Thea is being targeted by a new incarnation of the League of Assassins — the Thanatos Guild, led by a mysterious woman named Athena.
- And Your Little Dog, Too!: The Thanatos Guild plant a bomb in the city gasworks to lure Team Arrow out.
- Antagonist Title: The titular team are Malcolm Merlyn's very own "League of Assassins" who are literally out for Thea's blood.
- Arrow Catch: Ollie shoots a Trick Arrow to Roy, who catches it and uses the arrow's electrical component to defuse the bomb.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
- Averted when Thea gets a facial wound during her fight with Athena. She's shown to still have the scar when she returns in Season 8.
- Athena herself has the scar across the eye version.
- The Big Board: Dinah loves a good Murder Board.
- Big Damn Heroes: As they're leaving Star City, Roy and Thea are ambushed by the Thanatos Guild only to be saved by Nyssa.
- The Bus Came Back: Nyssa comes back after not being seen since "Lian Yu".
- But Now I Must Go: Thea, Roy, and Nyssa leave town to hunt down the Lazarus Pits.
- Call-Back:
- Oliver and Thea's parting words mirrors the one they had in the pilot, except Oliver is now the one who says "he'll miss the her" while Thea is the one who replied "he will be with her the whole time". The accompanying music are also the same in both scenes.
- Quentin makes a remark on how Black Siren "is a much better cook" than the real Laurel.
- Roy suggests freezing the bomb like they did in "The Calm".
- The drug Vertigo rears its ugly head again, though with Diaz rather than a new Count Vertigo selling it. Given that the drug was introduced back when Thea was a seventeen year-old drug user, it's a subtle reminder of the Character Development she's undergone.
- Likewise there's a joking reference to Oliver's overprotective brother act from Season One.
- When Thea wonders how she was so lucky as to get Roy for a boyfriend, he reminds her that a stolen purse was involved.
- Chekhov's Gun: On entering the Abandoned Warehouse, Team Arrow trip a pressure plate and barely escape being skewered by an arrow-firing Booby Trap. Later Thea while lying on the ground and about to be captured, pushes down the same plate to fire the arrows at the surrounding Assassins.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Roy Harper returns to Team Arrow in the Season 7 episode "Confessions". Athena and the Thanatos Guild return (along with Thea) in the Season 8 episode "Leap of Faith".
- Combat Pragmatist:
- Nyssa is not afraid to use radio-detonated explosives when she is outnumbered by Athena's men.
- Thea uses one of Athena's own booby traps against her.
- Thea also later attempts to burn the map, which catches Athena off-guard and gives Thea the opportunity to knife her while Athena is trying to grab the map.
- Comically Missing the Point: Felicity wants Nyssa to stop hovering over her so she can concentrate on her tech work, so Nyssa announces she will stay to ensure that no-one bothers her.
- Complexity Addiction: Malcolm found three new Lazarus pits. He detailed their locations in a map that could only be revealed when it came in contact with Thea's blood. Which he hid in a puzzle box that could only be unlocked using the most ancient form of mathematics. And then he hid the box in a booby-trapped warehouse.
- Dramatic Irony: During the opening flashback, Malcolm offers to train Thea so no one can ever hurt her again, so she has some control over her life. We know, of course, that a) people did hurt her again, and b) one of those people was Malcolm, sometimes by using her to hurt other people.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Curtis falls for Officer Anastas and asks him out at the end of the episode.
- Gay Bar Reveal: The place where Nyssa meets Tigressa is strongly implied to be a lesbian bar.Thea: Now I see why you didn't want the boys to come.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Felicity understandably every time Nyssa calls Oliver, "husband", which just motivates Nyssa to keep doing it.
- Hero of Another Story: Thea, Roy, and Nyssa set off in a journey to destroy the remaining Lazarus Pits, but said journey will be off-screen.
- I Am Not My Father: Thea quotes this trope when Athena tells her how Malcolm always spoke about how weak she was.
- If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Oliver says the last two times he shot Roy with an arrow will be nothing to what he'll experience if he doesn't make his little sister happy. Of course by now they're all Fire-Forged Friends, and Oliver is the one encouraging them to run off together, so the threat is more tongue-in-cheek than it would have been in earlier seasons.
- I Just Want to Be Badass: Diggle seems quite annoyed at Oliver still putting on the Hood instead of leaving it to him, as he promised. Before she leaves, Thea advises her brother to make it clear that he doesn't want to give up being the Green Arrow after all.
- Insecure Love Interest: Lampshaded by Thea when Roy wonders if she's really committed to running off with him.
- Internal Reveal: Dinah learns that Captain Hill is dirty, when she takes her off a typical drug murder on the pretext of a "sting operation", a little digging reveals that Diaz is now dealing Vertigo and Hill is making sure nobody in the department investigates it.
- Invisible Writing: The map turns out to be a blank parchment, so they try to expose it with heat as usual only nothing happens. Turns out Thea's blood is the key; the map is printed with bacteria that reveals itself when exposed to the enzymes in Thea's DNA.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Thea is surprised that Oliver hasn't changed his mind about her leaving, but he assures him that her happiness is all that matters.
- Leaning on the Fourth WallFelicity: We have a bomb situation.Roy: There's always a bomb situation!
- "Leave Your Quest" Test: Thea drives off with Roy to start a new life, but can't Refuse the Call when her late father's legacy threatens to create a resurgence of the League. In the end Roy decides that rather than them splitting up again, he'll go with Thea because he doesn't care where they end up as long as they're together.
- Married to the Job: Both Oliver and Thea realize that they simply can't stop being Vigilantes, as it is part of their lives now.
- Mythology Gag:
- The cube containing Merlyn's map looks suspiciously like a Mother Box.
- Roy's costume is basically street clothes and a red trucker hat. The hat is from his New 52 costume, though that one is grey.
- Polygamy: In one instance, Nyssa calls Felicity her "sister wife", much to the latter's chagrin. At the end of the episode, though, she officially annuls her marriage to Oliver.
- Properly Paranoid: The DA's refusal to drop the case against Oliver, even though Roy is no longer in their clutches sets off alarm bells for Quentin.
- Put on a Bus: Thea, Roy, and Nyssa leave Star City in search of the remaining Lazarus Pits. On a meta level, Thea's actress, Willa Holland, departs the series after this episode, having spent this and the previous seasons Commuting on a Bus.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Athena's mooks aren't too tough, but Athena is good enough to fight with Nyssa and Thea on an even ground.
- Schizo Tech:
- On finding herself outnumbered by sword-wielding opponents, Nyssa produces a radio detonator for the plastic explosive she's planted.
- Malcolm Merlyn used an atomic force microscope to imprint the map via nanolithography.
- Shout-Out:
- When entering a booby-trapped warehouse, Felicity wonders if the traps will be like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Becomes a Brick Joke when they encounter an arrow-firing booby trap and Thea informs Felicity that it's Raiders.
- In multiple instances, Felicity compares the puzzle box to the one from Hellraiser.
- Start My Own: After the Legion of Doom was disbanded but before sacrificing himself on Lian Yu, Merlyn recruited League survivors to form his own—the Thanatos Guild.
- Team Title: The title refers to Malcolm Merlyn's very own "League of Assassins" consisting of his loyalists from said league during his time as Ra's Al-Ghul. Doubles as Antagonist Title.
- Tempting Fate: The In-Universe version when Roy doesn't want to be too optimistic about running away with Thea to live Happily Ever After.
- Thea: Since when do you believe in superstition?Roy: Ever since I met your brother, there's not a lot I don't believe in.(an arrow slams into their tire to force them off the road)Thea: Now I might believe it too.
- At the Lair, Felicity notes they didn't even make it to the city limits and Roy snaps "she jinxed us."
- There Is Another: There are three more Lazarus Pits out in the world.
- Troll: Nyssa takes great pleasure in calling Oliver her husband, as it upsets Felicity. Felicity in turn discovers Nyssa is Hopeless with Tech and gleefully trolls back.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Athena manages to Stealth Hi/Bye from seemingly fatal injury. Merlyn would be proud.
- Villainous Legacy: Although he may be dead, Malcolm's association with the League of Assassins comes to haunt Team Arrow. Before he died, he started his own version — the Thanatos Guild. He left behind a map leading to more Lazarus Pits, that could only be opened by Thea, whom he intended to recruit by his side at a later date; the bastard never changed.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Nyssa's contact Tigressa gets one scene before she is murdered off-screen and displayed by Athena. She is said to have had over 200 kills (including her own brother for trying to beat her score) so this is presumably for The Worf Effect.
- Wham Episode: Merlyn discovered the existence of three new Lazarus Pits across the world, which explains why he was so calm about dying. Meanwhile, Thea leaves Star City for good.
