Recap / Arrow S 4 E 13 Sins Of The Father

As Team Arrow tries to contain the League civil war between Nyssa and Malcolm, Felicity decides what do her about her dad.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Malcolm has his hand cut off so Oliver can take Ra's ring without killing him.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Nyssa holds Thea's cure as leverage to force either Oliver to kill Malcolm, or Malcolm to resign as Ra's. Then Malcolm lets Oliver know that he knows about William.
• Apologetic Attacker: Oliver tranq-ing Nyssa.
• Arch-Enemy: This episode fully re-establishes Malcolm Merlyn as Oliver's. Oliver admits that he hates Merlyn like no one else for all of his crimes, even if he's unwilling to kill him for the distant hope of Thea having a decent father-daughter relationship. After losing his hand, Malcolm swears a terrible revenge, which he starts setting into motion by betraying the location of Oliver's son to Damien Darhk.
• Asshole Victim: Laurel, Diggle and Felicity all agree that Malcolm Merlyn deserves to die if it means Thea will live. Oliver admits he is entirely willing to do so, were it not for the fact that Malcolm is Thea's father.
• The Atoner: Tatiana is forced to look after Flashback!Oliver on pain of her own death if he dies. She refuses to accept his condolences over Vlad, but recognizing that he genuinely wants to atone, asks Oliver to help her save the other prisoners.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • It looks like the show is going to play a while with Noah and Felicity going at it without either knowing the other's identity... then Noah reveals he knows Felicity is Overwatch and he's the Calculator.
  • Given that the whole episode is about saving Thea, it looks like Malcolm is going to make the ultimate Face–Heel Turn and sell out his own daughter just to hurt Oliver. Then he manages to do one even worse by telling Darhk about William.
• Being Good Sucks: Oliver wants to do the best thing and his efforts mean that Malcolm lives and Nyssa grows enough to disband the League. But Malcolm doesn't see Oliver's action as a favor, so he cuts a deal with Darhk to really hurt Oliver.
• The Bus Came Back: Damian Darhk returns in the last scene after his notable two episode absence.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: After realizing that he's severely outmatched, Malcolm tries to take out Oliver with a bow and arrow. Unfortunately, it fails as Oliver quickly deflects the arrow and knocks the bow out of his hand with absolute ease before knocking down Malcolm and cutting of his left hand.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • There's a couple of mentions about Oliver being Nyssa's husband before he invokes it to take her place in the duel with Malcolm.
  • The hacking device that Roy stole in the previous episode is the one that Noah tries to plant in Palmer Techs R&D lab.
• Continuity Nod:
  • References are made to several of Merlyn's crimes throughout the series, such as the Undertaking, causing Tommy's death, brainwashing Thea to kill Sara, etc. Robert Queen's sacrifice on the raft is mentioned, as well as his past association with Merlyn. Laurel and Nyssa talk about Sara's resurrection and the fact that she was "made whole again" by John Constantine. Felicity's "hacktivist" days back at MIT are mentioned again. Malcolm even mentions Raisa, the housekeeper who only appeared in the pilot episode.
  • Malcolm says they will forgo the traditional removal of shirts for reasons of taste when he's about to duel Nyssa (unfortunately depriving the audience of the sight of Katrina Law sword-fighting topless).
• Cruel Mercy:
  • Oliver doesn't kill Merlyn, but he does slice off his hand to take away the ring.
  • Merlyn in turn swears that he will not kill Oliver—not because he is Thea's brother but so Merlyn can inflict a Fate Worse than Death.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Oliver's plan hinges on him being able to defeat Merlyn — which he does quite easily, a far cry from the last time they fought.
• Death Glare: Oliver the moment Malcolm reveals he knows about William. It's implied that it's at this point that Oliver decides to sell out Malcolm in favor of Nyssa.
• Elephant in the Living Room: Lampshaded by Diggle when pointing out that Oliver is avoiding the obvious solution; kill Malcolm Merlyn.
• Enemy Civil War: Between League factions loyal to Nyssa or Malcolm.
• End of an Era: This episode marks the end of the League of Assassins, an organization that has been a presence on the show, in some form or the other, since early Season Two.
• Evil Is Petty: Merlyn, furious over losing a hand and control of the League, thus being reduced to a petty thug thanks to Oliver, sells out Team Arrow to HIVE.
• Exact Words: Oliver to Nyssa when he takes her place in the fight against Merlin. She challenges his unwillingness to kill, she has to be the one to fight Merlin to the death.
  Oliver: If I have to choose between your life and his... I will see justice done.
• Foil: Nyssa and Merlyn are shown to be this throughout the episode; they both want to be the Demon's Head and will stop at nothing to attain that power, and they both have a long list of excuses for their actions. The key difference is that Nyssa is willing to allow diplomacy to win the day, while Malcolm is only interested in complete victory. At the very end, we see that ultimately they are motivated by very different concerns: Malcolm by personal power and Nyssa by the desire for change.
• Get It Over With: After being disarmed, Merlyn wants Oliver to finish him off. Oliver refuses and gives him a more literal disarmament.
• Guile Hero: Oliver takes on this role during the conflict between Malcolm & Nyssa. Oliver tells Malcolm to challenge Nyssa to a trial-by-combat to get the Lotus, and then convinces Nyssa to let him fight Malcolm on her behalf for the ring. In the end, Thea gets the cure and neither combatant is killed.
• Hate Sink: Merlyn's done plenty of horrible things over the course of the show, but telling Darhk about Oliver's son out of spite is the lowest thing he's ever done.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: After losing control of the League, Merlyn ends his status as Team Arrow's Token Evil Teammate and strikes up an alliance with Darhk.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the end of the episode, Nyssa has come to see how much like her father she was acting; thus, she disbands the League, then proceeds to destroy the Demon's Ring in front of Oliver, Laurel, and a shocked Malcolm. She even sincerely thanks the first two for showing her the error of her ways.
• Humiliation Conga: Merlyn loses both control of the League and his hand. He doesn't take this well.
• I Am Not My Father: Aside from Felicity having to deal with her issues with her dad, the Calculator, Nyssa is forced to face the fact that she's become just like Ra's. In the end, she dismantles the League, destroying her father's legacy rather than following it.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Realising he's exactly the villain she thought he was in the previous episode, Felicity hands her father over to the police despite feeling tremendous guilt over this act.
• Idiot Ball: While Oliver letting Malcolm live is debatable, Oliver letting Malcolm remain free to walk away after Malcolm swore revenge is inexcusable, especially considering Malcolm told Oliver that he knows where his son William lives. Needless to say, this backfires on the team multiple times in the future episodes.
• Immediate Sequel: The episode continues Nyssa's conversation with Oliver from the end of last episode.
• Invulnerable Civilians: Averted when the fight between the League factions spills out onto the streets of Star City.
• It's All About Me: Nyssa and Malcolm display this throughout the episode, trying to justify their war to Team Arrow with their own brand of Insane Troll Logic. However, Nyssa eventually realizes what she's become and dissolves the League for good, while Malcolm proves himself to be the same selfish bastard he's always been.
• It's Personal: One of the main focuses of the episode is Oliver's conflict over whether or not he should kill Malcolm to save Thea. Towards the end of their duel, when Malcolm is at Oliver's mercy, his demands to Get It Over With and telling Oliver that they both knew this was the only way it was ever going to end, can be interpreted to have a double meaning. It referred to not only how everyone insisted that killing Malcolm was the best way to do things and made sure he paid for his crimes, but also to their personal history — after all, everything began with Malcolm Merlyn and Oliver Queen, and their personal war only ends when one of them is dead.
• Internal Reveal: Noah, having deduced Felicity's identity as Overwatch, reveals to her both that and the fact that he's the Calculator. Meanwhile, Malcolm reveals to Oliver that he knows about William, and later gives this information to Darhk. Laurel lets Nyssa know that Sara has recovered, though she leaves out the whole traveling through time to stop an immortal dictator thing.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Nyssa is incredibly callous about whether Thea lives or dies, but she does remind Oliver that she's in her current situation because Malcolm ultimately caused a chain of events that led to it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Noah Kuttler and Malcolm Merlyn are horrible people who have always put themselves before their children, and are not going to change.
• Karma Houdini: Finally subverted to some extent with Malcolm, as he loses his hand and control of the League, which Nyssa then disbands, ensuring neither he nor anyone else can use it to cause further harm. Unfortunately, he takes advantage of the fact that Oliver let him live and betrays Team Arrow by revealing William's existence to Darhk.
• Kick the Dog: Merlyn's lowest, cruelest act of spite in the series so far: revealing the existence of Oliver's son to Damien Darhk.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Inverted. Faced with the possibility of killing Merlyn, Oliver instead cuts off his hand and takes the leadership of the League. Again.
• Love Redeems: Averted. Unsurprisingly Malcolm's love for Thea isn't enough for him to willingly forfeit his control of the League in order to to save her.
• Mood Whiplash
  • When her father calls her Overwatch, Felicity realises he's the Calculator.
  • On hearing that Noah is back, Donna Smoak speaks in a coldly serious voice without any sign of her usual ditzy demeanour.
• Never My Fault: Merlyn seems to be treating Thea's impending death as an unavoidable tragedy. Ignoring that he's a major part of the reason for her original injury (Ra's al Ghul might never have given Star City a second thought if he hadn't forced Thea to kill Sara), he's totally disregarding that it is, in no small part, his own selfish refusal to surrender the League to Nyssa that's put Thea's life in danger.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Tatsu gives away the Lotus she's guarding, enabling Nyssa to blackmail Oliver.
  • Oliver not killing Malcolm leads to Malcolm betraying him to Darhk.
  • In the flashbacks, Taiana takes the artifact Reiter wants from Oliver in a fit of anger after she finds out that Oliver killed her brother, then tries to buy her own freedom. Reiter just takes the artifact from her and leaves her imprisoned.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Oliver sparing Malcolm's life finally comes to bite him in the butt, since Malcolm is petty enough to betray Team Arrow to Darhk.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Noah tries to convince his daughter they are both vigilante hackers using their skills to do good. Felicity knows he's manipulating her, but admits to being tempted by this view.
  • Malcolm compares his willingness to sacrifice his loved ones in the cause of the League, to Oliver's willingness to do likewise to protect his city.
• Only I Can Kill Him: One of the main reasons why Nyssa demands Oliver kill Malcolm for the Lotus instead of giving it to him and doing the deed herself is because Oliver is the only one of the protagonists that can beat Malcolm in a straight up fight. Nyssa believes she is incapable of doing so herself. Oliver is perfectly aware of this, and for the majority of the episode tries to avoid the inevitable confrontation, but finds his hand forced once Malcolm proves to be too selfish to give up being Ra's al Ghul for Thea. As the fight progresses, one can see why Oliver was so reluctant — Oliver has grown in skill so much that Malcolm hardly poses a threat to him and has to hold back so he won't kill him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Felicity brings up the subject of her father to Donna, the latter drops her usual cheerful demeanor.
• Plot Parallel: Felicity's story with her father Noah echoes Thea's relationship with Merlyn.
• Riches to Rags: Merlyn when he loses control of the League.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Essentially the entire episode is one long one with pretty much every (conscious) present-day character stating why, exactly, Malcolm Merlyn is a horrible excuse for a human being, including pointing out that pretty much everything bad that has happened to Oliver, his family, his friends, and his city except for HIVE's ongoing activities is all directly due to Merlyn. Then Merlyn goes to Darhk with the information about William, so he gets to share blame for that as well.
• Revenge by Proxy: Merlyn decides to get revenge on Oliver by getting H.I.V.E. to target his young son.
• Secret Test of Character: Felicity takes her father on an exclusive tour of the Palmer Tech R&D lab. He takes the bait and leaves a hacking device, confirming her suspicions of his character.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Nyssa and Merlyn both believe there will be no end to their feud without one of them dying, while Oliver insists on looking for another way. In the end, idealism seems to win the day (Nyssa and Merlyn both survive and the League of Assassins is disbanded), but not without a cost (Merlyn betrays Oliver to Darhk).
• Subtext: Oliver's hope that Thea's father might be redeemed despite his crimes is linked to his own desire for redemption, both for himself and his own father.
• Suddenly Shouting
  Malcolm: [The League] is a force of change silently manipulating global events for hundreds of years, and I cannot, I-WILL-NOT, PUT THAT POWER INTO NYSSA AL-GHUL'S HANDS!
• Take a Third Option: Invoked by Oliver when convincing Malcolm to challenge Nyssa in a Trial by Combat (the other options being surrender, or let Thea die and endure war within the League). Then Oliver simply cuts off the hand that Merlyn wears the Demon's Ring on rather than kill him or Nyssa.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the first season Oliver was defeated by Merlyn twice and barely won his last battle, and at cost to himself. Here, he easily and very quickly defeats Malcolm in combat.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Despite having his life spared and owing him a debt, Merlyn reveals Oliver's son to Darhk.
• The Unreveal: Despite claiming that he wasn't actually trying to destroy Star City and that he was hired to do the job, Noah does not reveal who hired him for the previous episode's plot, or for what ends.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Malcolm used to kick Oliver's ass at will, but after three years of fighting top echelon threats including Ra's Al-Ghul and the Reverse-Flash, Oliver is in another league while Malcolm has stagnated.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: How Merlyn tries to present himself as Ra's Al-Ghul, being Necessarily Evil that secretly keeps the world safe from much larger threats. Nobody buys it, least of all Oliver. Also, Noah trying to explain to Felicity that's he as much a vigilante as she is, not seeing how vastly different their methods are.
• What You Are in the Dark: Merlyn's shocked gaze at the fire into which Nyssa threw the Demon's Ring proves all he truly cared about was the power.
• Wham Episode: Thea is saved and presumably cured of her bloodlust once and for all. Nyssa dissolves the League and ends her feud with Malcolm, who in turn betrays Team Arrow by telling Darhk about the existence of Oliver's son William in Central City.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: There's no sign of Tatsu, probably to avoid the Plot Hole of why she wouldn't just give the Lotus to Thea herself.
• Would Hurt a Child: Both Merlyn and Darhk are all too eager to strike back at Oliver by targeting his son.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Despite his help in the past, it's really no longer convenient for Team Arrow to have Merlyn's semi-friendly League of Assassins on their side, especially when they begin killing innocent civilians.

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