Arrow 5×12 “Bratva” took Team Arrow to Russia, where they sought to bring down General Walker, the man who framed Diggle.
The running theme through “Bratva” is the importance of being a better person. With General Walker escaping from military custody and traveling to Russia to sell the stolen bomb, Team Arrow hops on a plane to stop him and bring him to justice. However, Oliver, Diggle and Felicity all descend to some dark places to complete the mission.
For Oliver, that means tapping into his Bratva connections, particularly Anatoly. But the last time Oliver used his status as a Bratva captain, another Bratva member ended up dead, meaning Oliver broke the oath of brotherhood he took. Anatoly has not forgotten, so if Oliver wants the Bratva’s help to stop Walker, he has to do them a favor first.
He’s hesitant but is eventually forced to do just that — though it turns out just to be Oliver and Dinah threatening a Bratva’s competitor. Breaking a couple of fingers hardly seems like something Oliver would get morally conflicted about, especially in the service of stopping the sale of a nuclear weapon.
I was expecting something more along the lines of assassination, so being a strong man seemed minor in the grand scheme of things. Plus, it gets Oliver the intel and backup of the Bratva. Priorities!
Diggle, meanwhile, is — unsurprisingly — walking a tight rope of emotion as they look for Walker. As we’ve seen with people like Deadshot or Andy, Diggle doesn’t keep his cool when his loved ones are pulled into the equation. And with Walker threatening Lyla and John Jr., Diggle loses it. Team Arrow captures one of Walker’s lackeys and Diggle beats the man bloody for information. But it’s in vain.
To his credit, though, Diggle gets to revisit his decision to shoot Andy (which I still don’t disagree with, no matter how guilty Diggle feels) when he gets Walker at gunpoint. Walker threatens his family, but Diggle brings Walker in alive to see justice done. (Plus, Walker clearly doesn’t know Lyla is the badass head of a special ops group.)
As for Felicity, she continues using Helix’s information cache to take down Walker. She uses information from the cache to blackmail a Russian businessman for information. I have to say, I kind of like this edgy version of Felicity. Though Felicity’s lightness has always been one of her most endearing characteristics, I don’t think any human being can go through everything she has without sharpening their edges.
(For the record, I don’t think Felicity actually would have told the Kremlin about the businessman’s double dealings, considering her hesitation when he mentioned his family; but he didn’t need to know that.)
Rory is concerned about her crossing a line (apparently he’s become her moral compass since learning about Havenrock), but like Oliver breaking a couple of fingers, Felicity blackmailing a criminal businessman in the service of stopping the sale of a nuke seems mild compared to the reactions the others had.
But whatever. In the end, the team with the help of the Bratva catches Walker. However, the bomb is elsewhere, and when Felicity and Rory go after it, they accidentally trigger it to blow. Rory volunteers to absorb the bomb’s blast; his magic rags survived Havenrock so should survive this.
And they do, though taking a nuclear blast at point-blank range renders them inert. Rory decides to leave, I assume to find a way to repair his magic rags. (Also probably because there are too many characters to balance on the show right now. Speaking of, we haven’t seen Thea in ages.) But he promises to come back. Which is good because he’s adorable.
Felicity, for her part, promises Helix that she’ll keep working to take down the corrupt elite. It’s a bit like Felicity has gotten her own version of Oliver’s book from season 1, though unlike The Hood (whose birth we saw in the flashbacks this week), she’s not looking to kill anyone. Which, again, makes me question the show’s assertion that she’s doing something wrong.
Meanwhile, in Star City, Quentin is out of rehab and trying to prove that he is ready to act as deputy mayor once more. He sets up an interview with Susan Williams to do just that, but since Team Arrow is in Russia, Rene stays behind to help Quentin prepare.
This initially seems like an odd choice, but as usual, Rene proves he has surprising depths. In his gruff way, he tries to help Quentin prepare to face a journalist who we learn has no integrity whatsoever, either as a journalist or human being. But more on that in a moment. Quentin, at first, doesn’t respond well to Rene’s prodding, but he eventually comes around.
Rene later reveals that when Quentin was a beat cop, he caught a young Rene tagging a building. And rather than arrest him, he inspired him to become a better person. And Rene told Susan as much, so she ended up going easy on Quentin.
As for Susan, she and Oliver finally sleep together after he returns from Russia. She comments on his Bratva tattoo, but Oliver isn’t ready to talk. Later, Susan meets with her source who was looking into Oliver in Russia. He confirms Oliver’s Bratva connections and that a vigilante archer was in Russia at the same time Oliver was. Susan puts the pieces together and realizes Oliver is the Green Arrow.
Basically, Susan is the stereotype of a journalist who is willing to sink to any low to get a story. Sleeping with a potential story subject is a huge conflict of interest, but she seems to see it as doing research. And that is awful. It’s not surprising, I suppose, but it’s still awful.
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