Arrow season 2, episode 18, “Deathstroke,” aired tonight. Read our recap and discuss the episode with fellow fans.
Setting the stage
The episode opens with Slade giving Thea a ride. After commiserating with her heartbreak, he parks and tells her she’s not going home. She flees…right into the man in the skull mask.
Meanwhile in the Arrow cave, Roy’s training isn’t going well as he’s distracted by the breakup. Felicity enters with a pile of messages from Queen Consolidated; though Oliver wants to throw them away, Felicity reminds him that, as CEO, he has to attend the annual board meeting.
At Queen Consolidated, Oliver thanks Isabel for picking up his slack. Moira then arrives and asks if he’s heard from Thea and reminds him about that night’s mayoral debate. At the debate, Oliver and Sebastian Blood shake hands before Laurel arrives and apologizes to Sebastian for her accusations.
During the debate, a video of a distraught and disheveled Thea begging for help with with the message, “How much is Thea Queen’s life worth to you?” plays, causing an uproar.
Confrontation
As campaigning is suspended, the Queen family holes up at Queen Consolidated. Isabel defends them from press inquiries before reminding Oliver that the company has to vote on new officers within 24 hours. Oliver can’t think about business, so he appoints her temporary CEO.
Meanwhile, Felicity tracks a car registered to Slade using GPS, and the Arrow, Roy, and Canary head out. They confront Slade, though it’s obvious he won’t tell them where Thea is. The Arrow has his team call Lance to arrest Slade then shoots Slade with a League of Assassins-grade sedative.
Slade, though, has an alibi for the kidnapping, which gets Lance in trouble since he arrested Slade on the Arrow’s say-so. In the confusion, Oliver enters the interrogation room. He informs Slade of his nickname — Deathstroke — and Slade likes it.
Oliver asks Slade how he got off the island — he swam, surviving only thanks to the Mirakuru. When Oliver says it’s been five years since Shado died, Slade retorts that the island still has a hold of him, and judging by Oliver’s hood, it still has a hold on him, too. Oliver, meanwhile, begs Slade to punish him, not his sister.
The danger of secrets
Slade is freed before the conversation can continue. Diggle follows his car but is cut off in traffic and loses him. Sara then tries to follow on motorcycle but the tracking signal was cloned, making it impossible to track the original. Roy tries to follow the car by foot but also loses it.
Slade returns to the storage facility and lets Thea go, saying he had to make a point and made it. However, he offers to tell Thea Oliver’s secret.
Back at the Queen estate, Oliver and Moira bond in their grief. Moira admits that saying the lies she’s been telling were meant to protect them was the biggest lie of all; though Oliver tells her that what’s going on isn’t her fault, she sees herself as her own and her family’s worst enemy.
True colors
In the Arrow cave, Roy questions Oliver’s leadership and attacks Diggle when he tries to stop him from going after Thea. Sara shoots a warning shot with an arrow, just in time for Oliver to arrive. Roy then quits Team Arrow in disgust.
As Roy leaves, Felicity gets an alert that sends Oliver back to Queen Consolidated, where he finds that Isabel has been unanimously appointed permanent CEO.
Isabel, it turns out, is working alongside Slade and knows Oliver’s secret. She attacks Oliver, River Tam style, but he overpowers her. She tells him where Thea is and warns him to go alone.
Oliver, Sara, and Diggle argue over Oliver going alone, but Felicity tells him to do what it takes to save Thea and end things once and for all.
Worst enemies
At the storage facility, Oliver takes out Slade’s thugs with prejudice, but Thea is gone. It turns out she’d walked into the SCPD five minutes earlier, safe.
At the SCPD, Oliver meets Diggle and Sara, who tell him that Slade hijacked a prison transport van and recruited the prisoners. When Moira arrives, they hug Thea, but she tells Oliver that Slade told her his secret — that Malcolm Merlyn is her father. She’s furious that Oliver lied to her, too.
Roy leaves Starling after seeing that Thea is safe, and Lance is arrested for conspiracy and aiding in felonies.
In the aftermath, Moira’s poll numbers have risen and Sebastian believes the election is lost, though Slade tells him that he promised him the city. Meanwhile, Isabel has Queen Consolidated’s applied science division making Mirakuru serum.
Oliver returns to the Arrow cave, dejected. He believes he’s his own worst enemy, unable to stop Slade from doing anything. But Felicity and Diggle offer their support, motivating Oliver to want to fight back.
Meanwhile, Laurel watches a news report about Thea naming Slade her kidnapper. There’s a knock at her door — Slade. He tells her that he has come to Starling to see Oliver suffer. He then reveals that Oliver is the Arrow and leaves.
Meanwhile, on the island…
Despite Flynn’s protestations, the prisoners plan to give Hendrick up. Sara proposes that they use the exchange as an opportunity to kill Slade by rigging Hendrick with the explosive from a landmine.
At the exchange, Slade returns Oliver and takes Hendrick. However, he literally smells the brewing betrayal by the TNT’s odor. He pulls a gun on Sara, but Oliver steps between them. A hallucination of Shado encourages Slade not to kill the escapees but leave them on the island to rot.
Slade then leaves Ivo behind and threatens to pay Oliver’s family a visit once the freighter is fixed.
