Recap / Arrow S 3 E 1 The Calm

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After five months, the city is safe and crime is lower than ever... until the new Count Vertigo fires a missile at a restaurant where Felicity and Oliver are having dinner.

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Tropes that apply to this Episode

• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Oliver keeps trying to escape Amanda Waller while Maseo keeps tracking him down and dragging him back to her. Oliver is determined to escape or die in the attempt, until Maseo makes it clear that it's not his life at stake; Waller has threatened to kill Maseo's son if Oliver escapes.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Werner Zytle gives a speech to this effect, saying that since the Arrow helped create the legend of Count Vertigo, there will always be someone to pick up the mantle even if one of its bearers dies.
• Bait-and-Switch: Once again the season opens with our hero running through the greenery, but rather than Lian-Yu it turns out Oliver is running through some bushes while chasing down a truck in Starling City. The flashback scene also has him running, but this time it's through the streets of Hong Kong with Maseo in pursuit.
• Back for the Dead: Sara gets back to Starling in the last ten minutes of the episode, and dies in the last minute.
• Batman Cold Open: The episode opens with Oliver, Diggle, Roy and Felicity all working together to take down a truckload of RPG rockets being smuggled into the city.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Felicity manages to clean off the grime and crud, plus apparently heal the huge cut on her head, from the missile strike in between her waking up and Oliver returning from fighting Werner Zytle.
• Becoming the Mask: Oliver has to face a choice between being Oliver Queen or the Arrow. By the end of the episode, he has come to believe that he can only be the latter.
  Maseo: A man cannot live by two names.
• The Big Damn Kiss: But a sad one, as it marks the breakup of a relationship.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Between Diggle and Lyla's baby, and Sara, though there's a small time gap.
• Blatant Lies: Thea is still sending her brother text messages but refuses to send photographs. Wherever she went off to with Malcolm Merlyn, it wasn't the Amalfi Coast like she is pretending.
• Break Her Heart to Save Her: An Invoked Trope when Oliver breaks up with Felicity, who begs him to say he never loved her so she won't be tormented by the hope that they might get together again. Oliver responds with a "Shut Up" Kiss. "Don't ask me to say that I don't love you."
• By "No", I Mean "Yes": Ray Palmer has a tendency to deny something he's doing, only to quickly add "OK, I did, but..." mid-sentence.
• Cartwright Curse: Felicity and Oliver get a Relationship Upgrade only to have the restaurant they are in be blown up. Felicity survives, but the relationship ends by saddened mutual agreement shortly after. His curse strikes again when Sara is killed. The trope is Lampshaded beautifully at the beginning of the episode.
  Oliver: Last girlfriend? She's in the League of Assassins. My girlfriend before that shot my girlfriend before that. Not exactly a catch at the moment.
• Chekhov's Gun: Past!Oliver rushes into an internet cafe and logs into his email account to send a message home before Maseo stops him.
• Chekhov's Gunman
  • The tall handsome customer at the IT store who seems to know who Felicity Smoak is (admittedly she is wearing a nametag) and exchanges tech talk about hacking, turns up later to undercut Oliver's bid and take over Queen Consolidated.
  • The Japanese housewife who is tending to Past!Oliver will turn out to be important as well.
• Computer Equals Monitor: The sign that the Freon has worked to deactivate the Incredibly Obvious Bomb is shown by its timer stopping.
• Continuity Cameo: Barry Allen calls Oliver near the end of the episode to have a talk while he is standing on the roof of a building in Starling City, bridging his pilot episode in his own series with this one.
• Continuity Nod: At the end of the episode, Oliver receives a call... from Barry Allen, which leads right into the discussion they have in the Pilot for the spin-off.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: Quentin has collapsed from a Hollywood Heart Attack as the Count advances on him, only to catch an arrow in the back from the Arrow.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Lie to Felicity to get her to help your hostile takeover of her friend's company? She'll hack into every single electronic device you own to stop them from doing anything but playing porcupine farts.
• Covert Pervert: Felicity comments on how before her first date with Oliver she's already seen him with his shirt off. Many, many times.
• Cuteness Proximity: Everyone has the appropriate response to Diggle and Lyla's baby.
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: Oliver stumbles over his words when asking Felicity out for a date, causing her to note that normally she's the one talking in sentence fragments.
• Empathic Environment: The crowd watching the boxing match gives a loud cheer just when Roy defuses the bomb.
• Excuse Me While I Multi Task: Lampshaded by Oliver when he's asking Felicity about where she wants to go on their date while involved in a motorcycle chase.
• Expy: A drug dealer who creates a fear-inducing narcotic? See Mythology Gag.
• Everyone Can See It: Felicity gets Oliver a fern to spruce up the Arrowcave, since he's living there. Oliver says she's already bought him a bed. Diggle and Roy just look at each other.
• Facial Dialogue: Roy just walks off with a depressed look when Oliver mentions receiving a text from Thea.
• Foreshadowing: "... and as my mother always said, there's nothing more important to me than family."
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The new Count Vertigo was a minor drug dealer who rises to lead the gangs in the Evil Power Vacuum caused by the Arrow cleaning up the streets.
• Funny Background Event: As Oliver and Felicity are talking about a fern, you can see Roy and Diggle look at each other as if going "Yeah, they're flirting again."
• Gamebreaking Injury: The coronary heart disease Lance got from a Mirakuru goon five months ago, which is stopping him from doing significant field work, and causes him to walk with a cane a lot of the time.
• Gaussian Girl: During their date at the Italian restaurant, Ollie and Felicity are blurry and gorgeous.
• Good Costume Switch: Sara is working for the League of Assassins again but still wears her Canary outfit instead of the Dark Archer outfit used by their soldiers.
• Hope Spot: With the city rid of its biggest threats and The Arrow officially pardoned/thanked by the police, Oliver and Diggle feel this is finally an opportunity for Ollie to have a bit of his happiness in his life (read: Felicity). The reality of his double life ends that notion by the end of the episode.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue
  Thug waving a knife: Come on, what are you waiting for?
  (Roy tackles thug from behind)
  Arrow: My partner.
• I Know What You Fear: Zytle has refined the Vertigo formula so the person injected sees their worse fear. Presumably this is not the version of Vertigo he sells on the street.
• It's All My Fault: Oliver blames himself for being too distracted by his upcoming date with Felicity to notice that someone slipped a Tracking Device onto him.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Oliver realizes he can't have a romantic life. It feels more than a little contrived, since Felicity works with him both in his vigilante career and in his Oliver Queen identity, and spends most of her time with him regardless. She cannot be in all that much less danger just because they are not romantically involved.
• I Was Just Passing Through: Sara is implied to be in town on League of Assassins business (she asks Laurel not to let their cop father know she's in town) but has no problem turning up to help Oliver take down Count Vertigo.
• Kicked Upstairs: Thanks in part to his injuries leaving him unable for field work, Detective Lance is now a captain, much to his frustration, as he is apparently assigned to desk work and must occasionally dress up for press conferences.
• Kinda Busy Here: Inverted when Felicity has to interrupt her work on the sales desk at her new job to hack into the CCTV system and give Oliver directions. And answer questions on where she'd like to go for the date.
• Leitmotif: Count Vertigo likes whistling In the Hall of the Mountain King.
• Lip-Lock Sun-Block: A ceiling light shows up between Oliver and Felicity after they kiss.
• Love at First Sight: Perhaps not love, but Oliver notes that Felicity was the first person who he saw as an actual person instead of a potential threat or target. He even recalls the color of the pen tip she was chewing.
• Love Confession: A real one this time from Oliver to Felicity, but under sadder circumstances. When a tearful Felicity, knowing Ollie is about to break off the possibility of them being together, tells him to definitively tell her that they can never happen and he doesn't love her, he promptly kisses her and tells her never to ask him to say he doesn't love her. It's not enough to save whatever they could have (at this moment).
• Meaningful Echo: Sara repeats Tommy Merlyn's line from the pilot episode about how Laurel Lance is always trying to save the world.
• Mirror Match: Sort of. Thanks to the new and improved Vertigo, Oliver sees Count Vertigo II as being his Oliver Queen identity and fights him. He wonders afterwards if this is due to the conflict between his two personas. The second time he's injected, he musters enough Heroic Resolve to dismiss the image, having decided to become the Arrow rather than Oliver Queen.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Ray Palmer's presentation for how to rebuild Starling City ends on the idea of calling it "Star City" instead, the name it went by in the comics.
  • The first Vertigo hallucination we see looks very similar to the Scarecrow as portrayed in Batman Begins.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Oliver misses a tracking device planted on him by the criminal he caught.
  • She didn't know it, but the guy Felicity was giving tech support advice to (and awkwardly flirting with) was Ray Palmer, and he is going to use said help to orchestrate his takeover of Queen Consolidated.
• No Kill Like Over Kill:
  • Count Vertigo blows up an entire restaurant with an RPG rocket launcher to kill the Arrow. Then he's willing to blow up an entire stadium to kill three rival crime bosses.
  • Just so the audience knows that Sara has been Killed Off for Real, she's shot three times in the chest with arrows, then falls off the roof of a building, smacking her head on a dumpster and lying on the ground with her eyes open.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: A variation in the flashbacks. Maseo, who works for Amanda Waller, has Oliver in his home and offers him dinner, while his wife Tatsu tends to Oliver's wounds.
• Nothing Personal: Ray Palmer still wants to hire Felicity despite (and because of) her hacking all of his cellphones and personal computers out of revenge. Averted with Felicity who's still angry and turns down the offer.
• Offhand Backhand: Oliver shoots Count Vertigo as he gets up, without even looking away from Sara.
• Orbital Kiss: Between Oliver and Felicity at the end of the episode. It is their First Kiss, but appears to also be their last.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Oliver tries to get back Queen Consolidated with a very heartfelt and well-done speech. Unfortunately, Ray Palmer is even better, and has facts and competence on his side. Afterwards even Oliver agrees that Palmer will probably do a better job than he did.
• The Plot Reaper: Dramawise, Sara dies so that Laurel can take up the mantle of the Black Canary.
• Racial Face Blindness: An understandable mistake as Past!Oliver is in Hong Kong, but he has to be informed that Tatsu and Maseo are Japanese, not Chinese.
• Shipper on Deck: Diggle is one for Olicity.
• Shout-Out:
  • A very easy to miss one is that one of the gangsters the new Count Vertigo killed was named Shintaro Shimosawa. That's the name of a writer who did some work on Smallville.
  • When Felicity realizes Ray Palmer used the tech expertise she gave him in his plan to take over Queen Consolidated, she mutters, "Oh, frak."
  • Oliver and Ray's speeches to the board are very reminiscent of the climactic dueling speeches from Other People's Money, a passionate plea for honor and tradition versus a more charismatic one for ruthless practicality.
• So Happy Together: The episode starts with Team Arrow working as a well-oiled machine, with crime down and the Anti-Vigilante Taskforce officially disbanded in recognition of the Arrow's efforts. Oliver is starting a relationship with Felicity, and Diggle and Lyla are expecting a baby daughter. It ends with Oliver and Felicity breaking up, and Sara's death.
• Spectacular Spinning: In possibly a Shout-Out to The Avengers, Roy pulls Black Widow's twirling takedown on a mook.
• Cleavage Window: On the purple dress Felicity wears to the board meeting.
• Costume Evolution: Roy is now wearing a red-and-black version of the Arrow's outfit instead of just a red hoodie.
• Refuge in Audacity: Ray Palmer turning up out of the blue to undercut Oliver's pitch to the board.
  "Traffic was terrible, which is why I took my helicopter. I parked it on your roof, hope that's not a problem."
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Felicity working as a saleswoman in a tech store.
• A Storm Is Coming: Implied with the episode title "The Calm", as in "the calm before the storm". The episode starts off with everything seemingly well with Team Arrow, and ends with an event that will have serious long-term repercussions for everyone.
• Suddenly Shouting: Diggle has a rare outburst of temper when Oliver tries to force him off Team Arrow for the sake of his child. "Dammit Oliver, you would be dead ten times over if it wasn't for me!"
• Taking Up the Mantle: Invoked by Werner Zytle, AKA Count Vertigo II, and he adds that there will always be someone to do it.
• Technobabble: A visual version. Palmer's fancy presentation is full of graphics and numbers that mean absolutely nothing to the audience. Us. The board members, maybe. But not us.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Flip, actually. Roy does a fancy flip into the path of the truck during the Batman Cold Open so he can shoot out the tire with an arrow.
• The Un-Reveal: We don't see who kills Sara, only that they're using a voice changer but she appears to recognize them.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Laurel gives one to her father for continuing to work in the field with the Arrow when he has a heart condition. Quentin admits that he is Married to the Job and doesn't know how to be anything else other than a street cop.
  • Dig gives a speech to Oliver when the latter wants to force him on the sidelines, due to his becoming a father. He takes it back when he sees said daughter, however, and agrees with Oliver's assessment that he should avoid fieldwork.
• Will They or Won't They?: When Felicity knows Oliver is going to shut down the possibility of their coupling, she demands he stop "dangling maybes" and end any chance of them ever being together.
• Wire Dilemma: Subverted. When dismantling the bomb under the arena, Felicity tells Roy to cut the yellow wire. Roy quickly tells her there is no yellow wire. They end up using a freon line from the arena's air conditioning system to freeze it instead. Added bonus: The freon line Roy breaks is yellow.
• Worst Aid: Oliver takes Felicity to the Arrowcave instead of a hospital, even though she's been knocked unconscious from an explosion and could have internal injuries. This is despite the fact that he's at the restaurant as Oliver Queen and not the Arrow.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Oliver and Felicity look to be embarking on a happy relationship—but their very first date is interrupted by a missile strike, the emotional fallout of which leads the couple to call off their romance before it even starts.