Poor Ollie, all alone with no one to play with. For the past four years, Ollie has had a team of friends, family and others assisting him in his quest to protect Starling City. With everyone else on the team doing their own thing, the Green Arrow has to put together a new squad.
His first recruit is “Wild Dog”, aka Renee Ramirez, a hot head with a bad attitude and a few fighting skills. He also recruits the NEW Black Canary and Curtis who’s got absolutely no fighting ability and no business being in the streets.
That aside, Ollie begins his hands-on training of his new, ragtag Team Arrow 2.0. Their job, should they choose to accept it, is to get past him to ring a bell. During the several flashback scenes, we learn that this was one of the training techniques that the Russians used on him.
In the present, after several failed attempts by the team, Ollie has to attend his day job of being the Mayor. Ollie creates a free health care fair with the assistance of a private company Ameritech. One of the terms he promised the company’s CEO is that he’d provide top-notch security after one of their corporate officers was attacked by an unknown assailant. Ollie sees this as a chance to get his new team some in-the-field training, but their job was to just watch.
At the fair, Ollie does his best public politico face by schmoozing with the attendees. Next thing you know, an individual covered head-to-toe in bits of cloth (known as “Ragman”) attacks the CEO. He displays some pretty awesome abilities, like teleportation. Although they were just there to observe, Wild Dog tackles Ragman before he can do lasting damage to the CEO and rips off a bit of cloth in the process.
They give the cloth to Felicity, who in turn gives it to her boyfriend who we saw at the end of last episode and learn is a member of the local police department. Back at the Arrow Lair, the new kids on the block become frustrated with Ollie’s teaching style which is more punching, kicking and yelling instead of actual instruction, so they all quit — including Curtis who, before walking out the door, drops some knowledge and the mic. He let Ollie know that the reason the other team worked is because they trusted him and were willing to follow The Arrow.
Meanwhile, former team member John Diggle is back on active duty with the Army and is deployed with a small team to Europe to help stop the sale of nuclear components. After his team is attacked and while waiting for back up, Diggle learns that he was set up by his own commander who planned on taking the components for himself to make a profit.
Back in Starling City, Thea tries to make contact with the CEO of Ameritech to try to smooth things over after what happened at the health fair. In doing so, she actually stumbles on the fact that baddie Church was buying guns from the healthcare company. Turns out, they are in a financial hole so selling guns to a crime boss was just another way to make ends meat.
When the CEO and Church meet to exchange goods, Ollie shows up to stop the deal from going down. Ragman, who had a personal vendetta against the company, also shows up. The bombs they made were used by Damian Darhk in his bid to restructure the world. Ragman’s father was killed, so he was trying to set things right by taking out those responsible.
Having figured out that Ragman was on the side of the angel’s, Ollie threw his fight with Church and pretended to need help to see what Ragman was made of. Fortunately for Ollie, he did have a heart of gold.
At the end of the fight, Ollie convinces Ragman to join his burgeoning team. Speaking of team, Ollie also gets the gang back together to try to convince them to not abandon him and he does so by unmasking in front of the two who didn’t know his real identity. Knowing his secret helps foster a sense of trust between Ollie and the rest of the team.
As the show ends, we see Church still out on the street. As he’s leaving a club, lights in the area are shot out so of course we think it’s Ollie. Turns out, there’s a new player on the scene named Prometheus, and he lets Church know to stay away from the Green Arrow because he (or she) wants him for himself.
Who’s the man behind the mask? How will Team Arrow 2.0 work out in the future? Only time will tell, so tune in to Atlanta’s CW every Wednesday at 8:00 to find out.
This recap was provided by Marc who previously published this piece for CW Atlanta. You can follow Marc on Twitter @ATLBlerd.
