Recap / Arrow S 1 E 14 The Odyssey

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On the island, Slade Wilson teaches Oliver combat. Slade mentions that there is one supply plane every three months, and they must take action soon. While heading through the forest with Slade, Oliver steps on a mine. Unable to move as Fyers’ men approach, Oliver disguises himself as one of them. Slade takes the men down and uses one’s corpse to shove Oliver off the mine; it does not explode.

Slade reveals that his partner was Billy Wintergreen. They were assigned to find out why Fyers was interested in Yao Fei. Fyers took Slade and Billy hostage, and Billy agreed to join Fyers’ camp, but Slade did not.

Oliver and Slade take over Fyers’ watch post. Oliver uses the phone to call Laurel, but he cannot muster up words to say. Slade and Oliver argue about what will happen to Yao Fei once they leave. Slade wants to blow up the island, but Oliver wants to rescue Yao Fei. Oliver heads to the main camp and follows Yao Fei into a tent, but Fyers enters and takes Oliver to be executed. In his Deathstroke mask, Billy Wintergreen beats up Oliver, but is interrupted by an explosion. Slade arrives and fights Wintergreen, fatally stabbing him in the eye. The plane leaves the island without them aboard. Fyers allows Yao Fei five minutes with his daughter, Shado.

The Hood faces off with Moira and she soon shoots him in the chest. Oliver, having sneaked into Felicity’s car, reveals himself and orders her to take him to the warehouse. Diggle sews up Oliver’s bullet wound and shocks him back to life when Oliver begins seizing. Felicity expresses her disapproval of Oliver killing, even bad guys. As Oliver wakes up, Felicity hacks into the police system and tells them to destroy Oliver’s blood sample taken from Moira’s office. Oliver officially asks her to join the team, but Felicity only wants Walter back, after which she will resume her normal life.

Tropes applying to this Episode:

• Aesop Amnesia: Even after being shot by his own mother, Oliver is still reluctant to see her as a criminal.
• The Atoner: Diggle tells Felicity that he joined Oliver because of his service in Afghanistan where he had to defend a warlord who was worse than the people they were fighting.
• Attack Hello: When Felicity bursts into the Arrowcave, Diggle turns and points his pistol at her in alarm.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Why Felicity wants to save Walter.
• Big Entrance: As Fryers' men scatter after bullets and explosions start flying around the camp, Slade walks out of a tent and faces the camera just as a huge explosion takes out two men directly behind him.
• Call-Back: Felicity recounts all the terrible lies Oliver and Diggle made to her up to this point.
• Campfire Character Exploration: Slade and Oliver while waiting to attack the airbase, in contrast to their more antagonistic training scenes.
• Captain Obvious: Justified as Felicity is understandably flustered with the course of events.
  Felicity: You're bleeding!
  Oliver: I don't need to be told that!
• Cat Scare: Diggle has an Oh, Crap! when Oliver flatlines, only for Felicity to realise his heart monitor pad has just come loose.
• Chekhov's Skill / Rule of Threes: Slade demonstrates a disarming technique for a man pointing a gun in his face. When Oliver tries it on the control tower guard, he stuffs it up and Slade has to rescue him. As he's carrying a wounded Slade from Fryers camp however, another guard points a gun in Oliver's face and he uses the technique successfully.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Slade turns up for a Big Damn Heroes as Oliver is about to be executed by Wintergreen.
• Character Development: Slade is going to call down an airstrike on the mercenary camp as soon as he escapes the island. Having had a Heel Realisation about what a self-centered jerk he was all his life, Oliver risks going to save Yao Fei, even though the plane leaves in three hours and Slade says he's willing to leave them behind.
• Danger Takes a Backseat: A nonlethal version when Felicity finds the Hood lying on the backseat of her car, requiring urgent medical attention.
• Damsel out of Distress: A "villainous" example is when Moira shoots the Arrow when he had her at gun arrow point.
• A Death in the Limelight: In some ways, to Billy Wintergreen. We find out his name and backstory from Slade before the latter offs him.
• Debut Queue: The episode marks Shado's debut.
• Defiant to the End: At his 'execution', Oliver delivers "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Wintergreen for betraying his country that gets him a savage pounding. He does make a futile attempt to buy Wintergreen off by offering the mercenary triple what Fryers is paying him, but as Slade pointed out earlier, there's no buying his way out.
• Dumb Blonde: Invoked when Felicity uses "blonde" as a synonym for "stupid" while explaining how bad Oliver was at lying to her whenever he tried to cover up his superhero antics.
  Felicity: Oliver brought me a laptop riddled with bullet holes, had me trace a black arrow, and research a company involved in armored car heists. I may be blonde but... not that blonde.
• Eye Scream: Billy Wintergreen gets a sword in the right eye... from Slade Wilson, no less.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Slade and Oliver don't like each other much at the start of the episode, but their willingness to risk their lives saving each other changes that. And although on the surface she's Refused the Call, Felicity too becomes a member of Team Arrow after helping save Oliver's life (and upgrading their software), with Oliver shown shaking her hand in the same manner he did with Slade.
• Foreshadowing: Several for Season 2.
  • Slade stabs his old partner through the right eye while said partner is wearing the Deathstroke outfit. Oliver puts an arrow through Slade's right eye in Season 2's last flashback.
  • Slade has Oliver tie him up before cutting the bullet out of him because, "A man in pain is unreliable. I was afraid I might kill you." A grief-crazed Slade with a vendetta against Oliver is the Big Bad of Season 2.
  • The fact that both Shado and Oliver have the same kind of dragon tattoo.
  • Diggle talks of how he was assigned to protect an Afghan warlord called Gholem Qadir.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Fyers is talking with Yao Fei in his command tent, a copy of The Odyssey can be seen on his desk.
• If I Do Not Return: Oliver asks Slade to call his family if he doesn't make it to the airfield in time, though he can't think of any message to give them.
• I Have a Family: Used for Dramatic Irony when Moira begs the Hood not to kill her, while holding a picture of Oliver and Thea. When Oliver lowers his bow, she takes the opportunity to grab a gun and shoot him.
• I Have Your Wife: Fyers has Yao Fei's daughter Shado to ensure his cooperation.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: A variation; when Oliver tells Felicity to take him to the former Queen factory, Felicity says he needs a doctor not a steelworker.
• Internal Reveal: Oliver is forced to reveal his secret to Felicity, though she already had her suspicions.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Slade has only a ten days to turn Oliver into even a passably good soldier, so can't afford to be gentle with him.
  Slade: There is no giving up to these guys! No crying or buying your way out of it! You have two choices—escape or die. So choose!
• Kirk Summation: Oliver attempted to do this to Wintergreen. He gets beaten up for the trouble.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Oliver steps on a Japanese landmine left over from World War II, which goes click. Just them a patrol comes up so Slade appears to abandon Oliver, only to ambush them while they're all standing around Oliver. He then frees Oliver by pushing the body of one of the soldiers on to the mine to take his place. This starts a Running Gag of this trope appearing whenever someone goes to Lian Yu.
• Literary Allusion Title: To The Odyssey, the long journey of a man to return home. While all the flashbacks throughout the first season deal with Oliver's attempts to get off the island, this episode is one of a few to be almost exclusively made up of flashbacks since it details Oliver and Slade's first real attempt to challenge the soldiers occupying the island and steal one of their planes off the island.
• Magical Defibrillator: Diggle has to restart Oliver's heart with little idea of how to use a defibrillator. Felicity has to remind him to tell her to get clear, and when Oliver's heartbeat appears to stop realises the problem is only a loose wire.
• Modesty Bedsheet: In the flashback, Oliver dreams of him and Laurel talking on a bed presumably after sex before Slade wakes him up.
• Money Is Not Power: Slade warns Oliver there is no buying his way out of his situation. Sure enough Oliver offers Wintergreen triple whatever Fyers is paying, but it doesn't work.
• Mythology Gag:
  • “Wintergreen” was an associate of Slade Wilson’s in the comics. William Randolph Wintergreen first appeared in The New Teen Titans #2, the same comic book that introduced Deathstroke, as his butler.
  • Slade Wilson mentions a son named Joe. Joseph Wilson is the Teen Titan named “Jericho.”
  • Shado is a major figure in Mike Grell’s seminal Green Arrow story "The Longbow Hunters".
• One-Man Army: Slade assigns himself the job of killing the ten mercenaries patrolling the airfield, leaving the mercenary manning the control tower protected by bullet-resistant glass to Oliver. He's not impressed when he has to kill that guy as well because Oliver stuffed it up.
• Out of Focus: Both Quentin and Thea only appeared at the closing scene, while Laurel appeared twice in short scenes (one in a dream, the other when Oliver called her) in a flashback.
• Pistol-Whipping: Island!Oliver is still reluctant to kill, so after disarming a mook he uses the pistol to knock him unconscious.
• Public Execution: Fryers drags Oliver, who was already knocked onto the floor and helpless, into the middle of his camp, has all his men surround the twenty-two year old civilian, and then orders Billy Wintergreen to execute Oliver with his bare hands, which amuses the soldiers.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Angry over how Slade keeps walloping him, Oliver demands to know why they're learning stickfighting when they're going up against men with guns. "What am I supposed to do if someone sticks a gun in my face—hit them with my stick?!" Cue Oh, Crap! from Oliver as Slade hands Oliver his pistol and tells him to stick it in his face, only to be quickly and painfully disarmed.
• Sadist: When Bill Wintergreen decks Oliver, one of the soldiers behind Fryers is visibly bouncing back and forth, seemingly in excitement over getting to see this armed mercenary execute a scared, shipwrecked twenty-two year old. It goes to show that it's not just Fryers and Wintergreen who are evil, the men that work under them are just as callous and exploitive. This, along with their constantly masked faces, makes it easy for audiences to sympathize with Slade moments later when he mows down the soldiers.
• Shout-Out:
  • A quote of The Odyssey becomes an important line as a safe phrase.
  • In the flashback, Oliver comments "I’m trapped on an island and my only friend is named Wilson."
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Ten days of stick-fighting is not going to miraculously improve Oliver's skill.
  Slade: One job to do. And you managed to screw up even that.
• Stuff Blowing Up: When Slade raided Fryers' camp to rescue Oliver and fight Wintergreen.
• Sword Fight: Between Slade and Wintergreen, though they're using martial arts as well.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Felicity is asked to join their vigilante crusade but refuses, saying she'll only stay long enough to find Walter Steele and then go back to her boring life in IT. She spends the rest of the series as a core member of Team Arrow.
  • Diggle became a vigilante because he thinks it would not have the morally grey areas of his military service. No such luck.
• Took a Level in Badass: Slade is unimpressed with Oliver at first, but by the end of the episode he acknowledges that, even though they missed their chance to escape, he has what it takes to survive Lian Yu.
• Troll: Slade watches Oliver trying and failing to light a fire when he has a lighter in his pocket. He watches for two hours.
• True Companions: Oliver insists on going back for Yao Fei. Slade insists that everyone is out for themselves after Wintergreen betrayed him, but comes to save Oliver in turn even though it means abandoning his chance of escaping the island.
• Trust Password: After Slade and Oliver take the control tower, the supply plane calls on the radio with a challenge code. Fortunately it's a quote from The Odyssey, the one book Oliver read in college, so he knows the rest of the quote. This is entirely for Rule of Drama of course, as the whole point of the countersign is that you can't just guess it, so a quote would never be used in its entirety.
• Training Montage: Slade and Oliver start the episode smacking bamboo sticks against each other like their swords, with Slade outdoing Oliver each time and snapping the stick against Oliver's neck. Eventually, Oliver gets sick of failing and questions how sticks will help him fight armed mercenaries, only for Slade to let Oliver stick a gun in his face and promptly disarm him in half a second.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Nearly, anyways; only a handful of scenes take place in the present day, the rest of the episode is a flashback to Oliver's time on the island.

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