Arrow S4:E14 Code of Silence Recap starts now, spoilers ahead!

Oliver is excited!

Oliver and Thea are rehearsing for the mayoral debate when Ruve Adams, his new opponent, arrives. The secret Mrs Darhk is all smiles until Oliver asks if Adams is her maiden name: “I’m not married actually,” she says. “Really? Well, I’m sure you just haven’t met the right person yet,” Oliver replies. A bit a verbal sparring follows, with Oliver stating that this election needs to be fought in the light of day, an obvious dig towards Damien Darhk. She leaves Oliver and the team to their rehearsal.

Oliver asks if they have managed to find anything on Ruve but she appears clean so far. Felicity interrupts to ask Oliver to have a look at the engagement party invitations her mother Donna has had designed. “The envelope is very pink.” says Captain Obvious. “I know,” replies Felicity. “Wait, don’t -” as the glitter bomb from up there ^^^ goes off in Oliver’s face. “Maybe less glitter,” says Oliver, unimpressed. “You look good in glitter,” replies Felicity as they leave to suit up and track Ruve.

The last six times they have tried to track Ruve, she has gone straight home.  This time she heads in a different direction. Laurel watches from the rooftops until her limo is out of sight, then Thea takes over on her motorbike. She follows until she gets to where Oliver is waiting on his motorbike, and he takes over until her car turns off into an abandoned car park. He pulls up: and Ruve and the car are nowhere to be seen.

She emerges from behind a car and tells Arrow that he missed a meeting with Damien Darhk last week, and he does not take kindly to being stood up. “And he has a little something to say about you stalking his wife as well.” HIVE soldiers come out of the shadows and begin firing on Oliver. He fights them off, and Thea arrives to assist. Diggle is not too far behind and a lot of karate kicks and grunty noises follow. They take them all down, but Ruve has taken her opportunity to get away.

Another trail to Damien Darhk has gone cold and Oliver thinks they are missing something about what he has planned. “Why try and destroy Central City’s leadership, and try to discourage anyone from running, but then put his wife in the race?” says Oliver.

Damien and Ruve are discussing their plan, which now seems to involve taking Oliver out. Damien hesitates and Ruve says “You’re not considering changing our plan?” Damien tells her that Malcolm Merlyn has given him an early birthday present and it would be a shame not to make use of it. They continue downstairs where a room of evil looking henchman, including Merlyn, waits.

“Ladies and gentleman, I am giddy to report that Phase 4 is proceeding on schedule,” says Darhk. One henchman tells him that there is concern over the next phase, which is control over City Hall; they seem to have found themselves mired in a petty political race. “We didn’t exactly plan on Oliver Queen, did we?” replies Darhk. “No one ever does,” says Merlyn. Another henchman dialled in from Madrid bags out Ruve’s political pull, Darhk gives him the evil eyes and he starts to choke. Killing someone over video link is a rare talent, I must say. They also discuss Captain Lance and that fact that he has turned against them. “Don’t worry,” says Darhk “that loose end is about to be well tied.”

Laurel goes to SCPD to visit her dad Captain Lance, taking him a coffee as a cover to check up on him. She’s worried that there will be some sort of reprisal from Darhk after his betrayal. Lance tells her he is surrounded by cops with guns, and is in the safest place he could be. He takes a call and tells Laurel he has to go to a B&E to provide backup. “Isn’t that a little below your pay grade?” asks Laurel. “Yeah, that’s how shorthanded we are,” he replies. Laurel offers to go with him and wait in the car and then take him to dinner later, but he already has a date with Donna Smoak, Felicity’s mum. Laurel says she wants to get to know her better, so it looks like Lance better change that table to a 3 seater.

At Felicity and Oliver’s apartment, Donna has turned the place pink, gaudy and feathery for the engagement party. There will be party favours, a champagne tower and Donna’s favourite game: “Pin the junk on the hunk!” Thea arrives and rescues Oliver from all the pink, uh, bits and tells him that their research team has found something. But it’s not dirt on Ruve, it’s something that could affect Oliver’s campaign. Oliver’s mother’s accounts were audited after The Undertaking (an evil plan she was involved in), and a cheque was written by her to a Samantha Clayton for a million dollars. For those catching up, Samantha is the mother of William, Oliver’s secret child. His mother tried to pay Samantha off when she was pregnant, but she never cashed the cheque. Oliver brushes it off and tells Thea not to worry about it.

Captain Lance and Laurel arrive at the location of the call in; he tells her to wait while he goes and checks it out. The building is deserted, no burglary and no other officers in attendance. Lance goes to call the station, and the ceiling above him collapses, sending him falling off a balcony. The roof continues to cave in and Laurel appears to help him out. They run and the building falls in around them. Every step of the way they narrowly escape being crushed and barely make their way out before the whole building comes down. “It’s like the building attacked me or something. But that’s not possible, is it?” says Lance.

Laurel takes her dad to the Arrow bunker and Diggle stitches up his neck and head. They surmise that the attack was planned by Darhk “why do you think they went to so much trouble to make it look like an accident?” asks Thea. “They didn’t want to take the heat of killing a police Captain,” replies Lance. Oliver convinces Lance to stay at the Bunker for his own protection. Diggle goes to talk to his brother Andy in the hopes that he may be familiar with this method of attack by HIVE. Felicity tries to track the fake dispatch call, and Oliver and Thea leave for more debate preparation: “yep. Debate prep. Just took the words right out of my mouth,” says Oliver, not at all keen.

Donna goes to see Lance at the election office and is pleased he asked her to meet him. She notices the cuts on his head “Pooh bear! What happened to you?” says Donna. Captain Pooh Bear replies “It’s nothing.” She continues to fuss and Lance tries to get her to listen to him, desperate to protect her from Damien Darhk. He tells her that they can’t see each other for a while, and makes up a story about a gambling debt and how some guys are after him for money. She buys his story for a brief minute, but then her built-in BS detector starts to go off. She knows he’s lying: “you either respect me enough to tell me the truth, or you don’t.” He doesn’t know what to say to her and she leaves. She passes Felicity, who sees she’s upset, and goes straight in to see Lance: “What did you do?” she asks. He explains and is distraught over losing Donna.

Felicity has tracked the call to an address and the team head out to check it out. They find a team of three with a laptop, and once they know they’ve been found they set the laptop to wipe itself and go on the attack. With a sledgehammer, grenades and a nail gun respectively. Diggle faces off against Sledgehammer and gets his ass handed to him, Laurel takes on Nail Gun and is on the back foot, Thea is under grenade attack and not able to break free. Oliver fires a few arrows here and there, but the building has been rigged with explosives that start to go off and they need to go. Thea goes back to get the laptop and just makes it out.

Back at the Arrow lair, Felicity tries to recover information from the nail ridden laptop and Diggle reports back that Andy has heard of a team called the Demolition Team. Made up of members of GRU, the IRA and Mossad, they are experts at precision demolition. Laurel tells them she saw blueprints on the screen before they shut it down and she goes off to try and narrow down some potential targets. Felicity gets a 911 text from her mum Donna and heads off to help, while Lance explains to Oliver that he’s lucky he’s with someone he doesn’t have to keep secrets from. Cough*William*cough.

Donna tells Felicity about Lance, and how hurt she is that he lied to her. Felicity knows what Lance is trying to do, and tells her that maybe she needs to have a little bit of trust in him. Donna apologises for going over the top with the engagement party, she was living vicariously through Felicity. She sees the kind of love her and Oliver have, and is starting to realise that she might never have that. “You don’t lie to each other, ever. And he’s going to be the best daddy in the whole world when that time comes. You know that don’t you?” says Donna. “In my bones,” replies Felicity.

Thea confronts Oliver about the million dollar cheque, and tells him she has worked out that he and Samantha Clayton were at college together. Oliver tells her he slept with Samantha while he was still seeing Laurel, and that’s the reason he kept it a secret. But Thea has done her research and know that she has a son conceived at the same time the cheque was written. Oliver confirms that William is his son, but tells her of his deal with Samantha. He can see William, as long as no one knows he is his father, including William. Thea tells him he is doing the right thing by not telling Felicity, as it’s keeping William safe. “Trust me I would love to be an aunt, but you have got to do the right thing for your son here,” Thea tells him.

Felicity goes to see Curtis Holt at Palmer Tech to see if he can get anything else off the laptop. He hides what he is working on behind a screensaver of Felicity herself. “Curtis, why is my face your screensaver?” she says. “At the risk of early termination, none of your business!” He tells her it’s a secret, an early wedding gift he is working on for her and Oliver and she lets him be: “whatever the surprise is, it better be good.”

Oliver and Lance discuss Donna again, and Oliver tells him he is doing the right thing. Lance asks him how he deals with the double life, the secrets, the lies. “Sometimes a lie isn’t wrong, if it’s for the good of someone that you love,” Oliver tells Lance.

The night of the debate arrives and the crew still have not tracked down the Demolition Team’s next target. Felicity gets a call from Curtis; he’s pulled the blueprints off the laptop and sends them through. They’re for the theatre that they are in right now, the location of the mayoral debate. “Why would they target the debate?” says Felicity. “To take me out, discourage anyone else from running,” replies Oliver. They realise the precision team will try and wipe everyone apart from Ruve out, and she will emerge as the hero survivor, ready to take over City Hall. They have their leathers with them, lucky right? And Felicity calls Diggle and Laurel to come and help them find the explosives. They pull the fire alarm and clear the building. Ruve evacuates with the others, but calls Nail Gun and tells her that Oliver can not be permitted to leave the building alive. “Copy that,” she replies.

Team Arrow checks out the theatre trying to locate the explosives, they find a few and start to try and neutralise the acid in them. They find themselves under attack. Sledgehammer and Nail Gun are at it again, and Laurel cops a nail to the face. Nasty. Laurel and Thea manage to take Nail Gun down, while Diggle gets the better of Sledgehammer by using a magnetic repelling device thingo. You know the one I mean. Oliver is still fighting the other dude with an uninteresting weapon, when Lance comes in and shoots him. The crew manage to deactivate all the explosives, and Lance tells Oliver he needs to get changed for the debate.

Ruve and Oliver begin their debate:”this applause, it’s enough to bring the house down. Almost,” he says to her, letting her know that he knows it was her. And now she knows that he knows that she knows he knows. You know? Oliver beats her convincingly, as she never thought she would actually have to participate and is rattled.

At the engagement party, every one is having a great time and Lance arrives to talk to Donna. He tells her exactly what’s been going on, and how he worked for HIVE because they threatened Laurel. She is shocked to find he worked for the people that hurt Felicity, but understands that he was just protecting Laurel. She also realises that he is also trying to protect her by keeping his distance. They kiss and make up, awwwww.

Oliver and Felicity greet Curtis and his partner Paul; Curtis tells Felicity the gift he has been working on is finally ready. She undoes a small box, and find a microchip. “Thanks! We forgot to register for a microchip.” “Actually it’s neither micro, or a chip. It’s an implantable bio-stimulant,” Curtis tells her. “And why would I need an implantable bio-,” she trails off. “For walking,” Curtis says. He tells her in a perfect world it will work in time for her to walk down the aisle, but it’s cutting edge so he can’t promise anything. He’d been working on it for a while, but finally found a power source, the new Palmer Tech power cell. “Curtis, you’re terrific!” says Oliver. (Tiny Mr Terrific squeeeee!)*

At the Darhk residence, Damien greets his daughter Nora, and tells her he would like to introduce her to a guest they will have staying for a while. It’s William! Nooooooo!

*Curtis Holt becomes Mr Terrific in future episodes, eeep!

And next week – Vixen!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIowimIx77k