Recap / Arrow S 2 E 7 State V Queen

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On Lian Yu, Ivo’s men open fire on the fuselage, but Slade and Shado remain unharmed. They force Oliver to show them the skeleton cave, but Ivo is displeased that the hosen is missing. Slade and Shado ambush them, leading Oliver to grab Sara and run off with his friends. Shado has the hosen and on the back finds coordinates to a Japanese submarine containing something to save the human race.

When Diggle passes out, Felicity finds that there is vertigo in his blood without him taking it and that the Count escaped from prison in the Glades’ earthquake. Donner also shows signs of infection in the middle of Thea’s time on the stand during Moira’s trial. The Count takes Donner captive and hacks into the city’s news feed to boast about his doings. Felicity tracks his location to an abandoned city building. Arrow arrives, fights, and escapes with Donner.

DA Kate Spencer makes Laurel lead council. Laurel discovers Donner’s trump card and confronts Moira about it. Despite initially not wanting to testify, Moira takes the stand and reveals she once cheated on Robert with Malcolm. With Diggle’s help, Felicity tracks down the roaming flu shot van responsible for covertly spreading vertigo. She’s taken hostage by the Count. Although Moira’s verdict should come shortly, Oliver confronts the Count, who figured out his identity. When the Count moves to inject Felicity, Oliver shoots him, sending him out the Queen Consolidated window. Felicity is fine, and Diggle gets an antidote.

Sebastian Blood arranged for the Count to take on the Arrow. Blood is informed of a development: Brother Cyrus is the only one to have survived the testing and become stronger. Moira’s verdict is “not guilty” to the shock of everyone, even her children. On her way home, Moira’s driver takes her to an abandoned lot where a surprisingly-alive Malcolm Merlyn mentions that he helped with her acquittal and he’s Thea’s father.

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Tropes Applying to This Episode

• Afraid of Needles: Felicity admits to being terrified of needles "and pretty much all pointy things". Given that her boss regularly shoots arrows in people, she notes the irony.
• Agony of the Feet: Slade machine-guns one of the Amazo's crew in the feet to take him out of the game during the Mexican Standoff. The fact that he was dumb enough to point his gun at Shado was undoubtedly a factor.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: The Count secretly addicts hundreds of Starling citizens, then lets them know that the only cure for the agony of withdrawal is visiting their local friendly Vertigo dealer.
• Answer Cut: Laurel wants to know how Oliver could possibly forgive her for what she did. Cut to Oliver with Sara on the island.
• Arson, Murder, and Admiration: The Count escapes from his cell and walks down the cell block taunting the other prisoners with the keys he's holding.
  Count: No...no...too violent...too sloppy...too stupid! Too...ambitious. (sees the Dollmaker calmly watching him from his cell) You...(hands him the keys) Love your work. Big future.
• Back for the Dead: The Count returns and this time Oliver puts him down for good (though it turns out he won't be the last person to adopt the Count Vertigo name.)
• Back from the Dead: Malcolm Merlyn, for reasons as yet unexplained, survived Oliver putting an arrow through his heart in the Season One finale.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: Despite his Thou Shalt Not Kill vow, Oliver still fatally shoots Count Vertigo in order to save Felicity.
• Bored with Insanity: Turns out the Count recovered from the Vertigo overdose that Oliver gave him in Season One. Now he suffers only from an excess of Large Ham.
• Car Cushion: When the Count dies, he lands on and breaks the top of a taxi far below.
• Call-Back: When Moira admits to her affair with Malcolm, Thea angrily reminds her that she denied having such an affair in "Vertigo".
• Chekhov's Gun
  • Diggle mentions getting a flu shot. Turns out that's how the Count secretly addicted large numbers of people across the city, by using a mobile flu inoculation van.
  • The Captain plants a Time Bomb inside the crashed aircraft. Shado deactivates it and uses the bomb to blow up the Captain later.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Averted as The Count finally refers to himself as "Count Vertigo".
• Common Nonsense Jury: Even Moira and her children are astonished when she's acquitted. She's even less happy when she discovers why.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Count Vertigo is able to get his hands on a dead guard's keys but the only prisoner he releases is Barton Mathis, who in "Broken Dolls" was said to have escaped at the same time.
  • The reason why the guards at Iron Heights covered up the escape of the Dollmaker and the Count is explained—they decided to evacuate but left the inmates to their fate. Apart from the ensuing loss of life, that also meant that some of the inmates could just walk out of prison as long as they could get out of their cells.
  • When Diggle is poisoned, Oliver tells Felicity to try the Vertigo antidote he created in "Unfinished Business". It doesn't work because the Count has changed the formula.
• Conversation Cut: From Moira revealing her affair with Malcolm Merlyn to her children, to Laurel cross-examining Moira about it.
• Death by Secret Identity: Count Vertigo is killed by Oliver shortly after figuring out his identity.
• Disney Villain Death: Oliver puts three arrows in the Count's chest, which knock him back through a broken window and down a couple dozen floors onto a Car Cushion. Possibly subverted, as the arrows may have killed him before he hit the ground.
• Easily Forgiven: Oliver refuses to hold Laurel prosecuting his mother against her. It's implied this has a lot to do with Sara, whom he still feels guilty about. In the island flashbacks, Sara can't understand why Oliver rescues her during the gunfight after she betrayed him. He says it's because she stopped the Captain from killing him, though the fact that Oliver got her into this situation in the first place is likely the real reason.
• Evil Is Hammy: The Count is once more channeling a Gotham-type supervillain, right down to a city-wide poisoning and a Do Not Adjust Your Set broadcast of his Evil Plan! Then again we later discover Gotham is in the Arrowverse, so maybe he's from there?
• Foe Romance Subtext: When the Arrow puts on an appearance, Count Vertigo says, "Be still, my heart!"
• Foreshadowing:
  • For the appearance of Barry Allen in the next episode, with a news announcement that the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator has finally been completed. Also shown for that episode is Cyrus Gold, the only survivor of Blood's experiments.
  • Malcolm's only explanation for coming back from the dead is, "There are parts of the world where death is an illusion." This foreshadows the Lazarus Pit in the next season.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Thea after her cross-examination, but Roy gets her to try Percussive Therapy instead.
• Hollywood Law: The entire court sequence. From the DA being kidnapped, to Laurel (who's a known friend of the Queens) being appointed prosecutor to the fact that Moira would even be on trial (as opposed to pleading guilty and providing information about a mysterious 5-year conspiracy group).
• Hostage for MacGuffin: Ivo demands the hozen in exchange for Oliver, but our heroes have no interest in playing along.
• I Approved This Message: "I'm Count Vertigo, and I approve this high!"
• I Have Your Wife: Count Vertigo takes Felicity hostage in Queen's office to force the Arrow into a confrontation.
• It's All My Fault: Thea blames herself when the prosecution uses her unwillingness to forgive her mother (shown by her failure to visit Moira in prison for months) to show the jury shouldn't either.
• Jury and Witness Tampering: Merlyn "persuades" the jury to find Moira not guilty.
• Killed Off for Real: Count Vertigo and the Amazo's captain.
• Quick Draw: The Count puts a syringe to Felicity's neck and forces Oliver to lower his bow and throw away the arrow. However when he goes to inject Felicity anyway, Oliver draws an arrow from his quiver and shoots him, followed up by two more.
• The Man Behind the Man: A minor example, as it only affects this episode, but it turns out that Brother Blood helped the Count set up his new operation, in exchange for a promise to kill the Arrow.
• Match Cut: Whenever the scene cuts between events in the present day to those on Lian-Yu.
• Moment of Weakness: How Moira describes her affair with Malcolm after Robert cheated on her.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The burns Slade suffered from the missile attack a few episodes ago have burned half his face, making it look like his Deathstroke mask.
  • The member of Brother Blood's cult that survives the injection is named Cyrus Gold a.k.a. Solomon Grundy.
  • The fictional nation of Markovia is mentioned again.
  • Kate Spencer a.k.a. Manhunter appears again, discussing Moira's trial.
  • Malcolm's claim that in Nanda Parbat "death is an illusion" works as a reference to the origin of the DC hero Deadman as well as to Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus Pits.
• Percussive Therapy: A literal version when Roy gets Thea to put on boxing gloves and let loose on him the anger she has been bottling up.
• Pull the Thread: Upon capturing Felicity snooping around and discovering she has a Queen Consolidated ID tag, The Count remembers selling Oliver Queen some Vertigo shortly before the Hood took him down, and realises they're the same person.
  Count Vertigo: Ipso facto...Arrow!
• Reflective Eyes: Studying the Count's broadcast, Felicity enhances a reflected image in the eye of the abducted DA to find out where the Count is holding him.
• Right Under Their Noses: Ivo's men machine-gun the crashed aircraft only to find it empty, so they leave a Time Bomb so Shado and Slade can't return and use it for a shelter. Turns out they're actually hiding underneath the plane—they emerge and defuse the bomb.
• The Reveal:
  • The importance of the graves is because Ivo is looking for the hozen, which has the coordinates of the Japanese submarine he's looking for engraved on it.
  • Turns out Moira did have an affair with Malcolm Merlyn as Thea suspected, only it was years ago and Thea is the result.
  • As suggested by Never Found the Body, Malcolm is still alive.
• Rule of Symbolism: The Count escapes through an arrow-shaped hole knocked in the wall of Iron Heights prison.
• Ship Tease: When Felicity feels bad for making Oliver choose to break his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule to save her, he simply tells her that as the Count was going to hurt her, there was no choice.
• Tempting Fate: Felicity is terrified of needles, so gets the Count's twin-injector syringe against her neck.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Oliver nocks and fires three arrows in a row into Count Vertigo when he threatens to inject Felicity with Vertigo, rather than any kind of Multi Shot. Justified by his Tranquil Fury. Then the Count falls through a window and falls 20 stories.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Oliver demonstrates this when he talks to Laurel after her brutal cross of Moira, just checking in to see if she's okay with doing what she had to do. Then at the end of the episode, he makes it a point to stop by the Arrowcave and check in on Diggle and Felicity after their respective traumas.
• *Twang* Hello: Merlyn introduces himself to Moria when he kills the driver who brought her to him at the end of the episode with a shot arrow.
• The Unfettered: Blood assumes his attempt to kill the Arrow via Count Vertigo has only caused the Arrow to revert to his killing ways again (though this isn't the case).
• Villainous Rescue: Of a sorts. It turns out that Malcolm coerced the jury into finding Moira not guilty.
• Walk-In Chime-In: Felicity goes to investigate the mobile flu truck and finds vials of Vertigo inside.
  Felicity: Gotcha!
  Count Vertigo: (entering the door behind her) Funny... You took the words right out of my mouth.
• Wham Episode: Malcolm Merlyn is alive and Thea is his illegitimate daughter.
• Wham Line: The last line of the episode.
  Malcolm Merlyn: Imagine my joy at learning that Thea is my daughter.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Thea is incredulous when her brother has to rush off to deal with Felicity being taken hostage, right when the jury appears ready to deliver a verdict. At least the Count's public demise outside Queen Consolidated gives him a good excuse.
• You Can Barely Stand:
  • Diggle is sick so Oliver tells him to take the day off. Diggle eventually keels over and it turns out someone has spiked him with Vertigo and he's undergoing withdrawal symptoms. He's so sick he's unable to follow up the mobile flu truck clue, so Felicity goes instead and is captured by the Count.
  • Slade is not going to let his injuries stop him from going with Shado to rescue Oliver, especially since Ivo's men are trying to hunt them down and kill them anyway, so he'd rather face them head on.
• You Have Failed Me: Ivo kills the Amazo's captain for failing to deal with Oliver and his friends, then appoints the first mate captain.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When the doctor who does up the Count's new formula tries to extort more money for his silence, the Count simply kills him, as his plan involves letting everyone know what he's up to anyway.

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