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'Arrow' Season 7, Episode 14 Explores Bonds Between "Brothers & Sisters" [SPOILER REVIEW]

Welcome back to Bleeding Cool's continuing coverage of the CW's Arrow season 7. After the previous episode wrapped up the Star City Slayer storyline, we're at a bit of a loss for a big-bad to threaten Star City over the next two months, and quickly running out of time to establish such a threat. Where do Star City's deputized vigilantes and ARGUS's investigation go from here? Let's find out!

https://youtu.be/6mtIIriopiI

Arrow s07e14 "Brothers & Sisters": DIGGLE AND LYLA DEPLOY THE GHOST INITIATIVE – After months of covertly pursuing Dante, Diggle (David Ramsey) and Lyla (guest star Audrey Marie Anderson) finally have a solid lead on the elusive terrorist, so they deploy the ARGUS Ghost Initiative to apprehend him. Meanwhile, Oliver (Stephen Amell) tries to bond with Emiko (Sea Shimooka). Marcus Stokes directed the episode written by Rebecca Bellotto & Jeane Wong (#714). Original airdate 3/4/2019.

Lyla and John are feeling the pressure to wrap up the Dante deal before the ARGUS brass come down on them and put the Ghost Initiative on the Shelf. With the best lead they've ever had on Dante's messenger Virgil, the two put the team of miscreants into the field to set up a meeting with Dante. Virgil is tipped off that the whole thing's a set up, so Virgil takes the most logical step and throws himself out a window.

That's loyalty.

Everyone points the finger at Diaz as the one who tipped off Virgil using some sort of 007-inspired code phrase like "In London, April's a spring month" or "Hey, it's a set up." Diaz proves to be clean, but Virgil is still dead and Lyla's being summoned to the Pentagon to resign. There's only one way to get their man tonight.

Oliver tries to be a good big brother to Emiko, but she isn't receptive to his butting into her business. She even chucks a knife at his head, in a deftly handled bit of foreshadowing. Oliver's buttinsky approach robs Emiko of her chance to take in the guy associated with the bullet that killed her mother when Oliver makes the arrest. (I'm sorry, but I can't help but get the image of Oliver running around after bad guys in his Green Arrow outfit, shouting, "Citizen's arrest!" as he chases after them out of my head.) Anyhow, Oliver extends an olive branch in the form of the police report on the suspect, and everything's hunky-dory between the two.

Or is it…

When Felicity find out that Lyla and John are putting Diaz in the field, Oliver approaches the news with an odd, zen-like stillness – like leaf floating on wind over pond. Is Oliver the wind? The leaf? The pond? All three? Oliver should meditate further on this. On the other hand, Felicity is ready to off Diaz herself. She turns to Laurel for help, who doesn't want to blow this sweet D.A. gig she's got going in exchange for a jail cell for killing Diaz. Felicity hacks ARGUS's computer and takes control of the bomb in Diaz's head – which is pretty bad-ass.

With the chance to catch Dante running out, Lyla and John ask Oliver to back up the two of them and Diaz at a meeting between a princess planning a coup and Dante. Felicity agrees to let Oliver go on the condition that she goes, too – and gets to kill Diaz as soon as the mission is over. Oliver tells Felicity that's her call to make. He's not going to kill Diaz, but if she wants to, he sure as hell isn't going to try and stop her – not with all her security throughout the apartment. If he tries to play Felicity like he did Emiko, he's likely to get zapped by his electric razor when he goes to shave or… I don't know… attacked by a reprogrammed toaster or something.

Predictably, Diaz gets free from ARGUS control by shocking himself with a defibrillator in order to short out the bomb in his head (say what???) and warns Dante, this time using the coded phrase "It's a set up." Oliver and Lyla get the drop on Dante, who is a skilled knife thrower (where did we see that earlier?) and manages to escape. Felicity pulls a gun on an escaping Diaz in a corridor, buying John enough time to pistol whip Diaz.

In the end, Felicity comes clean to Oliver about her pregnancy.

They look so happy.

They're going to be such great parents…

In the future, Mia and Will commiserate over what terrible parents Oliver and Felicity were. Will says that they never tried to get in touch with him after his grandparents took custody of Will, even though we saw Oliver leaving an umpteenth voicemail for Will for the umpteenth time. Mia sounds like she never knew her father, blaming him for the way Star City is today… I mean in the future. Even Dinah didn't know that Oliver and Felicity had a child, which is a whole other can of worms about how it's possible she could not have known. Conner knew everything about this whole family mess all along, but he didn't tell anybody anything – making him the best character at both keeping a secret and doing his job in the seven season history of this show.

It is interesting that Mia sort of has Nora's story from The Flash, no? I mean, Nora grew up without her father because he disappeared in a red sky/Crisis-level event. We know that Oliver made some sort of deal with The Monitor that we'll likely see play out in next season's Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, which apparently leads to Mia growing up without knowing her father. Or is it possible that in trying to "fix" her own timeline on The Flash that Nora is impacting the future on Arrow?

Hmm…

Finally, we learn that Oliver hasn't earned Emiko's trust. Instead, she's been playing to his selfish needs in order to get "in" with him on behalf of Dante. The knife-throwing master tells his knife-throwing protege that she's done her part right on time and that it's time for her to come on home.

As if that wasn't enough, in order to prove that Dante is the villain now and that Diaz's story is over (at least for the time being), someone doused The Dragon in a flammable liquid and burned him alive in his cell at Slabside.

Hmmm, indeed.

Arrow airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/ 7 p.m. CT on CW. Join us back here next week for Bleeding Cool's coverage of season 7, episode 15 "Training Day":

https://youtu.be/cWPM-vSmFQw

Arrow s07e15 "Training Day": TEAM ARROW ATTEMPTS TO WORK WITH SCPD — Team Arrow attempts to work with the Star City Police Department but much to Oliver's (Stephen Amell) frustration, things don't go as planned. Meanwhile, Dinah (Juliana Harkavy) gets some life-changing news. Ruba Nadda directed the episode written by Emilio Ortega Aldrich & Rebecca Rosenberg (#715). Original airdate 3/11/2019.

CW's Arrow stars Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, David Ramsey as John Diggle/Spartan, Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak, Echo Kellum as Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific, Katie Cassidy as Laurel/Black Siren, Rick Gonzalez as Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog, Juliana Harkavy as Dinah Drake/Black Canary, Colton Haynes as Roy Harper, and Kirk Acevedo as Ricardo Diaz. Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Beth Schwartz, and Sarah Schechter serve as executive producers.

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