The Arrow season 3 premiere, titled “The Calm,” aired tonight. Read our recap and share your thoughts with fellow fans!
Everything’s coming up Oliver
The episode opens with a chase scene as the Arrow, Arsenal, and Diggle stop an illegal shipment of RPGs. Five months have passed since Slade’s defeat, and Starling’s crime rate has plummeted.
Oliver gives Diggle a handmade necklace for his daughter, who will be born any day now. Diggle encourages Oliver to pursue Felicity because he loves her and deserves to be happy.
The next day, Laurel, who has been putting away criminals the Arrow has been catching, brings Oliver to a press conference Captain Lance is holding to recognize the Arrow and disband the anti-vigilante task force.
Elsewhere, Werner Zytle — the new Veritgo — prepares to kill the Arrow.
Seeking happiness
Meanwhile, Oliver asks Felicity out to dinner, and she accepts. It’s all very sweet.
Later, Felicity’s new job at a tech store is interrupted when Team Arrow gets into a high speed chase. With a quick hack, she gets the target’s location. In the sewer, the Arrow and Lance take down their man. The Arrow thanks Lance for the press conference.
Enter Superman, er, Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer. He’s picking up some hacker hardware, and Felicity recommends a better piece of hardware. He recognizes her and says he knows someone who wants to hire someone like her. She refuses, but there is chemistry there.
Explosive first date
Later, Oliver meets Felicity at a restaurant. After an awkward hug, Oliver says there are still some things Felicity doesn’t know about him, like that he spent some time in Hong Kong instead of the island. He also says that his time away made him unable to trust anyone completely, which continued to affect him after he got back. But Felicity changed that. Aww.
Oliver is beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, he can be with someone he truly cares for when a rocket flies through the window and blows up the restaurant.
When Oliver regains consciousness, everything is in flames and Felicity is unconscious. Oliver carries her back to the foundry. Roy finds a GPS tracker in Oliver’s costume; Vertigo’s man from earlier had slipped it on him. Oliver decides he’s lost his focus, so he calls Lance.
Felicity wakes up moments later. She’s OK.
Fear drug
Together, the Arrow and Lance track down Vertigo. In a surprise attack, Vertigo injects the Arrow with an altered version of vertigo that makes the user see his or her worst fear. Oliver sees himself. He is afraid of what would happen if he let himself be Oliver Queen.
Vertigo prepares to take down the distracted Arrow when Lance shoots at him, only to collapse. Vertigo approaches him, but the Arrow drives him away and Felicity calls an ambulance.
Thankfully, Lance had only suffered a coronary artery spasm, which is treatable. Laurel visits her father at the hospital, mad that he continues to push himself.
Queen Consolidated and Star City
At Queen Consolidated, Oliver attends a meeting to convince the board to return his stake in the company. Before the meeting starts, though, Ray Palmer arrives to bid on the company as well.
Oliver gives an impassioned speech about the company being family. Ray then gives an impressive presentation that includes raw data from Queen Consolidated’s server — oops, Felicity. Ray has a vision for Starling City: to become Star City.
Bomb’s away
Later, Team Arrow tracks Vertigo to a prize fight where all the criminal elite will be. Roy suits up, but Oliver doesn’t want Diggle in the field anymore now that he’s going to be a father.
At the match, Vertigo sets a bomb. Arsenal goes for the bomb while the Arrow goes after Vertigo. Vertigo throws another drugged dart at the Arrow. He sees himself but pushes through it. “I’ve made my choice,” he says.
Before Vertigo’s men can interrupt, they are taken out by Canary. Well, hello! The Arrow then ties up Vertigo.
Meanwhile, Roy tries unsuccessfully to defuse the bomb so is forced to pull down a pipe and freeze the bomb. With one second left on the timer, it stops.
Dangling maybes
Sara was on her way to visit Laurel when she caught Team Arrow’s radio transmissions. She tells Oliver that they aren’t their masks and need people in their lives who don’t wear them.
At the hospital, Ray finds Felicity. It turns out she’d hacked his equipment; he tries to apologize and offer her a job, but Felicity isn’t having any of it. She’s there to see Diggle, Lyla, and their new baby girl. Also there is Oliver, who Diggle thanks for “being right.”
On their way out, Oliver apologizes to Felicity. He thought he could be himself and the Arrow, but he can’t — right now. Felicity tells him to stop dangling maybes. She wants him to say things will never work out between them, but Oliver kisses her.
“Don’t ask me to say that I don’t love you,” he says, but Felicity leaves.
Oliver’s impending brooding session is cut short by a phone call from one Barry Allen. He’s looking for advice — a scene we see in the Flash pilot.
Hello, goodbye
Laurel and Sara meet on a rooftop. Their conversation, though, is cut short by Laurel being called in to help interrogate Vertigo.
As Sara puts on her mask and prepares to leave, she’s greeted by a deep voice.
“What are you doing here?” Sara asks before being shot by three arrows, which knocks her off the roof.
Laurel sees her sister fall and holds her, sobbing. Noooooo, Sara!
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong…
Oliver runs through a street market in Hong Kong, armed assailants on his heels. He runs into an Internet cafe and tries to send a message that he’s alive, but he’s caught and knocked out.
Later, Amanda Waller confronts Oliver; this was his ninth escape attempt. She has a need of a man of his capacity, she says, but Oliver isn’t interested. He just wants to go home. Even threats on his life have no effect. Oliver is knocked out again.
Oliver wakes up in a home and is confronted by Akiko and Maseo Yamashiro; Maseo is one of Amanda Waller’s men. He says that if he can’t keep Oliver in line, Waller will kill his family.
