Arrow season 4, episode 3, “Restoration,” aired tonight. Read our recap and discuss the episode with fellow fans.
Two main things were restored in tonight’s episode: Oliver and Diggle’s relationship and Sara’s life. Both, however, came with their share of complications.
In Star City
Diggle finally learns who ordered the hit on his brother: Mina Fayad. She’s currently in town to meet with Damien Darhk, and she’s brought along a metahuman, Jeremy Tell, who can pull the playing card tattoos from his skin and use them as deadly weapons. Darhk enlists Tell to kill the Green Arrow.
Both Diggle and Oliver go out solo, Diggle to scout Fayad and Oliver to stop a robbery. However, Diggle is compromised and Oliver’s robbery is a ploy by Tell. Neither do particularly well and have to flee. Felicity has had enough; if the boys don’t work out their issues, she’s turning this car around.
Diggle reiterates his inability to move forward, while Oliver replies that he wants a chance to earn Diggle’s trust back. Diggle ends up filling Oliver in on the H.I.V.E. situation with his brother.
Their combined efforts are not to be, though, as Darhk uses Tell’s own playing card to kill Fayad before sending Tell back out to kill the Green Arrow. After finding Fayad’s body, Diggle says he shouldn’t have been keeping secrets, and Oliver promises to help with his H.I.V.E. search.
Meanwhile, Tell attacks Felicity and Curtis Holt at Palmer Tech. He’s looking for the Green Arrow and follows the pair to the new Arrow lair beneath the company. Felicity manages to fend Tell off with a gun, but Curtis is knocked out.
Tell is leaving town, but Oliver and Diggle stop him. They want information on Damien Darhk, but Tell isn’t talking. Instead, he throws a card at Diggle; Oliver, though, jumps in front of it. It’s a nice throwback to earlier in the episode when Diggle said he didn’t know if he could take a bullet for Oliver anymore. These two are definitely on the mend.
In Nanda Parbat
When Laurel and Thea arrive in Nanda Parbat, Laurel demands Malcom revive Sara. Malcolm, unsurprisingly, refuses. Nyssa, perhaps surprisingly, is on Malcolm’s side. The Lazarus Pit has never been used to revive the dead, and what comes out of the Pit would not be Sara. Nyssa tells Laurel to accept Sara’s death, as she has.
Considering the degree to which Nyssa hates Malcolm, the fact that she agrees with him on this should give anyone pause.
When Malcolm meets with Thea, he realizes what’s going on. He reveals that the Pit contains the souls of those who have bathed in it; that which it grants, it can also take away. This means that Thea needs to kill the person who hurt her, or be doomed to the bloodlust. Since Thea can’t kill Ra’s, who is already dead, she’s SOL. Malcolm then suggests they go up to see a sage in the mountains who might be able to help.
But when Thea is attacked during the night by two League assassins and she kills them, she realizes Malcolm was lying. He had her kill to hold off the bloodlust. Malcolm’s pretty pleased with himself (#FatheroftheYear), but Thea is furious. She wakes up Laurel so they can leave. Not wanting to lose Thea, Malcolm agrees to bring Sara back.
Nyssa begs Laurel not to put Sara in the Pit, but Laurel and Thea do so anyway. It takes a few moments, but Sara rises. Like Thea, she is immediately feral, so she is restrained. Malcolm warns that they are in uncharted territory and Laurel should prepare for the worst.
We know Sara will come back to herself to some degree so she can star in Legends of Tomorrow, but this is clearly a setup for why Oliver will be calling in Constantine in episode 5.
Finally, Nyssa uses one of her father’s self-destruct methods to destroy the Lazarus Pit. Malcolm, furious, has Nyssa apprehended, but before she is taken away, she tells Laurel that while Sara’s death was on Malcolm, what is happening to Sara now is on her.
This final twist also explains why whoever is in that grave in the flash forward won’t be coming back to life.
In the flashbacks
There is a theft of the drugs being harvested in the camp, and workers are rounded up in response. After one is shot, Oliver instead suggests torture. He got pretty good with it last season, after all. This torture pushes a woman to confess to stealing the drugs and giving them to the overworked laborers. Before the guards can kill her, though, Oliver takes her out. But rather than kill her, he lets her go.
Also worth noting…
- Papa Argent got some meta powers and turned evil. Alas.
- Felicity adorably pulls a season 1 Oliver in giving Curtis excuses for him to do a workup on Tell’s playing card.
- Curtis is excited that Felicity is working with the Green Arrow because he wants to make the city a better place.
- It was nice seeing the OTA — Original Team Arrow — back together.
- Tell is locked up in the metahuman wing of Iron Heights.
- Felicity’s phone is acting up inside Palmer Tech, and as the episode closes, her name comes through on her phone. Ray, is that you sending a message?
Watch a promo for the next episode
