Anyway, Oliver was left alone, still the Mayor, still taking meetings with District Attorney Adrian Chase, a man who he knew to be a cold blooded killer, all while admitting defeat and that there was no way to fight him as he was always 10 steps ahead. At least that's how it seemed as Oliver had realised that to beat Adrian/Prometheus he'd need to do something that he'd never expect. As such, Oliver called his Bratva brother Anatoly to come to Star City and kill Chase.
In the flashback's we saw Oliver begin his plans to head home, starting with establishing his cover story of being stranded on Lian Yu for the entire five years he was gone. But Anatoly wanted Oliver's help with one last good old fashioned heist before he went. Historically the Bratva had helped the community it was based in but greed drove its leaders to forget its nobler goals, something Anatoly wanted to get back to. The heist in question was to steal tuberculosis medicine for a local hospital where children were suffering from a recent outbreak. With Oliver donning the Hood once again, they managed to do just that, with Oliver asking Anatoly how it felt to be a modern day Robin Hood - with a nice nod to the fact Oliver's the one who dresses like him. It all felt like the Russia backstory was coming to a good, more heartwarming ending, but Anatoly wondered what kind of man would he be without Oliver by his side?
Flash forward five years to 2017 and Anatoly reunited with Oliver, more than happy to kill his enemy for him using some of his best man, but at a price. With the nod from Oliver, Anatoly and his men stole a shipment of diabetes medicine, something that the former Team Arrow members tried to stop before finding out Oliver gave Anatoly the go ahead. Diggle, ever battling to save Oliver's soul, asked him to reconsider making a deal with organised criminals, but Oliver saw it as the only way to stop Chase. The Bratva even tried to kill Chase whilst he was under police escort, but were thwarted by Not Team Arrow in their efforts, which lead Chase to being put into U.S. Marshal custody, possibly blowing any shot they had a killing him.
However, unlike five years ago when stealing medical supplies was for a good cause, this time Anatoly wanted it along with a second component to manufacture a new street drug that he felt would secure the Bratva's financial future. Seeing what Anatoly had become in the last five years, seeing the length's he'd go to to survive, made Oliver realise that he couldn't let this stand so he rejoined his Team to stop Anatoly and his men from stealing the second ingredient they needed for their new drug.
Through her connections with Helix, Felicity got hold of video of Prometheus unmasking caught by a random CCTV camera but there was one problem however, his face was pixelated due to a personal signal scrambler he wore on his person. After getting a hold of it during the earlier attempt on Chase's life, Curtis and Felicity tried to reverse engineer the device to unscramble the footage but found they could only do it at the source, where the device was manufactured.
So as Not Team Arrow, led by Oliver, raced to stop Anatoly, Felicity and Curtis broke into the computer lab of a tech company to hopefully get the last piece of the puzzle needed to prove Chase was Prometheus. Having the action cut between these two scenes as they played out simultaneous was a brilliant move by ARROW, and I have to give a shout out to the shot of Wild Dog shooting and diving through glass guns first, like something straight out of a comic book.
As Felicity and Curtis were successful in unscrambling their Prometheus video, Oliver thwarted Anatoly, burning any bridges he may have had with the Bratva and potentially, almost certainly, making a powerful new enemy out of his old friend. This week's episode seemed to have brought a bittersweet conclusion to the exploration of Oliver's friendship with Anatoly in the flashbacks, which have retrospectively given them a lot more weight.
With their evidence of Prometheus's identity, for expediency's sake having been verified as legitimate by independent experts, the SCPD put out the word they wanted Chase. The U.S. Marshals who were baby-sitting him received the message to bring him in but Chase was too smart for them. Knowing exactly the moment he had been made, he killed the Marshals, brutally dispatching one with just his pen, before driving back to Star City, right past the police racing to the safe house to take him into custody. With nothing left to lose and no secret identity to fall back on, it feels like Adrian was entering the final stage of his plan and may be more dangerous than ever.
Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer -- Click to read Nick's posts
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