The Arrow mid-season premiere, “Who Are You?” solved the mystery of Laurel’s sudden appearance at the end of the mid-season finale.
I was quite surprised when the trailer for “Who Are You?” spoiled the fact that Laurel is actually Black Siren, somehow escaped from S.T.A.R. Labs.
But this is revealed within the first 10 minutes of the episode and she spends the rest of the hour in her Black Siren gear (and apparently S.T.A.R. Labs does piercings, as Black Siren suddenly has a nose ring that she didn’t on The Flash). It would have been difficult to cut a trailer with so little footage of Black Siren pretending to be Earth-1 Laurel.
It also becomes obvious within the first few moments of the episode that this isn’t our Laurel, as she claims Sara brought her back via time travel, having found a way to save her without creating a time aberration. Those watching Legends of Tomorrow know that Sara has accepted the fact that she can’t use time travel to save her sister because the consequences to the timeline could be disastrous.
Felicity is immediately suspicious of the new Laurel as well, so she comes up with the idea of throwing a party in Laurel’s honor as a means of getting her DNA from a glass she drank from. While this Laurel’s DNA matches their Laurel’s, Felicity realizes that there is another person with Laurel’s DNA on Earth-1: Black Siren.
I’m glad the secret didn’t take very long to come out; lingering secrets like this have dragged the show down in the past, so it’s good to see the show continuing its forward momentum. And the momentum did continue, as it turns out Black Siren’s appearance is Prometheus’s doing. S.T.A.R. Labs continues to have terrible security, and he easily broke into the lab and freed her a few days earlier.
Prometheus knows Oliver well enough to know that Laurel’s death haunts him; bringing in her doppelganger would allow him to plant a spy into his blind spot. And he’s right. She’s easily able to manipulate him into believing she’s been forced to act by Prometheus and she’d like to change. Felicity’s BS detector is going off non-stop from the moment Laurel reappears, though, and she recognizes what Black Siren is up to.
EP Wendy Mericle says that Felicity will be going down a darker path in the second half of the season in response to Billy’s death, and there were definitely some hints of her being on the beginning of that road in this episode.
Felicity, for instance, goes behind Oliver’s back to tell the recruits to attack Black Siren at the first hint of a double cross. And she lets Black Siren go after giving her water with trackers in them. The goal is to have Black Siren lead them to Prometheus. When Oliver tries to lecture her, she reminds him that he did the same thing by letting Anarky go to find Damien Darhk. (I live for people calling Oliver out on his hypocrisy.)
The plan works at they do find Prometheus and Black Siren, but when Felicity is in danger, Oliver has to give up the chance to take on Prometheus to save her life. They are able to stop Black Siren with a device Curtis devised to keep her from using her powers, and Oliver sends her to a secure cell in A.R.G.U.S. But not before Felicity gets to punch Black Siren.
Oliver still hopes to rehabilitate Black Siren, so he wants to keep her close — thus keeping her at A.R.G.U.S. rather than S.T.A.R. Labs. I doubt this is the last time we’ll be seeing her, especially since Katie Cassidy signed one of the big Berlanti-verse contracts.
Also in this episode, Oliver asks Adrian Chase to help Diggle, who is in military custody. Though Chase is out of his comfort zone, he comes to believe that Diggle is indeed being framed and sets up a situation in which Diggle will stay in Star City for the time being due to committing a lesser crime in his jurisdiction.
I’m intrigued by this development, as I’m 99.9% certain that Adrian Chase is Vigilante. Vigilante’s goal is to get justice that can’t be gotten in the courtroom (and much like The Hood in season 1, he’s willing to kill to do it), and a corrupt general framing an innocent man would definitely be up his alley. I won’t be surprised if the general gets a visit from Vigilante at some point.
Chase also tells Oliver that the crime scene of Billy Malone’s death indicates the Green Arrow was manipulated into killing him by Prometheus, and he’s going to cover that up because the truth would cause panic. Billy’s death being a setup is another thing I’m glad isn’t being used to create drama. It would be a major plot rehash if the SCPD was once again hunting the Green Arrow. It wouldn’t surprise me if the cover-up comes back at some point to bite Mayor Queen, though.
Meanwhile, Curtis is struggling with constantly getting his butt kicked in the field and losing his husband for all his trouble. Rene, after realizing he’s gone too far in teasing his friend, encourages Curtis to focus on the things he is good at, like inventing. And this is what pushes him to create the dampener that stops Black Siren. I’m glad Curtis is getting back to inventing because he’s a freaking genius. It makes more sense for him to utilize his strengths.
And in the flashbacks, Oliver is nearly killed by the Bratva captain who is working with Kovar only to be saved by Talia al Ghul.
Oh, and the team is going to look for a new Black Canary. I’m definitely meh on this development since, you know, they already had a Black Canary.
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