Recap / Arrow S 4 E 22 Lost In The Flood

As Team Arrow struggles to stop Hive from regaining control of Rubicon, Oliver and Diggle go into the dome to rescue Thea.

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• Abusive Parent: Malcolm is at his best again during the episode, forcefully restraining Thea and drugging her into attacking Oliver.
• Actually, I Am Him: Curtis notes that Felicity's father shares the name of a famous criminal hacker, to which Noah merely states that he wishes they'd used a different photo in his wanted poster.
• A God Am I: Darhk directly compares himself to God after his power up, comparing the pending nuclear apocalypse to the Flood.
• Air Vent Infiltration: A shot of Anarky in an air vent is used to explain how he gets into the control room.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Ruvé's death is portrayed fairly tragically, in part because her last words are for Team Arrow to take care of her daughter.
• Annoying Arrows: Anarky once again shrugs off an arrow, this time placed in his leg.
• Answer Cut: When Flashback-Ollie asks Taiana, "What would Vlad want you to do?" we cut to Ruvé Darhk ordering, "Find these hostiles at once!"
• Asshole Victim: Anarky kills Ruvé, and only Damian mourns her.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: It's ultimately Anarky, another villain, who foils H.I.V.E.'s plans by destroying the Ark and killing Ruvé Darhk.
• Blatant Lies: Although they're cut off before they can continue the conversation, Felicity makes it pretty clear to her mother that she doesn't believe Donna's claim that her father decided to go away for a while because she heard that the last time and she's not a little girl who will believe it anymore.
• Blown Across the Room: Cooper gets blown across the room when Noah and Felicity do hacking magic to surge the power system in the Darhk's control room.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Thea briefly succumbs to the same mind control as Andy, but is able to fight it off.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: At the beginning of the episode Darhk lets Oliver and Diggle live so they can die in the nuclear apocalypse. However this might be a bit subverted. After all if he did kill them then Anarky would have killed both his wife and daughter rather than just his wife.
• The Bus Came Back: The stream of Season 3 villains now on Darhk's payroll continues, as Felicity's ex-boyfriend Cooper shows up.
• Call-Back:
  • Anarky commented how he's having déja vu from holding Ruvé and her daughter hostage.
  • Cooper revives the Brother Eye logo upon getting into Felicity's network.
  • Curtis bursts in ranting about how past catastrophes like the Deathstroke army still made living in Star City preferable to Havenrock.
• Collapsing Lair: Underground City + Perilous Power Source = very large hole in the middle of Star City!
• Continuity Nod: Anarky mentions that the dome is powered by Ray Palmer's dwarf star alloy, which Hive stole earlier in the season.
• Cooldown Hug: Felicity is on the receiving end.
• Demoted to Dragon: Damien's and Ruvé's treatment of Malcolm confirms this once again, with the once-powerful leader of the League of Assassins being ordered about and threatened like a two-bit heavy.
• Dirty Coward: Malcolm acts all smug and in control when his men have Oliver surrounded. As soon as Spartan sweeps in he runs away like the coward he is.
• Disappeared Dad: Turns out Noah didn't abandon them—Donna took Felicity and abandoned him, feeling he was never going to change. Noah hadn't told Felicity this as he didn't want his daughter to hate her mother as well.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: It's a lot easier when everyone is forced to watch the same program. Anarky simply uses Ruvé's broadcasting setup.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Taiana really gets off on the Khushu idol's powers.
• Enemy Mine: Malcom's cowardly hide is saved once again when Anarky blows up the ark. Oliver puts him in charge of evacuating the citizens.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Ruvé's last words are that Oliver look after her daughter. Darhk meanwhile is distraught at her death, not even caring that the ark is destroyed, and decides to burn the whole world when he's told that no-one knows where his daughter is.
  • Despite what happened in the Sins of the Father, it's confirmed here that Noah Kuttler truly does love his family. He shows no grudge towards Felicity turning him over and took a bullet for her willingly. It's also revealed that rather than him abandoning his wife and daughter, in truth his wife left him with Felicity, and Noah accepts her decision and plays along with the facade so as to not have Felicity hate her own mother. He later leaves when Donna tells him to because she bluntly reminds him that having him around would endanger Felicity, and even then he shows hesitation as he didn't want Felicity to be hurt by him leaving.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Malcolm is not impressed when Ruvé incites her untrained civilians to attack the vigilantes in their midst.
  • Noah is clearly disgusted with Damien's plan to use Rubicon.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Anarky does a Stealth Hi/Bye while Thea is mourning the death of Alex. Then Malcolm turns up and accuses her of deliberately letting Anarky escape, has her hauled off by his goons and drugged into a state of compliance.
• Evil Costume Switch: Played with—Thea is already wearing dark clothes when she is brainwashed, so when she turns up with a black bow and quiver it looks a lot like a Dark Archer outfit.
• Evil Is Hammy: Cooper quotes General Chang, possibly the hammiest Star Trek villain ever, during his Hacker Duel with Felicity.
• Evil vs. Evil: Once again, Anarky vs. Darhk. We also have Brother Eye vs. The Calculator, though the latter is backed up by Curtis and Felicity.
• Explosive Instrumentation: Sparks fly (literally) during the Hacker Duel, though it's not clear exactly what is exploding, and the computers our heroes are using seem curiously unaffected as everything else blows up around them.
• Fighting from the Inside: Thea does it against the brainwashing pill Malcolm gives her.
• Foil: Malcolm and Noah in the way they treat their children.
• Foreshadowing: For Season 5 when Taiana talks of her hometown of Krasnoyarsk, which is under the oppressive reign of a government strongman named Kovar.
• For the Evulz: When Ruvé tells Lonnie that he is destroying the last safe place on Earth, he just smirks and rhetorically asks her if he strikes her as a rational person.
• Gallows Humor: Discussed after the Glades blow up.
  Thea: Looks like the real estate value of the Glades just went up.
  [Oliver glares at her]
  Thea: It's called gallows humor.
• Genius Bonus: The official name for the underground town is "Tevat Noah", which is the Hebrew translation of "Noah's Ark".
• The Guards Must Be Crazy:
  • Once again Anarky gets the better of Hive's guards, even while they're actively looking for him.
  • Also, the Green Arrow and Spartan in their superhero costumes are able to walk around in broad (artificial) daylight for quite a while and even then are spotted by civilians, not guards.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Taiana, under the influence of the idol, Neck Snaps an innocent man to fuel her newly awakened powers and claims that Reiter's motivation isn't wrong per se.
• Hollywood Hacking: Taken to astronomical heights in the episode, as Felicity, Noah, and Curtis engage Cooper in a Hacker Duel that somehow causes both Felicity's penthouse and the H.I.V.E base to go haywire. Ironically enough, Cooper first lampshades that hacking is not that easy when Darhk rushes him.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Oliver does this with Thea when she's under the influence of a brainwashing drug. It works, as unlike other HIVE drones Thea is not a willing recipient of the drug.
• I'll Kill You!: Thea threatens to kill her father if he drugs her again.
• Improvised Lockpick: Oliver uses an arrowhead to pick the lock on a house so they can hide.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Felicity rushes home when she gets a text from Curtis about an emergency. She finds him downing a beer because Donna has discovered her ex is back and they're having a long-delayed family squabble. On seeing this Felicity grabs the bottle off Curtis and takes a deep chug too.
• Jerkass Has a Point: One of the citizens Oliver and John detains states that his family is willingly following Darhk because he's offered them personally at least a chance at a better world while the old one is going to shit while nothing the heroes have done has really helped them. Oliver concedes to John that he's not wrong. Though they do omit the fact that Darhk is the main reason for most of the problems.
• Kick the Dog: When Oliver accuses Malcolm of being responsible for Laurel's death, he just smugly responds that Oliver can't do anything about it.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Curtis can't conceal his glee at watching two of the world's greatest hackers working together.
• Leap and Fire: Oliver does this while aiming back over his shoulder when he and Diggle are being pursued by HIVE goons.
• Like Mother, Unlike Daughter: Curtis realises that adding Noah to Donna suddenly makes Felicity make more sense.
• Made of Explodium: Anarky warned Team Arrow that the dwarf star alloy in the ark may be tough, but it's also quite volatile. It didn't matter because the brawl triggered a chain reaction big enough to create a sinkhole at Star City.
• Match Cut: Done for Rule of Symbolism between the island flashbacks and the present day to show how Taiana is Slowly Slipping Into Evil, as we cut from glowy-eyed Taiana to about-to-be-brainwashed Thea, then from Revue to a power-mad Taiana.
• Mythology Gag:
  • While exploring Tevat Noah, Oliver comments that without all the psychos, it could be Ivy Town. In DC Comics, Ivy Town is the home of The Atom.
  • The man terrorizing Taiana's village is named Kovar, same as the DC superhero Red Star.
  • Anarky's 'home video' showing his capture of mother and daughter Darhk brings to mind that one by the Joker - not too coincidentally, Anarky earns Joker Immunity this week.
• No-Sell: Darhk was clearly having fun vaporizing the arrows and bullets being fired upon him. He says he did it without even intending for that to happen.
• Not Brainwashed: The citizens of the Ark (or at least the family Oliver and John come across) are not under the influence of the yellow pills. They honestly believe in Darhk and his vision.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Oliver and John have the perfect opportunity to take down Anarky and they shoot him in the leg, which while painful barely phases him. He then uses Darhk's wife Ruvee as a Human Shield and warns Team Arrow that The Ark is powered by dwarf star matter, which is an excellent power source but also incredibly unstable and even one ricochet shot can destroy everything, and that's exactly what happens when Oliver tries to save Ruvee Darhk by shooting Anarky's knife out of his hand while he's holding Ruvee hostage. In essence because Oliver doesn't take kill shots anymore, he's responsible for tens of thousands of people's deaths, because the destruction of Damien Darhk's Ark collapsed a huge chunk of STAR CITY.
• No Time to Explain:
  Felicity: Curtis, I don't even have the time to tell you that I don't have the time!
  Curtis: You just did.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Donna claims that Felicity and her father are more alike than they think when she finds out her daughter has been in league with the Green Arrow for years and didn't tell her about it. Ironically, she gets subjected to this trope herself when it's revealed that she lied about the reason she and Noah broke up. Then Curtis points out to Felicity that the Donna/Noah relationship isn't that different from the Olicity one.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Felicity and Curtis have a mutual "Oh frak!" on realising Cooper has bested them (temporarily), then Cooper has one when he realized that Felicity just beat him in their hack battle.
  • Oliver and Diggle when Revue appears on television to incite the HIVE citizens to attack them.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: The HIVE family talk of how many people have promised to save this city, but have not delivered.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Anarky, as he intends to destroy even the last safe place for humanity, and Darhk after the death of his wife.
• One-Man Army: Anarky proves once again what a truly fearsome fighter he is, by taking on John, Thea and Oliver at once.
• Order vs. Chaos: Anarky and Darhk. Anarky wins because he's so unpredictable plus the futility of Darhk's desire to bring order to the world.
• Put Them All Out of My Misery: Darhk has a Villainous Breakdown when he finds out that his wife is dead and his Evil Plan is in tatters, while his daughter is missing and possibly dead as well, and decides to destroy the whole world anyway out of pure grief and rage, not caring if anyone survives.
• Race Against the Clock: Noah has put Rubicon's software in a loop, gaining them 24 hours leeway.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Noah and Donna keep handing those to each other throughout the entire episode.
• Schiff One-Liner: Darhk delivers one to Felicity and co. at the end of the episode:
  Felicity: Go to hell.
  Darhk: Why bother? I'm going to bring it to us.
• Shooting Superman: At the beginning of the episode Oliver shoots an empowered Darhk, and the arrow vaporizes. Darhk is just as surprised as they are.
  Darhk: Cool. You know I didn't even mean to do that?
  (Spartan shoots at Darhk, to the same effect)
  Darhk: Seriously? His steel arrows didn't work, and you thought some lead would do the trick?
• Shout-Out:
  • Cooper directly quotes General Chang during his hacking duel with Felicity, something Curtis notes.
  • Felicity tells Curtis about the nukes.
    Felicity: So unless we do something soon, the world is about to experience the sequel to Wargames.
    Curtis: Actually, there was a direct-to-DVD sequel in 2008. But it was a bomb too so that reference still holds.
  • Darhk says, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" when Nothing Can Stop Us Now!
• Spanner in the Works: By bringing down the dome, Anarky destroys Hive's Genesis plan.
• Start of Darkness: It's not evident here, but watching her mother die in front of her is this for Nora Darhk, who will grow up to become a villain in Legends of Tomorrow.
• Tempting Fate: While Diggle holds the line, Oliver declares he's going to go and find Thea. He runs out the door and runs right into his Brainwashed and Crazy sister in Dark Archer mode.
• Token Evil Teammate: As in the last episode, The Calculator is still this for Team Arrow. And Malcolm ends up being this for Team Arrow again, when Oliver puts him in charge of evacuating the dome.
• Trash the Set:
  • Darhk collapses the Nexus Chamber after completing his power up ritual.
  • The entire ark dome collapses and explodes after the fight between Anarky and Team Arrow causes a chain reaction.
• Underestimating Badassery: Both Ruvé and Darhk are relatively unconcerned about Anarky, treating him like a mild pest. It costs them dearly when he takes Darhk's wife and child hostage again and rigs the entire dome to blow up if anyone tries to stop him.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Darhk and Hive with the people in the Ark. Darhk even states that people still worship the last guy who caused a global genocide.
• Wham Shot: In the last scene, Darhk appears before Donna, Felicity and Curtis.
• What Would X Do?: Flashback-Ollie asks Taiana to consider what Vlad would want her to do. It's a good thing she doesn't answer: "Avenge him!"
• Would Hurt a Child: Lonnie once again plans to kill Darhk's underaged daughter.