to him about going to Shanghai to fool Waller. Then he came back to rescue him and got captured anyway.Oliver: Great plan!
- Better to Die than Be Killed: When Chase is cornered by Malcolm and Roy, he takes poison rather than let them kill him.
- Be Yourself: Laurel's resolution at the end of the episode is that she'll be her own version of The Canary instead of merely being Sara's exact replacement.
- Blatant Lies:
- Lampshaded by Thea when she remembers how angry she got at her brother whenever he had to rush off with some flimsy excuse. Both of them are glad he no longer has to do so.
- Thea insists she kicked her brother's ass that time he jumped through her window.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Count Vertigo forces a journalist into injecting a federal marshal with Vertigo. The marshal draws a gun and starts shooting at the crowd, enabling the Count to escape in the confusion.
- Broken Pedestal: Given how his lies last year drove Thea away, Oliver fears that telling her he's the Arrow will kill off her trust for good. Not only does this not happen, the revelation that Malcolm knew the truth but didn't tell her causes Thea to turn against her father, because she realises he was keeping this secret to ensure she would continue to be estranged from her brother.
- Brother–Sister Team: Oliver and Thea will finally start training to make themselves this.
- The Bus Came Back: Count Vertigo II.
- Call-Back:
- On realising her brother is the Arrow, Thea specifically recalls him saving her life from the Hoods and Nyssa. And the time he broke her window.
- Oliver tells Thea how their mother revealed she knew he was the Arrow shortly before she died, and Roy mentions how the Arrow saved his life.
- Oliver thinks Maseo is an idiot for coming back to save him, forgetting he did exactly that with Yao Fei in Season One.
- As with Laurel in Season Two, the revelation that Oliver is the Arrow actually strengthens his relations with a loved one, as they realize he is a hero who has always done his best to protect both them and others.
- Chase offers to kill Thea in a way that she won't feel any pain. Slade Wilson offered to do the same for Oliver in his introductory episode.
- The Reveal Shot that Oliver and Thea are on Lian Yu is the broken hulk of the Amazo.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Thea to Malcolm for convincing her that she could only trust him, while hiding the fact that her brother was the Arrow which would explain why Oliver kept lying to her.
- Can't Stop the Signal: Maseo tells Oliver to reveal to the world that he is alive, because the ensuring publicity will deter Waller from killing him. Waller however has no problem threatening Thea with a fatal overdose instead.
- Captain Obvious: After the Count sends the laboratory up in flames, Felicity comms Oliver to say there's been a "massive spike in thermal activity".
- Character Development: Thea shows how much she has grown when, upon learning Ollie is the Arrow, she doesn't berate him for lying to her as she had many times before, but rather thanks him for saving so many people's lives.
- Chekhov's Lecture: While on Corto Maltese, Malcolm told Thea about how for centuries noblemen used the taste of red wine to mask the taste of cyanide. She points this out to Chase right after he's poured her a glass.
- Clark Kenting: Lampshaded when Thea realises how lame it was for her not to recognise her own brother just because he was In the Hood.
- A Day in the Limelight: For both Laurel and Thea.
- The Day the Music Lied: When Thea sees the glass case containing the Arrow costume, her words and the background music make it seem like she's going to have another outburst, only for the music to surge as she turns to Oliver and praises him for saving peoples lives.
- Defiant to the End: After Malcolm offers to kill Chase quickly if he begs him, Chase refuses to give him the satisfaction and swallows a vial of cyanide.
- Enemy Mine: After finding out the truth about Ollie, and knowing Merlyn hid it from her, Thea loses trust in her father figure, but like her brother, she knows they must train under Malcolm in order to have a chance against the League.
- Face Your Fears: Why Malcolm sends Oliver and Thea to Lian Yu, because Purgatory is uniquely suited to doing that.
- Fake-Out Opening: The opening makes you believe that Sara came Back from the Dead before being revealed as only a hallucination made by Count Vertigo II's drug. Or the opening makes you believe it was All Just a Dream, and then the expected awakening never happens.
- Family Title: Only if you consider the fact that the titular Canaries are sisters.
- Go Back to the Source: Malcolm will train both Oliver and Thea... in Lian Yu.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Averted for once; Chase doesn't leap out of the shadows dressed in black waving a sword like other Assassins, but infiltrates by Hiding in Plain Sight as a useful employee and potential love interest of his target, whom he tries to kill unobtrusively with poison. Hassan-i Sabbah would be proud.
- Hourglass Plot: Oliver and Thea go to train on Lian Yu, while in the flashbacks Oliver finds that Waller has brought him back to Starling City.
- How We Got Here: After the introduction showing Laurel being attacked by Sara, we flashback 48 hours. It's eventually revealed that the scene is Laurel hallucinating, after Count Vertigo injects her with Vertigo at the docks.
- I Have Your Wife: Count Vertigo II made a reporter help him escape and later blow himself up to take Oliver with him by invoking this very trope.
- Internal Reveal:
- Ollie finally reveals to Thea that he's the Arrow.
- Captain Lance also finds out that not only is Laurel the Canary, but that Sara is dead.
- Chase is outed as a League spy when he tries to poison Thea.
- In the flashbacks, Oliver discovers Thea's drug habit.
- Irony:
- By the end of the episode, flashback-Ollie is in Starling City and present-day-Ollie is on Lian Yu, a complete reversal of the expected situation.
- Malcolm forces Oliver to reveal the Arrow's Secret Identity to Thea. Rather than causing Thea to turn against Oliver, it causes her to turn against Malcolm.
- Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Zytle's Vertigo darts are a perfect example of this. He tags Laurel with them twice, much the same as he did to Oliver in his premiere episode. There's no objective reason the darts couldn't have been lethal, or been bullets, except that then both characters would be dead.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Considering Laurel needed urgent medical attention, Oliver sniping at Thea when she comes down to the Foundry is perfectly understandable. Likewise he's also right telling Laurel that the adrenaline she feels when fighting won't heal her emotional problems.
- Kick the Dog:
- Waller threatens to kill Thea to motivate Oliver to give up Maseo.
- After spending the entire season preventing Oliver from contacting his loved ones, Waller brings him to Starling City for a mission, with strict instructions that he can't reveal himself to anyone.
- Oliver throwing Laurel's struggles with addiction in her face was a very low blow, one she immediately calls him on.
- Love Hurts: Roy sees Thea taking Chase home with her with a sad look in his face.
- Match Cut: Oliver answering the phone in the present day, to Flashback!Oliver using a payphone to attempt to contact his mother.
- Mirror Match: A variant. Laurel hallucinates fighting Sara while both of them are in their respective Canary costumes.
- Mythology Gag: Oliver once again addresses Thea as "Speedy" which may be, based on the episode's closing scene, a Foreshadowing of things to come.
- Necessarily Evil: Oliver frames the need to work with Malcolm as this.
- Not So Stoic: Quentin breaks down sobbing after Laurel tells him that he has once again lost Sara.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Our first hint that Sara isn't Sara in the opening is her calling Laurel a "selfish bitch", when she previously stated that she didn't like that word.
- Outrun the Fireball: The Arrow and Arsenal have to do a Super Window Jump when the reporter strapped in a bomb vest hits the detonator.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Once Captain Lance finds out that the Canary running around isn't Sara, it didn't take him long to figure out it was Laurel.
- Passing the Torch: The episode highlights Laurel finally earning her place as The Canary, complete with the ghost or hallucination of Sara (projected into Oliver by Laurel) smiling in approval.
- Properly Paranoid
- Turns out Thea is taking the threat from the League seriously when she's suspicious of the wine that Chase pours for her, knowing that it can be used to conceal the taste of poison.
- Moments after Chase attacks Thea, Roy and Malcolm burst in to save her. As both men were fully suited up as Arsenal and the Dark Archer, it's clear they were suspicious of Chase and followed him and Thea back to her apartment.
- Oliver puts a Tracking Device on Laurel. When it comes active on the docks, he knows she's following up a clue about Count Vertigo.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: See What the Hell, Hero? below.
- The Reveal: Apparently, Oliver did make it home to Starling two years before his supposed return.
- Secondary Character Title: The title refers to both Laurel and Sara.
- Secret-Keeper: Thea, who also discovers her father knows as well. Oliver can't understand why Malcolm never told her, but Thea instantly deduces the reason.
- Sex for Solace: Although she's been fending off Chase's advances thus far, Thea is a bit stressed out over recent revelations, getting barked at by Oliver, and seeing Laurel lying on a slab in the Arrowcave, so she takes Chase back to her loft wanting to keep things simple for a while. It turns out to be anything but when he's revealed as a League assassin.
- Sex Signals Death: Chase kills himself almost immediately after having sex with Thea.
- Shout-Out: One of the captured scientists in Vertigo's drug lab looks a lot like Walter White.
- Sixth Ranger: Oliver finally accepts Laurel as part of Team Arrow at the end of the episode.
- Skilled, but Naive: Despite all of Malcolm's training, Thea is overpowered rather easily by Chase and needs Roy and Malcolm to intervene. She realizes that she's far from ready to fight for real and joins Ollie in Malcolm's continued tutelage.
- Stalker with a Crush: For some reason, Roy made a Big Damn Heroes immediately (and completely geared-up as Arsenal at that) after Chase starts attacking Thea, meaning he's been there a while realistically speaking. On the other hand Malcolm was there as well; it's likely they were both wary of Chase the whole time.
- Superdickery: The episode's Fake-Out Opening has Sara beating the crap out of her sister.
- Throw the Dog a Bone:
- For all the crap Ollie goes through, Thea's reaction to his being the Arrow qualifies as this.
- Thea chooses Chase to sleep with, but after Roy helps save her life from Chase she gives him a kiss on the cheek (also in thanks for standing up to Oliver about her).
- Training from Hell: Malcolm sends both Thea and Oliver to Lian Yu to train them.
- Un-Confession: Played with but averted; Quentin thinks Laurel is just confessing to being the Canary in Sara's absence, but rather than go with that Laurel finally tells him the truth.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Roy points out that having brought Thea into his secret, Oliver has no business yelling at her just because she wandered into the Arrowcave at a bad moment. He also calls Oliver out for making Thea work with Malcolm, giving her father another chance to get his hooks into her.
- He's backed up by Felicity, who points out that Oliver can't simply bark orders or question their judgment as before, now that they've asserted themselves in his absence.
- Laurel's hallucinations call her out on trying to take Sara's place for selfish reasons, as well as refusing to tell her father about Sara's death.
- As he has before, Oliver continues to call out Laurel for putting herself in danger, reminding her that her father already has unknowingly lost Sara (again, and this time for real) and would probably not survive the burden of losing Laurel suddenly as well.
- Laurel calls Oliver out for using her addiction against her (again), and asserts that he is the real addict, using the adrenaline of vigilante work to avoid intimacy.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Every time Zytle drugs someone with Vertigo is a time he could have just killed them instead. See Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality.
- Why Won't You Die?: Averted. Zytle's reaction when Arrow and Arsenal showing up after supposedly being blown up is to say he admires their persistence.
