Team Arrow has to deal with Brick without Oliver. Meanwhile, Oliver may be alive, but he's in no shape to return to Starling just yet. Malcolm continues to attempt to hightail it out of the city, but Thea refuses to until he comes clean on the reason why.
- After-Action Patch-Up: Downplayed with Laurel being sewn up by Roy, and played for the usual Ship Tease with Felicity fixing the cut on Ray's head.
- Back from the Dead: Tatsu is purposefully vague on how exactly she brought Oliver back, just telling him "you're lucky to be alive."
- Brick Joke: Felicity asks for the keys to Ray's personal helicopter. He points out that helicopters don't have keys, but Felicity later returns the keys to his desk, as it turns out they do.
- Celebrity Paradox: Thea reads a book by comic writer Brad Meltzer, whose work has included a six-issue run on Green Arrow.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Felicity winds up helping Ray with the nanochip for the ATOM suit after refusing to in the previous episode.
- Chekhov's Gun: The voice changer Laurel uses to mimic Sara is later used to fool Brick as to where the Canary is, so Laurel can ambush him.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Felicity and Laurel talk about giving up their respective fights with the losses of Oliver and Sara. They come around when Felicity realizes that they don't fight for the people they lost, but the people who are still alive and need their help.
- Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Zigzagged; Team Arrow refer to the Canary but the news reports call her The Woman In Black. Likewise Arsenal is called the Red Arrow (see Mythology Gag).
- Cops Need the Vigilante: Justified seeing as they've been ordered to pull out of the Glades altogether.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Felicity gives Laurel a voice changer that uses software to mimic Sara's voice so that she can convince her father she's still alive to get help with the case.
- Do-Anything Soldier: Diggle can fly a helicopter despite his prior military experience being in special forces, not combat aviation.
- Drives Like Crazy: Or in Diggle's case—flies a helicopter like crazy, because it's been five years since he last flew one.
- The Easy Way or the Hard Way: During his Evil Gloating, a rapist asks his intended victim if she wants to do things the hard way or the harder way. Laurel turns up intending to show him the latter.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Brick has Laurel at his complete mercy when they attempt to spring the aldermen, but lets her go as he doesn't like hitting women.
- Would Hit a Girl: He's perfectly fine with killing her in the second attempt to rescue the aldermen, though.
- Hard Light: Apparently, once Ray's ATOM suit is complete, it will use these.Ray: It doesn't fire lasers! That would be ridiculous! ...It fires compressed hard light beams.
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Arsenal and Black Canary save the remaining Aldermen, leaving Brick with no leverage over City Hall; Captain Lance tells Laurel that the mayor still caved and pulled the police from the Glades, as Brick revealed he had the private records of every city employee and would go after their families if his demands weren't met.
- Heroic Wannabe: Laurel trying to take up the mantle of the Canary. She tries to take advantage of the Canary being The Dreaded, but the criminals she's fighting can tell she's not the same.Rapist: I heard rumors about a Mask who protects girls around here. I guess you ain't her. This is Brick's town now.
- Hostage for MacGuffin:
- Maseo trades China White the Alpha for Tatsu, but it's a fake and he, Ollie, and Tatsu have to fight their way out of a nightclub to escape White and her mooks.
- Brick kidnaps three alderman and demands that the police withdraw from the Glades, leaving it under his rule.
- Hourglass Plot: In the flashbacks, Tatsu treats Oliver with cold disdain while having a warm and loving relationship with her husband. In the present day, Tatsu and Oliver interact as friends (though their relationship is entirely platonic) while Sarab maintains an icy distance from his wife.
- Idiot Ball: Quentin seeing Laurel's silhouette from ten feet away and not realizing he's being duped, especially given the height/body-type difference between her and Sara.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Roy has a moment of this, after Brick kills one of the Aldermen in response to Roy firing an arrow at him as he was escaping.
- Improvised Weapon: Laurel uses her heel against one of Brick's thugs.
- Lawman Baton: Laurel discards the bo staff used by her sister for a PR24 side-handle baton.
- Legacy Character: Laurel quickly finds that being the Canary is more difficult than just putting on the mask and using the staff. For one thing, she swings the staff like a bat, and doesn't have the acrobatics skills necessary to bounce around the battlefield like everyone else.
- Make It Look Like a Struggle: Sarab puts a deep cut in his neck so he can claim that Oliver bested him and escaped.
- Mythology Gag:
- Roy is called "the Red Arrow" by the media. Red Arrow was the name Roy assumed in the comics after he became Ollie's equal as a member of the Justice League.
- Laurel threatens to send one of Brick's men to Belle Revue.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Laurel finds out where Brick has the hostages, but refuses to stay in Mission Control, leaving Diggle (who has special forces experience in contrast to her few months of boxing training) behind to do so. The attempt fails and Brick kills one of the hostages in retaliation for Arsenal shooting him with an arrow.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: While on the surface Brick has won, his audacious bid to bring the Glades under his control has helped bring Team Arrow back on point again, as well as giving Felicity the incentive to help Ray Palmer complete his A.T.O.M. suit.
- Nightmare Sequence/Bait-and-Switch: The episode starts with a rehash of Oliver leaving to fight with Ra's al Ghul. Instead, he chooses to stay, kisses Felicity, then spits blood and looks down to see the blade Ra's stabbed him with sticking out of his stomach. Oliver then jerks awake.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Oliver fell hundreds of feet off a cliffside after Ra's ran him through, but the only major injury he seems to have are the holes in his gut from the duel. Tatsu puts this down to the cold and Heroic Willpower.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Laurel, proficient in self-defense but lacking the experience and training to be at the level of Team Arrow's fighters, finds herself getting her attacks blocked often and getting pummeled herself on multiple occasions. At the end of episode, she changes her weapon from Sara's Awesome, but Impractical staff to a more pragmatic police baton.
- Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: Laurel experiences first hand that Brick is Made of Iron.
- The Reveal: Chase, the young handsome DJ who's putting the moves on Thea, is part of the League of Assassins, and contacts Sarab to inform him about Malcolm Merlyn staying in Starling.
- Shame If Something Happened: Laurel threatens to change the rap sheet of one of Brick's men to show he was involved in the killing of the leader of the Los Halcones gang, then send him to a prison where that gang happens to be locked up.
- Shaped Like Itself: "Your penicillin tea tastes like penicillin."
- She's Back: After talking with Laurel about why they continue to fight even in the absence of those they have lost, Felicity regains the spirit and mindset to help Ray on his heroic agenda.
- Shout-Out:
- Brick does the appropriate William Shakespeare-quoting of any ambitious villain. "Julius Caesar, Act Five, Scene Two. "They stand, and would have parley"." (It's actually Scene One).
- Thea calls the state of Brick in charge of the Glades "a scene from The Purge".
- Sincerity Mode: Thea refuses to run off with her father without explanation, so Malcolm tells her how Ra's al Ghul is after him and his family. The latter would appear to be stretching the truth, but the reveal that Chase is a member of the League shows her life really is in danger, even if no-one knows she killed Sara.
- Single Tear: Shed by Laurel, Felicity and Tatsu are various points.
- Spoiler Opening: Played with. Caity Lotz is listed in the credits, leaving the viewer to assume she'll appear in some physical form. It turns out it's a voiceover role when Felicity makes a voice changer to make Laurel sound like Sara when talking to her father.
- Stand Your Ground: Thea convinces Merlyn to stay in Starling City after convincing him that they're fearless and strong enough to defeat anyone who tries to take them out, even if Thea doesn't know who exactly is coming for them. In addition, this is why Team Arrow decides to press on sans Oliver, as Starling City is their home and someone needs to protect it.
- Take Over the City: Danny Brickwell isn't just planning to rule the Glades, he's directly challenging the city administration by kidnapping three alderman and demanding to negotiate directly with the Mayor. At one point, he's compared to Al Capone in the scale of his ambition.
- Take That!: When Quentin says the police aren't going to abandon an entire district of the city, Brick snarks that they did in LA in '92
. - Tempting Fate:
- Roy warns Malcolm that Thea will inevitably discover the truth about Sara's death, and when she does, it will destroy his relationship with her. Malcolm just scoffs at him.
- Brick is unimpressed when Ray Palmer turns up at the parley as well.Brick: Star City. [Laughs] Seems more like Brick City to me.Ray: Night is young.Brick: Tough talk. Too bad all you got is money to back it up. But you can't fix this with money, Palmer.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Laurel isn't efficient enough to be able to take out foes completely unscathed, or cover distances with the kind of agility that Arsenal and Sara possessed, but she's durable and skilled enough to keep herself alive and be useful with teammates watching her back.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Diggle and Roy both get stuck into Laurel after she nearly gets herself killed trying to stop an Attempted Rape and has to be saved by Arsenal.
- Oliver is shocked when Maeso is willing to hand over the Alpha to China White in exchange for Tatsu. Fortunately, Waller anticipated this and made sure he had a fake version.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Brick, until Laurel forces his hand, so to speak.
