In Arrow season 5, episode 6, “So It Begins,” Prometheus steps up his game and a major secret is revealed. Maybe.
Well, I didn’t see that coming! “So It Begins” saw Prometheus step up his game against the Green Arrow, resorting to murdering innocent people whose names were anagrams of names on The List from season 1.
Felicity, after stealing a throwing star that killed one of the victims from her boyfriend, discovered from an analysis that Prometheus was using weapons made from the arrows Oliver used previously. This revelation proved that Prometheus has access to police resources since The Hood’s arrows were collected by SCPD.
The big revelation comes in the final moments of the episode, then, when Quentin Lance wakes up from an apparent drinking binge with a bleeding wound on his arm (that matched the one Prometheus received earlier in the night) and a throwing star on his coffee table. He doesn’t seem to have any memory of what happened.
So, since things are rarely as they seem on the surface on Arrow, the question becomes what exactly is going on. If Quentin is, in fact, Prometheus (and that’s a big if), I have a feeling that whatever the issue is — second personality, his subconscious acting out while he’s drunk, whatever — it will have been the result of the trauma of losing Laurel after Sara died twice (though she’s currently alive). A human being can only lose so much before completely snapping, and Quentin has lost nearly everything at this point.
They really need to talk to the S.T.A.R. Labs team and figure out if there is a way to send a message to the Waverider to get Sara back, at least temporarily. Her father needs her.
While that’s not likely to happen, we know that Katie Cassidy signed a series regular deal across the Berlanti-verse shows, so it would be a powerful story to see her come back from the dead somehow and discover what her father has become in the wake of losing her.
All the being said, I’m glad Quentin is getting a meatier story this season. Even if he’s not Prometheus, he’s being pulled into that story. I’m honestly surprised he’s survived as long as he has — and at times, I’ve wondered why. And at the beginning of this season, it felt like he was just falling into a retread of a story that’s already been done as he relapsed into drinking. But this? There is a lot of potential, and I’m excited to see where it goes.
But there is also the potential that Quentin is a red herring and Prometheus is someone else entirely. Tommy Merlyn (either created by Flashpoint or resurrected via the Lazarus Pit before its destruction) seems to be the popular fan theory, but with Colin Donnell on another show, I’m not sure if it would work in terms of logistics.
Anyway, with the Prometheus story as backdrop, we see Oliver losing the trust of his team, at least temporarily. His recruits become frustrated with Original Team Arrow is keeping information from them, so they share their discovery about the List. This leads to Oliver having to explain that he was The Hood and he was killing people on The List when he first returned to Starling City.
The team has a perfectly human response to the situation: freaking out at the fact that their leader is a former serial killer. Evelyn is especially angry because Oliver comes across as a hypocrite for keeping her from killing Ruve Darhk to avenge her parents when he had a hit list of his own. Oliver doesn’t have much high ground here — the only solid defense he makes is that her killing Ruve while pretending to be the Black Canary would have soiled Laurel’s memory.
But Oliver is trying to be a better man. One of my favorite scenes in the episode is an appropriate throwback to season 1 when Diggle finds Oliver shooting tennis balls with arrows. Considering the focus on The List in this episode, bringing this back works quite well. He’s worried about losing the trust of his team, but Diggle tells him that The Hood never would’ve been concerned about that, proving that he’s becoming a better person.
I love Diggle. No other commentary there; I just love him.
Anyway, Evelyn finally comes around after Oliver intervenes when she was nearly killed by Prometheus. She’d been nasty to him, but he came to check on her when she went radio silent anyway.
Oh, and Felicity tells Detective Malone that she’s working with the Green Arrow. He doesn’t take it the way she expected; he’s completely understanding and even a bit of a fanboy about the whole thing. It’s actually really cute.
And in the flashbacks, Ivan Drago Dolph Lundgren’s Konstantin Kovar finally makes his debut. His group declares war on the Bratva via drive-by shooting. The Bratva send in Oliver and another Bratva agent to do some damage to Kovar’s expansion plans, but they’re busted. Kovar captures the pair and kills the Bratva agent. He then reveals he knows exactly who Oliver is. Dun dun dun!
Watch a promo for the next episode
