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Arrow ‘Beacon of Hope’ Recap

The Arrow community
welcomes Emily Kinney (Beth-The
Walking Dead)
back to our screens
as she resumes her role as Brie
Larvin,
the bug-eyed bandit.

In the opening sequence, Brie is typing
away on a
computer in her
prison facility. The judge allows her to have 30 minutes of
recreational
computer access per week. She
somehow figured out how to access the
government network and she
orchestrates an early release for

herself.

Since he and Felicity are no longer involved, Oliver now
puts
his full effort into
training up his team. It felt like a weird case of deja vu,
watching Oliver
spar with Thea, Diggle and
Laurel. Oliver is seemingly now 100%
back in the driver’s seat, focusing
solely on protecting Star City. The
streets
have gone quiet, but Oliver tells them they can never be too

careful.

Thea reveals to
Oliver that Ruve Darhk has reached out to
Oliver’s old campaign manager,
Alex, and has asked him to
represent her. Laurel
mentions that she ‘heard’ there is an opening at
Palmer Technologies in the PR

department. Oliver tells his team that Felicity isn’t ‘Voldemort’ and it
is
okay to talk about her
when they are around him. Let me just say, I absolutely
love these little
moments with all of the team
members. I especially love how
Thea joked about how she is surprised that
Oliver knew who Harry Potter was.

(Now that he has read the books, he’s gotta see the movies!) Thea agrees to
go
talk to Felicity about
the possibility of her hiring Alex as her new PR
rep.

While Team
Arrow practices their new fighting
techniques, Felicity
and Curtis remain hard at work at Palmer Technologies.
Since Felicity’s biochip
is
working to perfection, her and Curtis have began looking for a way to make

the chip more marketable and
showcase it as Palmer Technologies new development.
If you remember from
earlier this season, Felicity told
her board members that
Curtis was going to come up with an amazing project.
I would say this biochip

is pretty amazing. Felicity realizes that Curtis is sick,
more
than likely, running a
high fever. She tells him to head home, and she can
handle the board members
on her own. Just as Curtis is
leaving, Donna appears
claiming she is there to ‘cheer Felicity up’ after
her breakup with Oliver.

Ironically, Thea also walks into Felicity’s office and asks Felicity if she
can
talk to her about
Alex.

A guard escorts Damien Darhk to an interrogation
room, and when
the guard leaves, Malcolm Merlyn
steps out of the shadows. He
informs Damien that H.I.V.E is going to be
moving forward with GENESIS, but not

with Damien. Merlyn intercepted Damien’s ‘resources’ and because of the
way
they were treated and
constantly threatened by Darhk and his mystical ways,
rescuing Darhk is not
on their list of priorities.
Damien expresses his anger,
by attempting to summon magic and kill Malcolm.
When nothing happens, Malcolm

merely laughs and walks out of the interrogation room.

Arrow 'Beacon of Hope' Recap
Image: The CW

While
Felicity is in discussion with Thea,
her
board members gather in their conference room. One of the members comes
into the
meeting later than
the rest, and erupts in a coughing fit. He collapses and a
swarm of bees
pour out from his body. (Talk about
creepy!). Brie Larvin enters
the room and tells the members that she wants
Felicity’s biostimulant prototype

chip and yes, she knows that the only one ever created is currently in the
base
of Felicity’s spine.
Brie jams any cellular or data signals from dialing out of
the building, so
they are all trapped with no
hopes of immediate rescue. Brie
hacks into Palmer Tech’s broadcasting
network, and does a live video feed.
She
calls out Felicity, showing how she is holding all of Felicity’s board
members
hostage. Felicity has
10 minutes to contact Brie and surrender her biochip,
otherwise, she is
going to start killing more of
Felicity’s men.

Curtis
sees the swarm of bees circling Palmer Tech
on t.v and he heads out, despite
his
fever of 104. (Any sort of movement with a temperature that high is a
superpower
all on its own,
someone give this man a costume and a name
already!!)

Oliver logs
into Felicity’s computer in the
Arrow-cave and
recognizes the Brie Larvins name from when Felicity
encountered her in Central
City.
Captain Lance comes down to the bunker, and asks Oliver if he has any idea

as to what is going on. Just as
Oliver is about to answer, the elevator doors to
the bunker open and Curtis
appears there. Amazing what a GPS
tracker will help
you find! (No, this is not me encouraging you guys to go
out and use your GPS to
go
find secret superhero caves 😉 )

Curtis instantly becomes like a

little kid in a candy store. He
becomes so overwhelmed with the fact that Oliver
is the Green Arrow along
with the fact that he actually just
discovered the
Arrow cave that he faints. Captain Lance then makes a joke
saying ‘Can anyone
just walk
in here?’

We journey back to Damien Darhk, and he encounters
Mr.
Michael Amar (Murmur) and two of his
men. Damien gets coy and uses his witty
sense of humor to play them off. The
three men jump Damien and
attempt to pummel
him to the ground. Damien fights back, but had it not been
for the prison guard

intervening, Damien may not have lived to tell the tale.

Curtis wakes
up,
and is still in complete
awe at the Arrow cave. He becomes so overwhelmed with
excitement that he
almost forgets the real reason as to
why he is there. Oliver
gets him back on track, and asks him if he is
willing to fill Felicity’s shoes

and help them stop Brie. Curtis is able to hack into one of the bees, and
uses
it to communicate to
Felicity and tell her that Team Arrow will be waiting for
her outside on one
of the western ports.

The
rescue attempt fails, and
Oliver winds up getting stung by the bee. Laurel
and Diggle hurry Oliver back to

the Arrow cave, to assess the damage done. To Curtis’s horror, he discovers

that not only is the robotic
bee inside Oliver, it’s replicating as they speak.
Curtis comes up with the
idea that if they can somehow
disrupt the bee’s
frequencies and jam their signal using a sonic device,
the bees will be rendered

inactive. Curtis programs Laurel’s ‘Canary Cry’ device to emit the proper

frequencies necessary to
halt the bees replicating. Laurel performs the Canary
Cry, and it works!
Oliver becomes officially bee-
free.

Arrow 'Beacon of Hope' Recap
Image: The
CW

After their rescue attempt failed, Felicity,
Donna and
Thea all head back into Palmer
Tech. Brie sends Felicity another video
message saying since Felicity’s
timeline was ‘interrupted’ by The
Green
Arrow, she will grant Felicity five more minutes to give her the
biochip.
Felicity expresses that
she has an idea to safely rescue her board members, when
she realizes that
Brie is no longer in the
conference room holding them hostage
at point blank. She has Donna and Thea
follow her to one of the
elevators that
leads to the buildings panic room. Felicity rigs the elevator
to stop a few
floors short.
She uses one of Curtis’s prototype technologies to act as an
explosive
device, blowing a hole in the
concrete wall that leads directly to the
conference room where her board
members are being held.

Brie
walks back
into the room, her eyes set on Felicity. Felicity shuts the
elevator doors so
that her board
members, and her mother are now safe. Brie walks Felicity and
Thea back to
Felicity’s office, and demands
the chip one last time. As she
raises her weapon to threaten Thea, she
stumbles slightly as if she suddenly

lost her balance. Brie states that she has a tumor on her vertebrae and the
only
surgery in the world
that could remove it would cause her to be paralyzed from
the waist down,
which is why she needs Felicity’s
biochip. Felicity tells her
where she can find the blueprints to the
biochip, and make one for herself. When

Brie locates the blue prints not only does she discover the coding to build

another chip, she also
discovers that Felicity was the hacker who stopped her in
Central City and
sent her to prison.

Curtis
discovers that that every
single time they come up with a plan to defeat the
bees, it is only temporary.

Brie’s bees are constantly evolving, and become more and more
indestructible
with every attempt to stop
them. When Curtis attempts to celebrate their small
victory of stopping the
bees from killing Oliver, Oliver
snaps at Curtis,
telling him that it doesn’t matter that they had a small
victory. Felicity,
Thea and
Donna are still in danger and there is no time or need to celebrate.
Laurel
speaks with Oliver privately,
telling him that he hasn’t wronged anyone
as The Green Arrow. As a matter
of fact, he is a Beacon of Hope
for everyone. He
has defeated the darkness before, and despite the pain he
is going through now,
he will
do it again… and that yelling at Curtis, was completely uncalled

for.

Curtis creates a new arrow for
Oliver, telling him to fire it at the
bees when they come together as the
‘bee man’ again. (The bees
literally
merged together to form this awesome, robotic looking bee-man).
Curtis
discovers a way to
decipher their upgrade protocol, he just needs Oliver to
distract them for a
few minutes. Oliver thanks
Curtis, and heads to Palmer
Tech.

While Diggle and Laurel distract
the bee-man outside, Oliver sneaks

inside of Palmer Tech. He finds Felicity and Thea, and shoots Brie with a

retention arrow, tieing her to
the pillar. The bees swarm in the room, and form
another bee-man. Thea and
Oliver both attempt to fight it
off, but fail.
Felicity then steps up, grabbing a lamp and smashing it
against the ground. She
then uses
the electricity from the lamp to electrocute the bee-man, causing them
to
lose the bond holding them all
together.

Curtis seizes control of the
bees once more, and they swarm
Brie. She collapses on the
floor, but is still
alive. She is taken to the hospital, where she is
declared in comatose
condition.
Oliver thanks Curtis for all of his hard work, and tells him he is
always
welcome to come back to Team Arrow.
Curtis heads home, and apologizes to
his husband, Paul for running out like
he did. Paul forgives him,
telling him he
will go get him some soup. Curtis then replies with
‘terrific’. I find this
incredibly
ironic, considering Curtis’s character is loosely based off of the
D.C
character, Mr. Terrific. Easter Eggs,
anyone??

In the concluding
minutes, we see Malcolm Merlyn talking to
someone in a dark car. He’s
plotting
his takeover of HIVE and the GENESIS project. Since Damien Darhk is
no longer
significant to
HIVE, he needs another ‘in’. The camera pans, and we see Andy
Diggle
sitting in the driver’s seat of the
car.

But,
but, but… just when you thought Damien
was well on his way to
rotting
away in prison, the tables turned. When Mr. Amar and his men visited
Damien
in his cell again, I was almost
positive that they were going to kill
Damien this time. Well, this certainly
was not the case. Mr. Amar
stabbed both
of his men, killing them. Damien then told Mr. Amar that it was
time to deliver
his ‘other
message’ to Mr. Amar’s associates.

Arrow 'Beacon of Hope' Recap
Image: The CW

Flashback

Oliver

Oliver and Tianna
remain trapped in the caves with
Reiter. Oliver reveals himself to Reiter,
and he and Tianna attempt to shoot

Reiter with the pistols that they acquired from some of Reiter’s men. The

bullets hit Reiter like flies
on a windshield, and Reiter knocks Tianna out
against the wall. He and
Oliver fight, but Reiter eventually
grabs hold of
Oliver. Reiter claims that one day soon, people will look to
him as a god, and
not just a
man. He lifts Oliver off of his feet, and his eyes begin to glow.
Something
causes him to stop, and he lowers
Oliver to the ground. He again
demands to know where Oliver and Tianna hid
his artifact. Oliver refuses to
tell
him. Reiter knocks Oliver out.

When Tianna and Oliver awake,
they realize
that Reiter is gone
and is more than likely somewhere in the cave looking for
his artifact.
Oliver tells Tianna they need to get
to the surface, and kill all
of Reiter’s men.

A Few
Thoughts

It seems as

though Felicity pretty much has her mind set on not returning to Team
Arrow…
for the moment. Right now,
she wants to focus all of her attention on building
up her company. She
wants to take all the good that her
biochip has done for
her, and share it with the world. A Beacon of Hope for
everyone else, with
Palmer
Tech as the light guiding the way. Maybe being away from Oliver and the
rest
of the team will help Felicity
and Oliver’s relationship. After all, they
do say distance makes the heart
grow fonder. I am still hopeful,
my fellow
‘Olicity’ fans…

I cannot get over how much I loved
seeing Curtis as a
honorary
member of Team Arrow this episode. I really hope that he gets brought
back
into the fold, and that he gets to
fight some crime along Oliver once
more.

What’s Damien Darhk got up
his sleeve? Just when you think
he’s
finally been knocked down, he continues to surprise us. I imagine
he’s going to
be making his
prison escape very soon and when he does, he’s going to be
gunning hot for
Malcolm Merlyn… and I feel like
he’s not going to be the only
one.

As if Diggle and his family
haven’t been through enough, now we

have Andy to worry about once more. So it appears. I hope that Andy is
pulling
some double-double agent
stuff and isn’t actually going to consider going back
to HIVE or working
for Merlyn. Diggle just got his
brother back; I really hope
that he isn’t going to be losing him
again.

Fantastic performance by

Emily Kinney! It is always a treat to see some of our The Walking
Dead

cast members perform in
other projects!

Arrow returns Wednesday April
6th, at 8PM/EST on The
CW.

Are you ready for
1159?

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