The funds that Cayden James extorted from Star City are missing from his account and all the evidence points to Black Siren. Team Arrow and the New Recruits disagree on what to do about it, which leads the former friends on a path that might end badly for both parties
- Alliterative Title: Collison Course.
- Apologetic Attacker: Neither Team Arrow nor the Newbies are comfortable with fighting their former comrades, but neither party is willing to back down now either.
- Bad Liar: After Quentin clumsily tries to explain that he might have a way to contact Black Siren, Thea follows him home and sees that he has actually kept her hidden.
- Bait the Dog: Throughout the episode, redemption for Black Siren is teased even more so than ever before...only for her to run away in the end and Quentin finally conceding that he may have deluded himself all along.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Team Arrow is absolutely right about the need to recover the money that Cayden James extorted, while the New Recruits are absolutely right that there's no justice to be found in letting Black Siren, a repeated and remorseless killer, go free. Though both sides also needlessly grab the Idiot Ball and Jerkass Ball.
- Brutal Honesty:
- Oliver makes it clear that he doesn't trust Dinah to do the right thing, since she can't be talked out of her revenge crusade.
- Dinah is also correct that nobody from the original Team Arrow wants to kill Black Siren, since she all reminds them of the old Laurel they lost.
- When Rene blames Oliver for Vigilante's death, John snaps back how the New Recruits walked into the trap and if they had helped Team Arrow they would've been able to find the bomb and save Vigilante.
- Career-Ending Injury: Rene's bullet wound from earlier in the season ends up being reopened in his fight with Oliver, and he doesn't just walk away from it; he's stumbling and coughing up blood shortly after taking the hit, and the effects of the injury leave him hospitalised, and it will likely mean the end of his career as a vigilante.
- Contrived Coincidence: Oliver even mentions how unlikely it is for Cayden James to get randomly murdered just after being incarcerated.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: After they come to blows in direct hand-to-hand combat, Oliver has little trouble dealing with both Curtis and Rene.
- Dead Person Impersonation: In the end, Black Siren decided to take over her late Earth-1 counterpart's life.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Quentin deduces that Black Siren followed Zoom, Prometheus and Cayden James because of her lack of a father figure. Indeed, she seems at least slightly unnerved when she hears that James has been murdered.
- Didn't Think This Through: Team Arrow just walking into the Newbies bunker, threatening and accusing them without any proof? Yeah, like that is gonna soothe the tension.
- Downer Ending: The money isn't recovered. Black Siren escapes, Rene ends up in the hospital which officially sours whatever remaining vestiges of friendship the New Recruits had with Team Arrow, and the DA working Agent Watson's case is revealed to be on Diaz's payroll and he and the corrupt police captain are plotting to put Oliver behind bars.
- Dramatic Irony:
- The audience knows perfectly well that the reason Dinah's footprints were at the scene Team Arrow investigated was because the New Recruits were investigating it first. Unfortunately, that's not the theory they come to.
- The audience is also aware of the fact that it was highly unlikely for Black Siren to withdraw the extorted money from Cayden's account, making it highly likely that the events of the entire episode were All for Nothing.
- Exact Words: Black Siren tells an old man that she is Laurel Lance and that she was kidnapped two years prior. She did so to make a Dead Person Impersonation of her late Earth-1 counterpart, who's been dead for almost two years. However, she's also not lying for two reasons; that she is Dinah Laurel Lance and that she was illegally detained for months by Team Flash since the penultimate episode of their second season which aired over a month after Earth-1 Laurel's death.
- False Friend: Oliver's DA friend who's being forced by Agent Watson to prosecute him? Turns out he's on Diaz's payroll.
- Frame-Up: Diaz is framing Black Siren for stealing the funds that Cayden extorted from the city. Which she couldn't have done since Quentin has her squirreled away to keep her safe from Dinah.
- Go Through Me: Quentin tries to do this to stop Dinah. She knocks him down in ten seconds.
- Hypocrite:
- Oliver even acknowledges that he shouldn't be the one to lecture Dinah about not killing somebody.
- Rene accuses Oliver of being a thug and only solving problems by fighting. Yet when he gets beat down by Oliver, he refuses to stay down and even comes at him with an axe!
- Idiot Ball:
- Rene does not know when to stop fighting. This time it gets him into the hospital.
- Everyone grabs it when they see the footage that Black Siren withdrawing the money and then learning that Quentin has her. Nobody makes the obvious connection that it would've been impossible for her to go to Corto Maltese and get back to Star City in such a short time, especially after she had just been shot.
- Internal Reveal: Quentin tells Thea and Oliver about Black Siren following him previously. Thea then follows him and finds out about him having hidden her after she was shot.
- It's Personal: When Team Arrow breaks into the New Recruits' bunker to look for Black Siren, the conflict gets very personal. That's when Rene and Curtis go from being apprehensive about Dinah's revenge crusade against Laurel to being all gung-ho for it just to spite Oliver.
- Kick the Dog:
- Rene throws Vince's death in Oliver's face and taunts him about his relationship with his son. While he had a purpose in doing this, there's no denying that it's a very low blow.
- When Quentin gets between Dinah and Black Siren, Dinah smacks him twice in the face with her bo staff.
- Laser-Guided Karma: What Rene calls bugging Oliver, due to him doing the same to all three of them before.
- Rene getting beat into a hospital after refusing to stay down.
- Let's You and Him Fight: The entire premise are Team Arrow and the New Recruits facing off.
- Manchild: Rene and Curtis. They were very aphrensive about Dinah's obsession with Black Siren and worried she was going off the deep end... until Team Arrow invades their bunker and they decide to support her crusade just to get back at Oliver.
- Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, Oliver considers that the New Recruits crossed it when Curtis hacked John's implant to find Laurel, which is why he feels justified in fighting them to save Black Siren. On the flip the New Recruits see Rene ending up in the hospital as Team Arrow's Moral Event Horizon.
- Moral Myopia: Dinah is disgusted that Team Arrow wants to protect Black Siren, instead of getting justice for Vigilante ... who had his own high body count and was never particularly remorseful for it.
- Mythology Gag: Black Siren uses the name "Siu Jerk Jai", one of the aliases of her comicbook counterpart, when she allegedly withdraw Cayden James' funds.
- Never My Fault: Rather than acknowledge their role in the escalation of events, Dinah and Curtis chose to blame Team Arrow and just Team Arrow for Rene ending up in the hospital, even though Rene refused to stand down in his fight.
- Not Helping Your Case: Black Siren once again acts very antagonistic throughout a major chunk of the episode, Evil Gloating towards Dinah included. It's no wonder the latter doesn't buy her apology in the end. And after Curtis succesfully manages to talk Dinah down, she attacks them and runs away again. Although, considering she has been "living in a cage" on and off for two years, it's not surprising.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Diggle warns Oliver that if Team Arrow fights their former comrades there's no going back from that. Turns out he's right; Rene ends up in the hospital and the New Recruits want nothing to do with Team Arrow. Ever.
- Only Sane Man:
- When Team Arrow realises that the New Recruits are on their way, Thea is the only one to point out how insane the whole situation is.
- Curtis becomes this at the climax, when he realizes how things have gotten out of control between the two teams... and that the New Recruits are exhibiting the same traits that drove them away from Oliver in the first place.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Dinah has Black Siren on the ropes, she actually says that she is sorry, as opposed to her usual Evil Gloating which was present even in this episode.
- Poor Communication Kills: The two teams' refusal to share intel results in Team Arrow drawing the wrong conclusion and things escalating from there; the New Recruits go to Black Siren's last location and then Team Arrow does the same. They find Dinah's DNA at the scene plus tire tracks and they inevitably draw the wrong conclusions. And that's when things all go to hell.
- Put on a Bus: After being beaten by Oliver, Rene needs to be treated outside Star City.
- Replacement Goldfish: It's made painfully clear in this episode once again how much Quentin tries to project his deceased daughter onto Black Siren. The newbies also accused Team Arrow of the same thing; for Oliver's part he makes it clear he's only protecting her for Quentin's sake and he never wants to see her again.
- Revenge Before Reason: Dinah for all her posturing is more concerned for getting back at Laurel, than finding Star City's missing funds. When she finally catches up to Laurel, she makes no mention of the money and just prepares to kill her.
- Self-Serving Memory: Curtis comments that Dinah trying to blame the whole fiasco on Team Arrow makes her sound just like Oliver; ignoring how in Oliver's original apology he pointed out how both parties made mistakes.
- Skewed Priorities: Played for Laughs. After the fighting is over, Felicity complains to John about Curtis hacking their prototype (instead of complaining about him hurting John).
- This Is Unforgivable!: For Team Arrow, it is Curtis hacking John's arm implant. For Curtis and Dinah, it is Oliver hospitalizing Rene.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Extremely minor, but at least Dinah doesn't want to commit murder anymore after Curtis talked her down.
- We Used to Be Friends:
- It's made perfectly clear that the surrogate father-daughter relationship Quentin and Dinah had is gone; she's very unrepentant about her attack last week. She does it again, when he's literally begging her to not go through with her plan.
- By the end it's made abundantly clear that Team Arrow and the New Recruits will never be reconciled.
- Wham Episode: Oliver's DA friend is revealed to be on Diaz's payroll. Despite Rene being his key witness, his case is still weak and his only way to make sure it's solid is with the help of the corrupt police captain also on Diaz's payroll.
- Wham Line: When an old man sees a wounded Black Siren...Old man: Hey, are you OK?
Black Siren: I was kidnapped two years ago I think. I don't know.
Old man: Lady, what's your name?
Black Siren: Laurel. Laurel Lance. - What Could Have Been: In-Universe, Quentin speculates that if somebody had been there for Black Siren when her father died, she wouldn't have become a criminal.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Rene throws Vigilante's death back at Oliver, ignoring that Oliver was trying to save the city. In the heat of the moment, John throws their decision to turn their back on the city back at them.
- Felicity is furious when she confronts Curtis over hacking John's arm; it wasn't just the hacking it was the fact that doing so was physically hurting John.
- What You Are in the Dark: Despite her own disdain for her in their first meeting, Felicity willingly shields a wounded Black Siren from being gunned by Rene.
- Worf Had the Flu: Black Siren loses her fight primarily due to her gunshot wound.
