Recap / Arrow S 3 E 2 Sara

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While mourning, Team Arrow investigates Sara's murder, and the new archer killing businessmen across town.

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Tropes That Apply To This Episode:

• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Ray spent $1.2 billion buying up an entire IT chain of stores to get the one Felicity works at.
• Awesome by Analysis: Ray is correct in deducing about Felicity not being upset at him, but rather at something else (he doesn't know about Sara's death). He commented that years of being one of the smartest in the business world gives him enough experience to know when people are pissed at him.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: Team Arrow enter the Arrowcave to find Sara on a slab and a suit-wearing Laurel covered in blood because she had to drag the body down there.
• Bread Milk Eggs Squick: According to the ARGUS files Komodo was born in Quebec, raised by a single mom, has a terrible credit score, and is wanted for murder in seven countries. They narrow down the cellphone he's using via the calls he's making to mom.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: A BFF version where Past!Oliver, posing as a masked kidnapper, tells Tommy that Oliver Queen is rotting at the bottom of the ocean so Tommy will give up his search.
• Continuity Nod: Roy shows Felicity and later Oliver the farewell note Thea left behind in the season 2 finale.
• Captain Obvious: After getting shot by Komodo who gets away, Oliver states "he got away". Only somewhat obvious because, even though Laurel and Felicity are watching the battle through CCTV cameras, they don't have the vantage point to see Komodo escape.
• Card-Carrying Villain: When Laurel accuses Komodo of lying about not killing Sara, he replies that he wouldn't do that as he is proud of his work.
• The Chains of Commanding:
  Oliver: I don't have the luxury of falling to pieces when everyone's looking to me to find a solution.
• Contrived Coincidence: An archer turns up in Starling City around the same time Sara is shot by another archer. It would be less of a coincidence if he happened to be another Arrow copycat or challenger, but he's just a hitman who prefers to use that method (apparently there are twenty known Professional Killers worldwide who use a bow, and half of them work for the League of Assassins).
• Dead Guy Junior: Diggle offers some comfort to Laurel by telling her that he and Lyla are naming their daughter after Sara.
• Deer in the Headlights: When Team Arrow walks into the cave and sees Sara laid out on a table.
• Did Not Think This Through: To get out of killing Tommy, Oliver suggests to Maseo that they fake his death by finding a body that looks like him at the morgue. In Hong Kong. He almost gets a Face Palm in response to the stupidity of the plan.
• Dies Wide Open: Oliver closes Sara's eyes for her.
• Disposing of a Body: As Team Arrow is an illegal vigilante group, they can't take Sara's body to a hospital, so put her in the nightclub freezer because they don't know what else to do. In the end they bury Sara under the headstone put up when she was presumed lost at sea at the start of the series.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Detective Lance mentions Sara and asks the Arrow what's bothering him, not knowing that Sara's dead.
  • Oliver talking about how Thea's happily traveling the world when the audience knows that she's gone off with Malcolm Merlyn.
  • Sara is buried by the headstone put up when she was mistakenly assumed to be lost at sea.
• Dramatic Unmask: The final scene is in a Big Fancy House in Corto Maltese, where a short fighter in kendo gear fights two others. After defeating the others, the kendo mask is removed to reveal the fighter is Thea.
  Malcolm Merlyn: Well done.
  Thea: Thanks, dad.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Almost word for word from Komodo on meeting the Arrow.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Thea's hair is shorter, signifying her upgrade to Action Girl status.
• A Friend in Need:
  • Just someone accessing Oliver's email account is enough to have Tommy pinch his father's corporate jet and fly off to Hong Kong to investigate.
  • Diggle returns to Team Arrow realising that Oliver needs his support at least until Sara's killer is caught.
• Foreshadowing
  • For the next episode when Oliver decides to find out where Thea is and bring her home.
  • After cuddling the shark toy that Sara loved as a child, Laurel picks up the black leather Canary jacket that Sara left her and stares thoughtfully at it.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Part of Laurel's heartbreak comes from the fact that no one outside the team will ever know the real Sara.
• Groin Attack: When a drug dealer tries to escape the Arrow by attempting to climb into the rafters, Oliver just takes the opportunity to punch him in the groin while he's hanging there.
• Heroic Safe Mode: A tearful Felicity tries to get Oliver to unbottle some of his grief, but he refuses as everyone is relying on him to lead Team Arrow. By the end of the episode when all their efforts to find Sara's killer turn out to be futile, even Oliver can't keep going.
• His Name Is...: Komodo's third target gets an arrow in the chest just before he can tell Laurel about the secret business deal he was part of. He reveals enough however to enable Team Arrow to track down Komodo's final target.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Ray Palmer is willing to invest half of his net worth for Starling City's benefit, and take a salary of only one dollar for this year.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Averted; as a recovering alcoholic Laurel leaves Verdant because a bar is the last place she needs to be right now.
• Informed Judaism: Subverted; the mourners throwing dirt on the coffin is an actual Jewish tradition, just as Felicity says.
• Infraction Distraction: A masked Oliver kidnaps Tommy and pretends he's a criminal who hacked Oliver's email account to lure his family or friends to Hong Kong to investigate, so they can be kidnapped for ransom. Tommy is then 'rescued' by Maseo posing as a Hong Kong policeman.
• Internal Homage: Thea's Dramatic Unmask is similar to The Reveal in "Muse of Fire" of Malcolm Merlyn as the Well-Dressed Man, shown when he removed a fencing mask. The overhead camera shot of the three kendo fighters is also reminiscent of the scene where Sara, Oliver and Diggle spar each other in "Time of Death".
• Internal Reveal: Roy tells the rest of the team that Thea left town for good after finding out about his work with the Arrow, and probably isn't backpacking in Europe like she says.
• Ikea Weaponry: The sniper rifle Past!Oliver is given to Shoot Your Mate.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Oliver emptied the clip of the gun Laurel grabbed from the Foundry in case she followed him and tried to kill Komodo with it.
• I Will Wait for You: Averted; seeing Oliver's grief-stricken resolve that being the Arrow will be everything he will ever know, Felicity does not want to same for herself and takes Ray Palmer up on his offer to work for him.
  Felicity: You're just going to spend your life hiding down here in this cave, waiting to die? I'm sorry. I'm not going to wait with you, because if there's one thing that today has taught me, is that life is precious. And I want so much more in mine than this.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Laurel twist the arm of a wounded target of Komodo to get him to talk.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Laurel just can't bring herself to tell her father about Sara's death, for fearing that the truth might trigger his heart condition.
• Last-Name Basis: Subverted at the end of the episode for dramatic effect. Oliver finally breaks down, calls Diggle, "John" and tells him that he doesn't want to die in the cave.
• Living Emotional Crutch: With Sara dead and Felicity gone, Oliver decides to go to find his little sister Thea and bring her home.
• Morton's Fork: Oliver is given a choice between killing Tommy or risking Maseo's family and having Amanda hire someone else to kill Tommy. He Takes a Third Option and stages a fake kidnapping for ransom to convince Tommy that Oliver is dead, by pretending it was all a plot to lure him there.
• Motorcycle Jousting: Komodo and the Arrow ride motorcycles at each other while shooting arrows.
• Mythology Gag: The building of an oil pipeline at Qurac is behind the contract killings, and we finally get a look at Corto Maltese which turns out to be where Thea has really been all this time.
• Not Me This Time: After spending the whole episode convinced that Komodo is the one who killed Sara, they find out that he wasn't even in town that night, meaning it was someone else.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • To get information, Laurel twists the arm of a wounded man in hospital, and would have shot Komodo if Oliver hadn't made sure the gun she had was unloaded.
  • Felicity calls Oliver on his apparent ability to shut down his emotions.
  • Roy looks surprised when Oliver doesn't rip into him for keeping the truth about Thea from him. This is presumably because, like Roy, Oliver blames himself for her leaving in the first place.
• Red Herring: Komodo didn't kill Sara and because the team was so busy hunting him, the real killer's long gone.
• Secret-Keeper: Laurel ropes Team Arrow into hiding Sara's death from her father, for the sake of his health. It was only meant to be a temporary measure until Sara's killer was caught which would provide some comfort for Quentin, but that turned out not to happen.
• Secret Test of Character: On seeing Tommy is his target, Oliver wants to know if this is some kind of test. For all we know it could be; either to see if Oliver is capable of killing a friend, or resourceful enough to think up another option.
• Shoot Your Mate: Waller's first assignment for Past!Oliver is Tommy Merlyn, who has come to Hong Kong to investigate Oliver opening his email account in the previous episode.
• Stalker with a Crush: Though Ray is actually after Felicity's skills, or so he says.
  Felicity: You are the creepiest form of stalker that I have ever had to deal with, and believe me when I'm telling you that that is saying a lot,
• Super Window Jump: Komodo crashing Palmer's benefit.
• Took a Level in Badass: Over the past five months Thea has advanced in kendo enough to fight two opponents simultaneously.
• Torture Always Works: Twice, actually. Once with Oliver getting the drug dealer to describe Komodo to him, and then Laurel getting Kelso to confess to the business deal he had with Komodo's other victims.
• Un-Confession: Laurel is going to tell her father about Sara's death, but fearful of his heart condition she just apologizes for lying about having the DA's permission to interview the witness.
• Villain Ball:
  • Amanda Waller wants Oliver to shoot Tommy, who came to Hong Kong looking for him. She doesn't stop to think that killing the son of a wealthy businessman would only draw further attention towards Hong Kong. Eventually, Oliver and Maseo come up with a plan that gets Tommy to go back to the U.S.
  • Instead of just shooting his third target, Komodo rope-arrows him and drags him, giving Roy and Oliver time to intervene.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Felicity very appropriately calls Ray out for being a really creepy stalker, such that he spent 1.2 billion dollars buying out the holding company that owns the company that runs the franchise she works for.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Felicity's response to discovering that Palmer has bought up the store where she works, so he's now her boss.