Arrow S2E11 “Blind Spot” recap by CynicNerd

Last night’s episode of Arrow was pretty solid and touch on a lot of issues that the show has building on since the beginning of this season. Ollie uses the title “Blind Spot” in reference to the trust his places in certain people in his life. In this episode we have at least two good examples of this, Laurel and Sarah. In the present time Laurel has, or we should say had, a personal vendetta against the Arrow ever since Tommy was killed in the quake that destroyed the Glades. After that tragedy she made it her personal goal to bring down the Arrow, but soon realized that the blame was misplaced. She soon dived head deep into a substance abuse problem which comes full circle in this episode, so much so that she loses her job over it. After visiting Sebastian Blood’s mother in the hospital and learning the truth about the death of his father, Laurel is ever more convinced that Sebastian is a villain. This is only reinforced by when Sebastian visits his mother to find out why Laurel visited her, and then kills her as Brother Blood. Everyone around Laurel thinks she’s crazy, so she decides to ask the Arrow to help her.

Blind Spot #1, Ollie can’t say no to Laurel. Even against the advice that Diggle gives him about the actions Laurel has taken in the past, Ollie still wants to help her out. So they go and break into the Starling City records department to steal the file on Blood’s father, almost getting caught! Blood, who WE all know is the bad guy, sends his dirty cop friend, Officer Dailey, to take care of the situation. Well at first they mess up her place and arrest Laurel for possession of narcotics that are not hers, we find out she was stealing them from her father, but this whole set up sends Laurel’s credibility down the tubes. Now who’s going to believe her story! Of course this was the plan all along as we find out at the end of the episode that this is the plan that Slade has put into motion to take down Oliver, but we can get to that in a little bit. So Oliver takes her home, only to be knocked out and Laurel kidnapped by Blood. The Arrow has to go in to save her and at the end of the fight, Laurel ends up shooting Brother Blood, or rather Dailey wearing the “skull mask”. Laurel realizes in her head that she has made a big mistake and that she has been “wrong” this whole time about Sebastian and that he substance abuse problem is the real deal, which it is, but we as viewer all know better about Blood. So I do have to mention something, throughout this season it has been considerably noticeable that Laurel has been looking like hell. Now for the first time it is actually mentioned in the show, but did Katie Cassidy do something drastic to herself via plastic surgery or did she loose weight for the role? Whatever it is, some of the angles on the show are not very good to her, just sayin’.

Blind Spot #2 is a simple one, it deals with Oliver’s time on the island and when he and Sarah are on the run from Ivo. With Slade disappearing with the Mirakuru, the two are left to survive on their own. We are lead to believe that Sarah still thinks Ivo is a decent person and when it comes night she takes the radio and walks off into the jungle. Just when we think that she is going to betray Oliver, Sarah comes to terms with Ivo telling him that she believes that he is not a good person and that during her time on the AMAZO he was manipulating her the entire time. Well at least we now know where her loyalties lie.

Speaking of Mirakuru, the Roy Harper story takes a good step this week, as Roy is starts to realize what he can do. But he can’t tell Thea, so he tells Sin his situation instead and they decide to put his powers to the test. There is a lawyer out there who has been dubbed the Starling City Slasher, and he targets prostitutes, so Roy dresses up Sin in one of Thea’s “slutty” outfits and the sting is on. Roy ends up losing control and almost kills the guy and hits Sin the process. It’s time to fess up to Thea what’s going on, and this leads to her letting Oliver know that something is seriously wrong with Roy. So the Arrow goes to him and offers to help, time for a sidekick!

So like I said, this week was very solid. We even get to see Slade in his full Deathstroke garb as he takes out four of Blood’s bodyguards and threatens Sebastian that he is next if he lets down his guard again. Slade reveals that he was the one who broke into the records department to steal Blood’s file. So what will happen this season? I am sure that Brother Blood will be taken down by the end of the season, but will Slade continue into the next as the big bad of the entire series? I really hope that this is the case.