As all our favorite Arrowverse shows head towards their season finales, the stakes are getting raised. Last week on Supergirl, Kara and the DEO defeated the “trinity” of World Killers. Unbeknownst to them, Reign had absorbed the powers of Purity and Pestilence, meaning that the fight’s not over yet. Last week on The Flash, Barry made a deal with the Devil and had Amunet Black (Katee Sackhoff continues to chomp on the scenery to everyone’s delight, including her own) in order to take on DeVoe. While Team Flash’s partnership with a supervillain didn’t turn out the way they wanted, Amunet Black did give them a parting gift to use against DeVoe. Meanwhile, on Arrow, the members of Team Arrow were attacked by Diaz and his corrupt police force. They almost got a hold of Diaz’s secret list of everyone he squeezed to take over Star City, but failed at the last minute. This forced Oliver to enlist the help of the FBI, which means he was forced to reveal his true identity as the Green Arrow.
So how did this week in the Arrowverse go?
Supergirl: “Shelter from the Storm”
They determine that Reign’s next target would be Samantha’s adoptive mother Patricia’s house in hopes to search for Ruby. Patricia tells Kara and J’onn that she realizes her daughter is Reign as some of her childhood drawings are the same as Reign’s signs. She does not want to flee as she blames herself for Samantha turning to Reign and she feels that she can reach her. It’s not long before Reign comes to Patricia’s looking for Ruby. She’s met instead by Kara and J’onn. However, with Pestilence and Purity’s powers, they prove to be no match for her. Patricia tries to intervene to reach her daughter, only for Reign to kill her adoptive mother.
Lena reveals to Alex where she is hiding Ruby, at Lex Luthor’s old mansion. It’s hidden and invisible, so she should be safe. However, Reign soars above the city listening for Ruby’s voice, and manages to find out where she is. After disabling the invisibility cloak, she goes to attack her daughter. Alex does her best to fight back against Reign, but she just can’t compete. Lucky for her, Lex Luthor’s mansion has some anti-superman weapons that help slow her down, just in time for Kara to arrive with Mon-El to fight Reign. Lena convinced Kara to bring a case of Kryptonite to use against her. While they manage to save Ruby, Reign’s mask is knocked off and she sees her mother’s face confusing the poor girl. Just as Reign is about to attack Ruby, Kara appeals to her code of ethics. Reign is supposed to enact justice against those who are wrong, and Ruby is an innocent. This is enough to distract her to fire a Kryptonite bullet at her and subdue her.
The Flash: “Think Fast”
With The Enlightening coming soon, Team Flash has to bunker down to stop DeVoe from reducing the whole planet’s intelligence.
The episode starts with Arrow’s Diggle showing up at an ARGUS facility to check in on one of the remaining bus metahumans, Borman, the one who can go nuclear. Turns out it really wasn’t Diggle, but instead, was DeVoe using Ralph’s powers to impersonate Diggle for access, and using Kilg%re’s powers to falsify a DNA scan to prove he’s Diggle. Once inside, he goes on the attack against the ARGUS soldiers. For the first time, we get to see him use all of his powers. DeVoe truly is a cheat code at this point. In a very well made scene, he uses each of the bus metahuman’s powers to take on the entire squadron and gain access to Borman and activate his nuclear power, which will then be used to power the satellites to launch into orbit and disperse Dark Matter throughout the planet.
Over at STAR Labs, they detect Borman’s powers going critical and they realize that they will only have 12 hours to stop DeVoe from launching the satellites. Normally, Barry could just use his speed powers to go in there and stop DeVoe. But DeVoe’s planned for this and took the ARGUS soldiers as hostage. He will not be able to save the soldiers and stop DeVoe. Cisco has a different plan instead. Cisco proposes that Barry uses his powers to create a Speed Force bubble around Caitlin and himself so that they can move in “Flash Time” to rescue the hostages, while Barry can then use the lightning to power himself up to run even faster to follow DeVoe through his dimensional gateway and stop him from launching the satellites. But if they are going to use Flash Time, Barry’s gotta train them. And he only has 12 hours to do so.
Barry’s hesitant to do this though. He’s already lost Ralph and he completely blames himself for DeVoe killing him (even though we all know he’ll be back) and taking his powers. Cisco tells Barry that he also feels blame as he created the bus metahumans when trying to rescue Barry from his Speed Force prison and wants to make this right. Barry agrees to train him and Caitlin. However, both of them have some work to do. Functioning in the Speed Force takes a create deal of energy and concentration. Cisco and Caitlin fail as their minds are elsewhere. Cisco already reveals where his mind was, and Caitlin is starting to deal with some unknown childhood trauma. She has a great moment with the same therapist who counseled Barry and Iris talking about her “imaginary friend,” but things take a detour when she discusses her childhood. Caitlin later asks Cisco to vibe her to an accident when she was a child, which reveals that she has always been Killer Frost, way before the first Dark Matter explosion. This means, Caitlin has always been a metahuman!
Iris and Harry go in search of DeVoe’s wife Marlize in the hopes of convincing her to stop her husband. She is intrigued with Harry, who is basically patient zero for The Enlightenments. She tells him that he will soon stop speaking as his mind continues to deteriorate. She reveals that she’s not willing to stop her husband. That is, until Iris reveals that she was very different and much more optimistic before she met DeVoe. With that said, she agrees to help Team Flash stop her husband.
Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin storm the ARGUS facility to rescue the hostages. Barry’s training of them paid off as they are able to move and save the hostages before the booby traps go off. This allows Barry to race towards DeVoe and once he catches up to him, DeVoe releases the satellites into the atmosphere. Barry races up a building to catch up to one of them and uses Amunet Black’s metal bomb to destroy it. Barry is excited they won, only for DeVoe to reveals that he did nothing but delay the inevitable. Just then, DeVoe uses Kilg%re’s powers to use STAR Lab’s own satellites to launch into the atmosphere, kickstarting The Enlightenment.
Next week in the season finale, Team Flash has to stop The Enlightenment…..
Arrow: “Life Sentence”
Continuing the rebound of the show from last season, Arrow closes out with a strong season finale. Oliver takes his fight to Diaz to finally save the city, and things will never be the same as a result.
Last week ended with Oliver paying a visit to FBI agent Watson a visit to enlist her and the FBI’s help to take on Diaz as he has grown too powerful for Team Arrow to take down. Agent Watson was eager to help, but we all know that she’s not going to help the man she’s been investigating all season without a price. Last week ended with Oliver confessing to her that he was in fact, the Green Arrow. With that now being common knowledge, the episode begins with Team Arrow, ARGUS, and the FBI teaming together to take on Diaz’s corrupt police force at their own headquarters. In yet another stunning display of a well-choreographed action setpiece, they are able to take down the police. Unfortunately for them, Diaz was not with them and is in the wind. Until they manage to get him and bring him into custody, the fight is still on.
Throughout the episode, Oliver feels like he knows he’s on borrowed time. He makes peace with those he has wrongs this season. He meets up with Diggle and gifts him with a Green Arrow costume. When he gives Diggle the outfit, he states that it’s something he should have done a long time ago. Diggle remarks that it’s not just the suit, it’s the hope that is inspired by his work as the Green Arrow. He feels that if there are two Green Arrows, it will make the name lose some meaning. Of course, Oliver is doing this because he knows something the rest of the team doesn’t. He also meets up with Renee and apologizes to him for his actions this season. He even remarks that when he first met Renee when he was a solo vigilante, he didn’t think much of him. He has grown to respect him not only as a member of Team Arrow, but as friends as well.
Anatoly, who has been secretly been working with Oliver to take Diaz down, manages to not get caught in the roundup. This adds to Diaz’s paranoia. He reveals to Anatoly that he doesn’t need the police force for his protection anymore, as he has now employed The Longbow Hunters (yet another deep cut DC comics reference who hopefully will make an appearance next year). Diaz also tells Anatoly about his plan in the hopes of springing a trap, knowing that he’s the snitch. When Anatoly tells Oliver about Diaz’s whereabouts, it springs a trap which lures Team Arrow and the FBI to an abandoned warehouse that’s filled with explosives. Knowing that he could die when surrounded by bombs that could go off any minute, Renee gives his daughter a call, telling her how much he loves her. For a second, it looked like Renee might be a goner, but he manages to survive the explosion, even after saving a frozen FBI agent, thanks to Felicity’s computer skills to jam the signal of the detonation Diaz set off.
Diaz has one more card to play. Holding Earth-2’s Laurel Lance hostage, he tells her father Quinten that he will kill her, unless as mayor he calls on the FBI to leave Star City. This helps lay the trap for Diaz. Quinten is concerned with saving his adoptive multidimensional daughter from being killed, so he agrees to the meeting (even though the FBI has no concern for her life). He even lets Diaz know that the FBI is monitoring him as they lose the FBI’s surveillance. Quinten did tell Oliver about his pacemaker, which makes Oliver realize that it could be tracked, in the hopes that they will follow him to where Diaz is holding Laurel. At Diaz’s hideout, he holds Laurel at gunpoint and threatens to shoot her in front of her father unless he gives the order. Just as he’s about to pull the trigger, Quinten jumps in front of the shot, taking a bullet for her.
Just then, Team Arrow and the FBI storm on Diaz’s location, and there’s yet another epic battle. In the scuffle, Dinah comes in contact with Laurel. While Dinah still hates her for killing her beloved when she was on team Diaz, she helps Dinah and Quinten escape hordes of Diaz’s men. It was good to see two Black Canary’s fighting and using their screaming powers at the same time to take down the bad guys. Oliver gets to meet up with Diaz for one last time. As the two duke it out, yet more impressive fight sequences for the show. Oliver finally gets the drop on Diaz and is just about to take him in when Laurel catches up to him. She doesn’t think he’s worthy of being arrested and decides to use her sonic scream against him, knocking him into the river. Oliver knows he’s not dead, but Laurel doesn’t care.
Oliver managed to use Felicity’s cloning device to make a copy of the flash drive on Diaz’s neck, meaning Team Arrow and the FBI now know every single person on Diaz’s payroll. Even though they didn’t get the bad guy, they got all of his infrastructure, rendering him powerless as all the people under his boot were arrested by the FBI.
And that’s where it gets worse for everyone. Turns out the second thing Oliver agreed to with agent Watson was for him to be arrested for being the Green Arrow. Just as Oliver is getting ready to turn himself in, Quinten dies while having surgery. Sara took a break from her time traveling adventures to see her father at the hospital, only for him to die. She has a brief encounter with Laurel, which is weird for the both of them. Something tells me that they will eventually have a sisterly bond, just as Quinten had a father/daughter bond with her. Oliver is escorted out in handcuffs only to be surrounded by the press as he is about to be taken into custody. He gives a great speech where he confesses who he is to the city, telling all the citizens of Star City to keep up his crusade of “saving the city.” Diggle and other members of Team Arrow watch the speech, and Diggle takes a look at the Green Arrow costume, meaning he’s going to don the hood in Oliver’s name. Oliver’s in for a tough time as he settles into prison, surrounded by people who hate the Green Arrow.
One hell of a season!
