In Arrow season 4, episode 21, “Monument Point,” Team Arrow tried to stop a nuclear apocalypse.
With Rubicon in the hands of H.I.V.E., the team has less than 24 hours to prevent the launch of nuclear missiles across the world. Felicity realizes her hacking skills aren’t quite up to snuff for a job of this scale, but her father’s are. H.I.V.E., however, knows this as well so it becomes a race between Darhk’s team and Team Arrow to find and bring The Calculator in.
Team Arrow manages to find Noah Kuttler and rescue him from Darhk’s men, but Kuttler needs more tech than Team Arrow has to successfully hack Rubicon. Felicity has the tech he needs at Palmer Technologies, but this is complicated by her being, well, fired. Turns out being a part of a vigilante team really does affect job performance, especially for CEOs. Felicity’s unemployment’s going to be an issue for continuing to fund Team Arrow, though. (So much for Felicity’s name being on the Palmer Tech building in 2046, per Legends, huh?)
Anyway, the father-daughter team manages to stop all but one nuclear missile from launching — for 24 hours anyway. But one missile from Russia still launches with the target of Monument Point. Felicity manages to redirect the missile so it hit Havenbrook instead; the fatalities end up being in the tens of thousands rather than millions. Felicity, despite saving a lot of lives, feels horrible about essentially playing God, deciding who gets to die and who gets to live by shifting the target.
I have to wonder (and hope) that this is something that will affect her moving forward. This would be something interesting to watch her wrestle with, particularly with Lyla at her side telling her that she made the right call; Felicity isn’t a soldier, though, so her thought process doesn’t work the way Lyla’s does. We only have two episodes left this season, though, so it seems unlikely we’ll get much of a pause to let her reflect.
All the while, Noah is trying to connect with Felicity, saying there is more to him than the criminal, but considering he tried to steal from her company after years of being out of her life, Felicity isn’t having it, though Noah does take a bullet for her. He’s a tool needed to save the world to her. And I admire Felicity for this; she owes her father nothing, and it’s a much healthier attitude to remove those toxic relationships from her life than to let it linger (and possibly fester).
Speaking of daddy issues, Malcolm visits Thea in Wayward Pines H.I.V.E.’s ark. For some reason, he’s still alive and telling Thea he’s doing everything to protect her — and Thea, to her credit, continues to tell Malcolm he’s full of crap. Because he is. However, they have their own issue: Anarky has snuck into the ark to get at Darhk. He’s going to blow up the air scrubbers, thus dooming those in the ark to suffocate underground. Thea and Malcolm stop him, but not before Anarky takes out Alex. I feel bad for Thea, losing someone else she cares for, but as a character, Alex was flat so his loss doesn’t do much emotion-wise.
At the end of the episode, Oliver and Diggle find Darhk getting his magic mojo on under city hall, which is on a ley line — explaining why it was important for Ruve to win the mayorship. They needed control of that physical location for Darhk’s magic.
And in the episode’s C-plot, Donna discovers that Quentin was planning to sign an affidavit stating that he was unaware of Laurel being the Black Canary in order to be reinstated. Donna, having married a career criminal, is extremely sensitive to lies — small and large — and she guilts Quentin into changing the affidavit to say he was aware after all. Donna is happy that he’s doing the right thing.
Donna feels out of place here, pressuring Quentin in relation to his recently deceased daughter and his career. Yes, they’re dating but I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to take from these interactions. As much as I enjoy seeing the relationship between Felicity and her mother evolve, she did feel out of place with the rest of the episode.
And in the flashbacks, Reiter is still alive. Oliver and Taiana steal his idol, but the idol then possesses Taiana. The flashbacks have been quite weak this season, mostly because they only tangentially relate to the present day while having no personal stakes for Oliver. I thought we might get those personal stakes when Reiter showed up in the Diggle brothers flashback, but nothing came of that. Alas.
Watch a promo for the next episode
