As Darhk begins making preparations to begin Genesis, Oliver looks for a way to counteract Darhk's magic while John hunts Andy. Meanwhile, Alex takes Thea on a much-needed vacation.
This episode contains examples of:
- Actually, I Am Him: Oliver and Felicity go to a casino and play poker, hoping to draw the attention of a magic user known to frequent the place. She turns out to be the player Felicity casually offered some of her blackjack chips too.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Andy's death is quite devastating for John, because evil or not, this was still his brother (and a victim of brainwashing, no less).
- All According to Plan: Darhk turns up to find Andy handcuffed to a pole and his brother has escaped. It looks like he's going to kill Andy for his failure, but instead he congratulates Andy on a successful Trick-and-Follow Ploy.
- Amicable Exes: As Felicity puts it, just because she and Oliver aren't together anymore doesn't mean he'll have to fight alone.
- And Your Little Dog, Too!: Darhk gloats to Oliver how he will have fun killing every last of his friends.
- Anger Born of Worry: Lyla rips into her husband for walking into a HIVE trap by chasing Andy without waiting for backup. She only stops when their raised voices make Sara cry.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Andy's final words to Diggle before getting shot in the chest.Andy: Tell me, how does it feel knowing that you have no problem pulling the trigger to protect a bunch of Afghanis that you never knew, but you don't have the guts to do what's necessary to protect your own wife and child?
- Artificial Limb: Malcom is wearing a robotic hand, which doesn't stop his boss from making 'hand' jokes.
- Artificial Outdoors Display: Thea discovers that the suburban town Alex has brought her to is actually a domed bunker made to resemble an outdoor environment.
- Asshole Victim: Considering everything Andy had done at this point, and the fact that he and HIVE were planning on hurting John's family, it's doubtful that anyone shed any tears when he finally got gunned down.
- Annoying Arrows: In his rescue of Lyla, Oliver harpoons Darhk with a tether arrow and yanks him down hard. Darhk's only reaction is to get a bit miffed and yank the bloody arrow out of his back like it was just an annoyance.
- Bait-and-Switch: John takes off on a motorcycle from the back of the ARGUS truck, leading Darhk and Andy to think he's trying to draw them away from Lyla and Sara, and Darhk is gloating about not falling for it as he plans to kill Sara. Then he discovers John had escaped with Sara.
- Base on Wheels: Lyla is protecting herself and Sara from HIVE by traveling in a mobile ARGUS headquarters on the back of a semi-trailer.
- Batman Gambit: Andy and Darhk pull one off in order to locate Lyla and the Rubicon chip, betting that John would not wait for backup before going after Andy and that he would be able to successfully escape after being captured.
- Beehive Barrier: The walls of "the Ark" are made of hexagons, which fits in with HIVE's "bee" theme.
- Big Damn Heroes: Lyla and John Diggle are at the mercy of HIVE when Oliver and Felicity (who were last seen in Hub City) turn up to rescue them.
- Blatant Lies: John Diggle can't admit to his wife that he killed Andy while he was unarmed, so claims Andy reached for a gun and he fired in self-defence.
- Brainwashed and Crazy:
- Andy has no problem torturing his brother in a plot to kidnap his baby nephew so Darhk can kill her.
- Alex Davis, thanks to taking Hive's yellow pills, abducts his girlfriend and continues to insist that everything is fine when Thea realises this.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Oliver quoting John Constantine's instructions to him somehow has to involve this."He just said 'Pitch game. First base, mate. See if yer worthy.'"
- Bullet Dodges You: Milo Armitage tries to shoot Darhk, who stops the bullet with his magic and sends it right back into Armitage's forehead.
- Busman's Holiday: Because Oliver and Felicity are going to Hub City, Thea asks for a weekend off with Alex. Oliver agrees that everyone needs time off after recent events and so tells Diggle to take a break with Lyla. Inevitably Diggle, Lyla and Thea all run into trouble.
- Cain and Abel: Andy and John certainly look like they're trying to kill each other during their shoot-out, even if it's later revealed to be a ploy on Andy's part. It's later played straight when John kills his brother.
- Call-Back:
- Felicity considers getting another fern for Oliver's new lair.
- Star City is identified as a nexus of evil.
- After the Car Fu below, Felicity notes that it's been a while since she's done that.
- Oliver's visions when surrounded by darkness has him being attacked by Deathstroke and reliving the memory of his mother's murder, father's suicide, Laurel's stabbing, and Felicity returning his engagement ring.
- Fortuna tells Oliver that he doesn't need a totem as the tattoo that John Constantine put on him acts as a channel for magic power.
- Car Fu: Felicity saves John and baby Sara by slamming into Andy and the other Ghosts with the team van.
- Character Death: Andy Diggle, who provokes his brother into killing him by threatening his family.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The Rubicon chip that Shadowspire wanted to steal is crucial to Darhk's plan (explaining why Andy helped his brother foil the theft).
- We now know why Ruvé Adams offered Alex a job; not for his skills but to lure Thea into a trap.
- Co-Dragons: Darhk has Malcolm, Andy Diggle and Murmur fulfilling this role, though Andy is dead by the end of the episode.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Andy does this to John, including shanking him in the abdomen with a long screwdriver. It's all just to distract John from the Tracking Device being planted on him.
- Clown-Car Base: The Bait-and-Switch where Diggle supposedly visits his wife in an ARGUS bunker, only for it to be revealed that she's riding around in the back of a trailer-truck, might have worked if the dimensions had been vaguely similar to that of the truck's freight container.
- Damsel in Distress: Thea is trapped in Hive's dome, per Merlyn's request.
- Dies Wide Open: Andy, just to let the audience know he's really dead this time.
- Didn't See That Coming: Andy is quite shocked that his brother actually killed him.
- The Dog Bites Back: John is tortured by his cold-hearted brother who then threatens his family; in turn Andy gets a bullet in his chest and dies.
- Doom Magnet: Star City is a nexus of evil just like Lian Yu is.
- Evil Is Petty: Even though they are now allies, Darhk can't resist making another hand joke at Malcolm's expense.Darhk: Why would I trust Malcolm Merlyn? He can be so...underhanded.Malcolm: ...Cute.
- Expy: Esrin Fortuna is one for Doctor Fate.
- Freudian Slip: Felicity has booked a room...rooms! for her and Oliver's trip to Hub City.
- Glowing Eyes: Oliver gets these when he's able to counter Darhk's life drain. Looking at his eyes, Darhk realizes that sticking around would be futile.
- Idiot Ball: Felicity makes some not-so-subtle gloating remarks to Oliver about her ability to count cards while she's right there at the blackjack table, though fortunately no one catches her.
- Irony: In order to stop Darhk, Oliver needs to channel his light. However, he's primarily motivated to kill Darhk to avenge Laurel and thus break his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule, thus from a narrative standpoint "going down a path of darkness".
- It Is Beyond Saving:
- John has to kill Andy since he's never going to change or back down.
- Hive apparently thinks this of the entire world, and believe that the option to Nuke 'em is the only way to truly rebuild society.
- I Have Your Wife: Ironically it's the wife who sends the husband away with their baby to avert this. Lyla knows she doesn't have Amanda Waller's ruthlessness and will give Darhk what he wants if he has them as leverage.
- Killed Off for Real: Andy Diggle and Milo Armitage.
- Magical Incantation: Averted. Felicity questions why there aren't any "lessons" when Fortuna was teaching Oliver magic. Fortuna tells her that magic is the way to channel primordial energies and is pre-literate (so no words in the magic of the Arrowverse).
- Magic Knight: What Oliver hopes he can be in order to stand up to Darhk. His lesson under Fortuna was a failure though, but he did learn the one bit of magic that he really needed.
- Match Cut: From Milo's corpse to a police photo of the same corpse where it has been dumped, being studied by Team Arrow.
- My God, What Have I Done?: John's initial reaction after he shot Andy.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Lyla had Rubicon embedded into her arm to protect it after ARGUS HQ was compromised; unfortunately Darhk knew where it was.
- Noodle Incident: Constantine owes Fortuna money for some reason.
- Nothing Personal: Or so Andy claims regarding stringing his older brother up to be tortured.
- Not Staying for Breakfast: Thea does the "wake up to an empty bed, only to find your boyfriend is making breakfast" version. However the moment of disquiet she feels is the first of many...
- Oh, Crap!:
- Thea when she sees Alex taking Hive's yellow pills.
- Darhk has one when Oliver manages to overcome his magic.
- Lyla when she sees the gash on her arm.
- Old Master: Averted with Esrin Fortuna. She appears to be a young woman with a hobby of playing blackjack. Though she also claims to be immortal.
- Only the Pure of Heart: To withstand Darhk's magic, a person needs to tap into their light and goodness. Unfortunately Oliver is full of darkness and Fortuna ends his magic lessons as Darhk would be able to take that and grow even stronger.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Andy spends the entire episode kicking John around from mocking Laurel's death to threatening Lyla and Sara, however long it takes. It makes John shooting him when he's helpless entirely understandable.
- Plot Hole: Esrin Fortuna mentions that there is no Magical Incantation in the Arrowverse due to the fact that the mystical energy manipulations of magic being pre-literate. This would be all well and good, but John Constantine and other sorcerers on his show use explicitly verbal components to their spell casting, which was highlighted in "Haunted".
- Power Corrupts: Oliver cites this as why he hadn't tried learning magic earlier when facing Darhk. He says he's seen good people get corrupted by magic, so it looks like Taiana probably didn't come to a good end.
- Power Tattoo: Oliver doesn't need to use totems to use his counterspell, the tattoo that John Constantine put on him acts as a totem.
- Properly Paranoid:
- Thea is quite right to be tense during her "vacation" with Alex.
- Nixon is very worried what Darhk will do to her and Armitage since they betrayed him. He kills them both.
- The Reveal:
- We find out what Rubicon is, a security program to lockout access to every nuclear missile, that unfortunately can be reprogrammed to allow access to every nuclear missile.
- We finally find out what Hive's goals are. They want to nuke the entire planet so they can rebuild it in their image. The artificial environment they were working on is their "ark" so to speak to survive the blast.
- Save the World: In light of The Reveal about Darhk's plans, this is what Team Arrow's mission now becomes.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After Oliver manages to neutralise Darhk's magic the latter decides to get the hell out of dodge while he can.
- Serial Escalation: Previous seasons had the Big Bad try to either conquer or destroy the city (sometimes both), whereas here the Big Bad wants to destroy the entire world.
- Shout-Out:
- Diggle grumbles about Oliver being an a Magical Mystery Tour.
- Felicity is skeptical that Genesis could have anything to do with Darhk.
- Sleeping Dummy: Darhk rips aside the blankets in Sara's cot only to find a pile of automatic weapons. Mind you that might be normal for this couple...
- Spotting the Thread: Thea feels vaguely uncomfortable in the suburb, but it's when she finally identifies a looped pattern of supposedly natural sounds that she realizes something is very wrong.
- Stepford Suburbia: There's something uncanny about the suburb Thea is staying in. There's no sign of other people or cars, the sun is always shining regardless of the time of day, and the nature sounds are on a continuous loop.
- Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Andy goads John into killing him twice in the episode, though in the first case he knows that John won't do it. In the second instance, however, John actually goes through with it after enough provoking and having his family threatened.
- Tempting Fate: Lyla says the tungsten-encased truck they are in is designed to withstand just about anything. Then they see Darhk standing on the road ahead.Diggle: Does that include magic?
- That Man Is Dead: Andy says that his old self, the loving husband and father, no longer exists.
- Thicker Than Water: Averted by Andy, who would not only kill his brother and sister-in-law, but also his baby niece.
- Treasure Chest Cavity: Lyla has hidden the Rubicon chip by having it implanted under the skin of her arm.
- Trick-and-Follow Ploy: HIVE locate Lyla despite her mobile ARGUS base by kidnapping Diggle, implanting him with a Tracking Device and allowing him to escape.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Thea decides to take a much needed vacation, only to discover that she's one of the first inhabitants of the Genesis Ark. Thanks to its central location in the plot and given that it neatly positions her to help the main cast, this averts Trapped by Mountain Lions despite her not being in touch with the rest of the cast for the next few episodes.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The HIVE drones continue working at their desks without paying the slightest attention as Darhk kills two of their leaders.
- The Wall Around the World: When Thea encounters Ghosts she tries to flee them only to find herself running into a holographic projection. A reveal shot shows she's in a Domed City under Star City.
- Wham Shot: Thea running around the suburb only to hit a wall, and the camera zooms out to reveal a giant glass dome.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Lyla lets John have it for going after Andy by himself.
- Would Hurt a Child: Andy and Darhk would most definitely. Darhk even says that he will have fun killing baby Sara.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Felicity tries to convince Oliver that he does have more light than dark inside of him when he fails Esrin Fortuna's training, which he rejects. When he faces down Darhk, Oliver discovers that she was right.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Darhk kills off Armitage and Nixon both for betraying him by letting him rot in jail and the fact that he really doesn't need them around if he was able to break out of prison without their help.
