BWW Recap: One Canary Too Many on ARROW

Laurel (Katie Cassidy) tracks down the villain Vertigo (Peter Stormare) alone with disastrous results as Ollie (Stephen Amell) plays catch up with everything that went down while he was dead/resurrecting on tonight's ep, "Canaries." Draw a bow, we'll catch you up.

We open with Laurel (as Black Canary) battling her deceased sister Sarah (Caity Lotz, as the first Black Canary). Laurel is getting her butt handed to her. Sarah asks "Why are you trying to take my place?"

Credits roll and then we begin in ernest 48 hours earlier. Bad guy is being chased across rooftops and down fire escapes by ARROW and Arsenal (aka Roy Harper, played by Colton Haynes). Laurel (as Black Canary) catches up with the guy and beats him senseless. ARROW asks "What the hell do you think you are doing?" to which she replies "Your job, apparently." Oh, snap. Someone's gotten too big for her black leather britches. Ollie is concerned that Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne) might lose both of his daughters. Laurel decides its best if she and Team ARROW stay out of each others' way.

Back at the lair, Ollie confronts Diggle (David Ramsey) about signing off on Laurel picking up the Black Canary mask. Laurel is a bit too head-strong to worry about paperwork being signed off on. Good thing Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) shows up to check in on the team. The team is still not happy with Malcolm in the lair. Malcolm thinks Ollie and he both need Thea's help to defeat Ra's al Ghul. Ollie doesn't think she is ready. That, and if Thea (Willa Holland) finds out her brother Ollie has been lying to her all this time, she's probably never going to trust/speak to him again.

Count Vertigo, meanwhile, is being escorted out of court. He pauses to address the media (he demands to face his accuser --ARROW-- in court). The media circus gives him enough time to touch the federal marshall escorting him, infecting him with the mind altering drug he uses as his weapon of choice. The cop sees ghoulish faces among the press corp and opens fire. Vertigo escapes.

Ollie shows up at Thea's club to show her his lair (it happens to be below her club). He tells her he lied all this time to protect her. She thanks him for saving people's lives. I wonder what the point of having a secret identity is if more than a handful of people know the secret.

Of course, she wants to know why he is telling her now and he let's her know that Ra's al Ghul is coming to kill them all and the only way they will survive is to fight together. She tells Malcolm she feels manipulated by him (she's absolutely right; he did try to drive a wedge between the siblings) and she storms off.

Back at the lair, I actually find out I am wrong. Vertigo didn't dose the cop, a fake reporter did. Laurel wants to accompany Ollie on the hunt for Vertigo. They fight again about Laurel crime fighting on the streets (as opposed to in the court --she is a district attorney, in case you forgot). Laurel storms off.

ARROW and Arsenal track down the reporter. Vertigo threatend to kill the guy's wife unless he not only helped him escape, but also kill ARROW. He has a bomb strapped to him. ARROW pleads with him to give him the detonator. The guy pushes the button. ARROW and Arsenal jump out the window to safety.

Ollie returns to the loft he shares with Thea. She asks if the smoke smell on him is Korean barbecue. He tells her it was C-4. She still doesn't think she can trust Malcolm. She later confides in Roy that she wants to get as far away from her father Malcolm as possible.

Back in the lair, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) summons the team. One of the trackers is going off, but she doesn't remember anyone every putting one on Vertigo. Ollie tells the team he put the tracker on Laurel. Roy and he suit up.

Good thing, too. Vertigo has already shot Canary with his mind-altering drug. Instead of seeing Vertigo, she sees her dead sister (as the original Black Canary) and the fight from the beginning of the episode begins again. ARROW shoots the baton out of Vertigo's hand before he can strike the finishing blow. Vertigo escapes with a truckload of chemicals.

Back at the lair, Thea comes down to see Ollie giving Laurel the antidote and realizes the is a part of Team ARROW. Ollie barks at Thea to leave. Roy rushes to Thea's defense and tells Ollie he can't invite her into the lair and then just tell her to go. Ollie yells at Roy. Felicity gets into it: Ollie was gone for a while, the team had to make their own choices and do things their own way without him and now that he has returned he can't just expect things to go back to the way they were. Ollie seems genuinely conflicted by the mutany on his team.

Thea leaves the lair and runs into her D.J. Chase (whom we know from the previous episode is actually one of Ra's al Ghul's assasins). She kisses him and when he asks what the kiss was for, she tells him it's because her life has become complicated (girl, what until you find out that this guy is probably going to try and kill you).

Laurel wakes and Felicity tells her to stop trying to be Sarah (or Sarah's version of Black Canary) and just be herself. And then a tracker on one of the barrels of chemicals Vertigo stole goes off. Felicity has his location!

Chase and Thea have just had sex on the couch in the loft that she shares with her brother Ollie who could come home any second. Maybe she and Ollie have a signal like the old sock on the outer door. They quickly dress and he opens a bottle of wine and pours two glasses. She picks up the glass, but before she drinks it, she smells the wine and then stops. She talks about how her dad told her about wine and that for years men have been using red wine in particular to cover up the smell of cyanide. She grabs what I think is the cheese knife that came with the the wine carafe set and lunges at Chase. They fight. He's a master assasin, after all. And Ollie appears to be correct. She isn't ready.

Arsenal comes in to save the day! Did I mention Chase is a master assasin? Arsenal gets knocked down. Malcolm arrives (dressed as the Dark Archer) and fires an arrow into Chase's back. Malcolm promises a quick death. Chase doesn't give him the satisfaction. He pops the cork on some poison and swallows it. Guess Thea needs a new DJ/distraction. I wonder what they're going to tell the cops.

Back in the lair, the rest of Team ARROW is tracking Vertigo. Roy can't be reached (they don't know he was almost killed by a member of the League of Assasins just yet). This leaves Ollie no choice but to let Laurel suit up beside him as they try to take Vertigo down before he can mix up a batch of his signature drug.

Vertico is waiting for them. Scientists are chained together, reluctantly making the drug. Vertigo drops a vial of something flamable. Felicity radios to him that the whole place is going to blow. He decides to save the scientists as Vertigo makes his escape with Laurel on his tail. He hits her again with another dose of the drug. And it is Canary vs. Canary round two. Laurel has some pent up agression about he dead sis, though. She channels it and beats the snot out of Vertigo (still thinking it is her sister Sarah).

At the precinct, Laurel tries to come clean about Sarah's death. He stops her and tells her he already knows that she is the one wearing Black Canary's mask. She pushes through her tears and tells him Sarah is dead.

Ollie rushes to the loft. She tells him she thought she was stronger and could keep herself safe. Ollie looks at the body covered by a sheet in the middle of their loft (apparently the cops have not been called). Malcolm tells Ollie it was one of Ra's agents and that both Ollie and Thea need to face their fears in order to take that advantage away from Ra's.

Back in the lair, Ollie tells the team he's leaving again. He knows that the city is safe in all their hands, though. He and Thea depart for the island where he was shipwrecked all those years ago to train to fight Ra's al Ghul.

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