Recap / Arrow S 2 E 17 Birds Of Prey

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Tropes Applying to This Episode

• Alas, Poor Villain: Helena gets to see her father die, just not by her hand, and is arrested. Ollie isn't angry but rather feels sad for her and lets her know she's not alone.
• Asshole Victim: Hendrik's Kick the Dog moments in "The Promise" are presumably so the audience won't feel too bothered when he's handed over to Slade.
• Bad Liar: Slade can tell Sara is lying when she says she doesn't have Hendrik.
• The Bait: Both Frank Bertinelli—who's in on the plan to catch his daughter—and Laurel Lance who was given her job back because she's the most expendable member of the DA's team. When Laurel figures this out, she blackmails the DA into giving her job back for real, rather than reveal the whole hostage crisis was their fault.
• Batman Gambit: By Adam Donner of all people. He sets a trap for Helena by staging a public trial for her father, knowing that she will eventually show up and try to kill him.
• Big Sister Worship: Inverted as it's big sis Laurel who thinks that Sara is the strong one.
• Break Her Heart to Save Her: When Thea refuses to accept Roy's rather curt breakup, Roy lets Thea catch him making out with a blonde so she'll leave him of her own accord. Oliver finds her in tears afterwards—turns out Thea is smart enough to know Roy is invoking this trope, but is still angry because he won't tell her why he's breaking up with her.
• Call-Back: Helena's snarky comment about Oliver dressing up his girls is a reference to how Oliver made up Helena's superhero outfit.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Helena's final conversation with Oliver in her cell implies that she could redeem herself and one day become a hero, but this is the last we see of her.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Laurel resists the Canary's attempt to get her out of the courthouse, insisting on helping save the hostages. It backfires when she becomes a hostage herself as Helena can coerce Oliver into handing over her father.
• Clark Kenting: Laurel can't seem to tell that the Canary is Sara even when she's right in front of her. Sara uses a voice changer and Domino Mask and like the Arrow tries to keep her face averted when speaking to her.
• Cliffhanger: Slade has abducted Thea.
• Cops Need the Vigilante: Quentin is covertly helping his daughter and the Arrow. Averted with the Special Operations commander who's unimpressed with this trope and orders his men to shoot anyone they see in a mask.
• Create Your Own Villain
  Oliver: I failed Helena, I created the Huntress.
• Create Your Own Villain: Ollie feels this way about the Huntress and Slade.
• Dark Action Girl: Both Huntress and Sara—the latter being not quite on board with Oliver's Thou Shalt Not Kill ethics.
• Did Not Think This Through: Slade decapitated the engineer, so there's no-one to get the Amazo working again. Hendrik has the required skill, but he's one of the escaped prisoners.
• Disguised Hostage Gambit: When Special Operations storm the courthouse, they find a hostage dressed as the Huntress, as Helena leads Laurel out at gunpoint while Impersonating an Officer.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Roy breaks a man's collarbone just by grabbing his shoulder after he pisses Roy off. This convinces Roy to go ahead with breaking up with Thea, for fear he might harm her too.
• Dramatic Irony: Thea, at her Despair Event Horizon, realizes that Ollie may be the only one ''who's never been hiding anything from her.''
• Electric Torture: Slade threatens he will kill Ollie this way if Sara doesn't hand over Hendrik.
  Sara: Slade! Stop, please! Look, he's your friend!
  (minion jabs shock prod into Oliver's side)
  Slade: That is the sound of electricity surging through my friend. Five milliamps, to be exact. Seven causes cardiac arrest. (screams) Oliver just passed out with six milliamps. He'll be delivered with the fatal blow of seven in one hour if Hendrik is not standing here by my side!
• Extremely Protective Child: After her father gets shot, Sara throws the man responsible out a window, to Dad's annoyance as he was wearing a bulletproof vest and was therefore unharmed. Laurel has to talk her down from killing Huntress at the climax, after Huntress threatens both Oliver and Laurel.
• Fanservice: If you like to see two hot chicks dressed in black leather fighting each other...
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Laurel wonders why Frank Bertinelli is being brought through the courthouse lobby moments before Huntress attacks.
• Get It Over With: Subverted when the Huntress is holding her crossbow on Daddy.
  Frank: Well, what are you waiting for? (beat) I said, what are you waiting for?!
  Special Operations pour into the room.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Downplayed, but on hearing that "Oliver's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend hell-bent on revenge against her father" is in town, Ollie gets irritated that it's the 'girlfriend' part that Sara picks up on.
• Has a Type: Various people note the fact that Ollie tends toward Action Girls who have a tendency to kill, and dress in sexy, leathery get-ups.
  Huntress: (on getting a close look at Canary) Oliver does like to dress up his girls.
• Hostage Situation: After Oliver hustles her father out of the courthouse, Helena has her men take hostages and threatens to execute them if Frank isn't handed over to her. The police are hardly going to comply, but fortunately she's able to grab Laurel too, knowing that the Arrow isn't restrained by legal niceties.
• Hypocrisy Nod: Sara wants to just kill the Huntress, and points out that Oliver didn't have a problem with trying to headshot Slade when his own family was threatened. Oliver concedes the point that when it comes to their own families no-one is objective.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Invoked by Sara when she has to protect the people she loves, now and in the past. In the island flashbacks, Slade is threatening to torture Oliver to death unless Hendrik is handed over to him. Hendrik has no intention of going back to the hellhole of the Amazo and he's entirely justified in doing so—Oliver means nothing to him, and he regards Sara as a collaborator of the man who had him imprisoned and tortured. That doesn't stop Sara and Anatoli from knocking Hendrik out and tying him up for delivery.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Felicity mentions it when she finds out the guy Huntress recruited into her plan was a local frat boy and says that explains why he did it.
  Felicity: Boobs can get a frat boy to do anything.
  Oliver: I was a frat boy.
  Felicity: I rest my case.
• Impaled Palm:
  • A variation. Roy grabs a handgun by the muzzle, and is shot through the hand. By the end of the episode, he's back to relative normal with a scab.
  • Played straight during the Batman Cold Open when Oliver sticks his arrows through the hands of several mooks with guns.
• It Was a Gift: Roy spends all his spare money for an expensive bracelet for Thea, which Thea throws back at him after catching Roy cheating. Roy is shown crushing it in his hand after watching Thea walk out of Verdant.
• The Missus and the Ex: As per the Running Gag with Helena, this time with Sara as the current girlfriend crossing swords with the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend. One look at her black leather outfit is enough to tell Helena that she's fighting Oliver's latest girl.
• Mythology Gag
  • Ollie calls Roy "Speedy" in order to get him to calm down. Turns out he doesn't like it.
  • The episode title comes from the superhero group of which Black Canary and the Huntress were members.
  • The gangster Hugo Mannheim shares his last name with one of DC's foremost crime bosses, Bruno Mannheim, head of Intergang and minion of Darkseid.
  • At one point Helena is at the corner of "Gail Street and Simone", an obvious reference to Birds of Prey writer Gail Simone.
• Mark of Shame: Slade has Oliver branded with Shado's tattoo in reference to this trope.
• Meaningful Echo: Laurel uses both "Show me" (from Sara) and "Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out" (from Helena).
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Laurel convinces Sara to let her help save the hostages instead of getting her out of the courthouse. When the attempt fails, this only gives Helena a hostage that she knows can force Oliver's cooperation.
  • Oliver convinces Roy to break up with Thea to protect her from his Mirakuru-induced rages. He forgets that Roy is the member of Team Arrow he assigned to protect her from Slade. When Thea walks home alone after their breakup, Slade appears and offers to drive her home. As Thea has no idea that "Mr. Wilson" is anything other than a business friend of her mother, she has no problem getting into the car with him.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Laurel tries this with Helena to get her to stop with her revenge plan, saying she knows what it's like to lose someone and feel lost. It actually comes back to Laurel when she blackmails the DA to get her job back; when the latter notes she didn't think Laurel was capable of blackmail, she quotes Helena about what the darkness does to a person.
  • Oliver admits to Helena that his attempt to redeem her failed because at the time he was a killer as well.
• Oh, Crap!: A funnier one than usual, as Felicity takes a second to realize why Quentin calling the Arrow while Oliver is standing right next to him is such a bad thing (she's starting to lose track of who knows Oliver's secret identity).
• Papa Wolf: Quentin is willing to kidnap Frank Bertinelli to save Laurel's life. Sara is entirely willing to kill to do the same.
• Poor Communication Kills: Because no-one in Team Arrow has warned her about Slade, Thea has no problem accepting a lift from him when she walks home alone after breaking up with Roy.
• Prisoner Exchange:
  • Slade wants to exchange Ollie with Hendrik, who is the only person able to fix the Amazo.
  • At the episode's climax, Helena exchanges Laurel for her father.
• Rabid Cop: The Special Operations commander hates vigilantes so much he goes off by himself to the Prisoner Exchange and opens fire on it. Ironically the only person he kills is Frank Bertinelli with a stray bullet, and Quentin knocks him out just before he can shoot the Arrow.
• Redemption Rejection: Both Ollie and Laurel give Helena a chance to save herself, only for her to throw it back in their faces each time.
  Helena: Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out.
• Removing the Earpiece: Sara when Oliver starts complaining about her not removing Laurel from the courthouse.
• Right in Front of Me: Laurel tells the Canary of her admiration for her sister who remains strong despite everything she has suffered.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Helena's back, and she's not gonna let her dad live this time.
• She Who Fights Monsters: Both on the island and in the present, Sara is willing to cross the Moral Event Horizon to protect the people she loves. She forcibly hands over Hendrik in exchange for Oliver, and is willing to break Team Arrow's Thou Shalt Not Kill rule to protect Laurel.
• Secret Identity: Felicity lampshades the confusion caused by sorting out who knows Oliver is the Arrow versus who's just working with the Arrow without being a Secret-Keeper.
• Short-Distance Phone Call: Quentin calls the Arrow, only to be startled by Oliver's phone ringing at the same time. Fortunately Oliver has set up his phone to show his mother is calling when the Bat Phone is activated (Moira and Oliver are no longer on speaking terms, so she wouldn't be calling him for real).
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Helena just gives up the fight when she realises her father was killed by a stray bullet fired by a renegade Special Ops officer.
  Helena: It was supposed to be me...
• Token Evil Teammate: Sara invokes this when she meets Laurel as the Canary.
  Laurel: Are you one of the good guys?
  Canary: No, but I'm friends with them.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: We get to see Laurel participate in a meeting, with the typical "Hello, my name's Laurel, and I'm an alcoholic" greeting.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Frank to his daughter, though you can also read this as a manipulative attempt to avoid her killing him. Not that that would work.
  Frank: I'm sorry for that little girl I used to take to ballet class. Go on ski trips with. The one I used to help with her math homework. Oh, she hated math. Sorry that I caused her so much hurt. 'Cause she brought me so much joy.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Helena gets revenge on her father, just not the way she expected. And she still feels empty and unfulfilled about it.
• We Need a Distraction:
  • Knowing that Team Arrow will be on to her, Helena steals a vehicle with a GPS tracker and then pays a guy to go joyriding in it, while she enters Starling City by hijacking another vehicle.
  • When Hendrik pulls a gun Anatoli says You Wouldn't Shoot Me, but that's only to distract him while Sara clobbers Hendrik from behind while he's busy waving the gun in Anatoli's face.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Neither Diggle or Sara is impressed to find Oliver making 'non-lethal' arrows for the Huntress.
• Willfully Weak: Sara can defeat Helena more easily when she's not holding back.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Laurel decides I Need a Freaking Drink and the Canary asks why she's breaking her sobriety vow. Then Laurel (not knowing she's talking to Sara) says she went back to work to show her sister she could be strong. The Canary says, "Then show me." Later the Canary is going to snap the Huntress's neck.
  Laurel: You're not a killer!
  Sara/Canary: You don't know who I am, Laurel! Not really!
  Laurel: Then show me.