Check out Violet’s recap of Season 4 Episode 14 of Arrow, titled Code of Silence, where Oliver gets ready for his debate, and HIVE comes after Captain Lance! Following the recap, both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Arrow, Season 4 Episode 14: Code of Silence
Oliver and the new mayoral candidate, Ruve Adams, meet for the first time at the site of the debate. When she leaves, the Arrow Team gets to work following her — Felicity via her tablet, Diggle via a truck, and Speedy and Green Arrow via their motorcycles. However, they suddenly lose the signal. It turns out that Ruve and her guys are onto them, and a firefight breaks out, which soon turns into hand to hand combat. In the chaos, Ruve gets away.
Back at the Arrow Cave, Oliver wonders what Darhk is up to.
Over at HIVE Headquarters, Darhk holds a meeting, which includes his wife and Malcolm Merlyn, among others. The others are a bit skeptical of Phase 5 resting on Darhk’s wife’s campaign. They also bring up a loose end — Captain Lance. But Darhk says it’s about to be tied up.
At the police station, Laurel is vising her father, who gets a call to a crime scene. Despite his protests, Laurel insists on going with him and going to dinner after with him and Donna.
At Felicity and Oliver’s place, Donna is going overboard planning their engagement party. Thea stops by to talk to Oliver. She tells him Alex found something on him — a tax audit has revealed that their mom wrote a check for $1,000,000 to a woman named Samantha Clayton, but it was never cashed. Oliver pays dumb and pretends not to be concerned.
Lance and Laurel pull up to his breaking and entering call, and he explains that the department is short-handed. Laurel waits in the car while Lance goes inside to investigate. The ceiling comes crashing down on him, and Laurel runs inside just then and helps him. As they run out of the building, it keeps crashing down around them. They make it out just in time, before the entire building collapses.
Back at the Arrow Cave, Diggle patches Lance up, and they surmise that this was Darhk’s work. Diggle heads home to talk to Andy, while Thea takes Oliver for debate prep.
Donna stops by Lance’s office. Lance tells her that they can’t see each other anymore, and he makes up a story about owing guys some money. Donna doesn’t buy it though, and can tell that Lance is lying. She leaves, just as Felicity is coming in. He explains to her that he doesn’t want anything to happen to Donna.
At the Arrow Cave, Felicity traces where the call to Lance came from. The Arrow team heads to that location. Two men and a woman working for Darhk are there, and they fight it out. Darhk’s people get away, as the building begins to explode, just like the hotel did that Lance went into. Speedy recovers the laptop they were using, barely making it out in time before the building collapses.
The laptop is filled with nails from the nail gun the woman was wielding. Felicity is tasked with recovering data from the damaged laptop. Lance informs Oliver that Donna called it quits, and tells Oliver that he’s lucky he’s with someone he doesn’t have to keep secrets from.
At Felicity and Oliver’s place, Donna cries to Felicity about Lance. She tells her that she’s gone “Momzilla” on her engagement party because she’s living vicariously through her. She also says that Felicity and Oliver have a relationship that everyone believes in, and that she wishes she could have a love like that. Felicity tells Donna that she does have that, with Lance, and they maybe he was just trying to protect her.
Meanwhile, Thea works on his debate points with him. She also confronts him about the fact that he went to college with Samantha Clayton. She has figured out that her son William is his son. Thea tries to comfort him about his guilt for keeping this from Felicity, and tells him that it’s the right thing to do, that keeping William a secret is keeping him safe.
Just then, Diggle calls Oliver and tells him what he found out from Andy – that there’s one warehouse that stocks the special acid used for the explosions of the buildings. Green Arrow and Diggle go there, but the place has already been cleaned out of hundreds of gallons of the acid.
At Palmer Tech, Felicity gives the damaged laptop to Curtis to work on.
Oliver puts his suit on for the mayoral debate. He and Lance have a chat, and Oliver reassures him about his choice to protect Donna, telling him that sometimes the lie isn’t wrong if it’s for the good of someone that you love.
Thea goes over some last minute pointers with Oliver before the debate. Curtis calls Felicity to report what he found, which are some blueprints — which reveal that HIVE is planning on attacking the debate. Thea pulls the fire alarm to get everyone out. Ruve radios to her people, the same ones we saw earlier, and tells them not to let Oliver Queen leave the theater.
Outside, Lance shows up and tells Donna and Felicity to stay outside. Inside, Green Arrow, Diggle, Speedy, and Black Canary look around the building and try to disarm the explosives. Diggle’s bomb is booby trapped and blows him back. Then a guy comes and attacks him, and they fight. Meanwhile, Laurel gets attacked by the nail gun woman, and Oliver fights the other guy. Thea and Laurel then team up against the nail gun lady, and take her out. They all successfully disarm the bombs with the neutralizing agent. Lance comes in and arrests the attackers. Oliver gets dressed back in his suit, and they get on with the debate, though Oliver whispers to Ruve, insinuating that he knows what she was up to. Later, the experts declare Oliver to be the winner.
Back at Oliver and Felicity’s place, they enjoy their engagement party. Donna isn’t happy to see Lance. However, he admits that he lied to her because he was afraid how she would react to the truth. He confesses that the people he was worried about was HIVE, and that he’s in their gunsights because he stopped working for them, and that he was only doing so to protect Laurel. Donna realizes he was protecting Laurel just like he was protecting her. She kisses him and they make up. Curtis and his husband Paul show up, and Curtis gives Felicity a surprise gift: it’s a an implantable biostimulant — so that she can walk in time for her to be able to walk down the aisle.
Over at Damien Darhk’s place, he introduces his daughter to a new friend that’ll be staying with them awhile — it’s William.
Flashbacks
Reiter has Oliver and the other prisoners clearing out some rocks from a wall. The other prisoners don’t seem to like Oliver. Taiana stands up for Oliver, and he explains what happened with Vlad. They tell him to prove himself — by killing Conklin. Oliver is afraid that killing Conklin will make him a monster again.
Later, Reiter talks to Oliver about the maps that he recovered, which helped him decipher the inscriptions on the rock that he took from Oliver. Reiter is seeking a hidden place within which lies a device of untold power, and requires one who has been granted passage by the gods. Reiter believes that person is Oliver. Reiter is called away, and Conklin stays and guards Oliver. Oliver takes the opportunity to attack Conklin. They fight, and ultimately Oliver stabs Conklin in the chest. Before he dies, he warns Oliver that Reiter is going to kill everyone, no matter what he does. Later, Oliver claims to Reiter that it was self defense. Reiter’s suspicious and warns Oliver not to test him again. Taiana kisses Oliver on the cheek in thanks. Oliver reveals to Taiana what Conklin told him, and says they don’t have much time.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 4 Episode 14 of Arrow: Code of Silence
Although this episode had a lot of great action, several things happened in it that annoyed me. First of all, at the beginning of the episode, where they’re trying to follow Ruve Adams to Damien Darhk — well, they’re not so stealthy about it. Nothing about two motorcycles equals stealth. They’re very loud and attract attention. I mean, sure, the stunts were cool with Speedy coming out of the truck, and Green Arrow make a big jump — but they don’t make sense within the storyline at all.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but Ruve Adams, Damien Darhk, and HIVE as a whole (aside from Malcolm Merlyn) don’t know that Oliver Queen is Green Arrow, right? I don’t think that Malcolm has revealed that secret to them, only the secret that Oliver Queen has a son, not that Green Arrow has a son. But the questions and comments that Oliver makes to Ruve sure makes it seem like everyone’s in the know. For example, when Oliver asks Ruve is Adams is her maiden name, why would he ask that if he didn’t already know that she is Damien Darhk’s wife, which only Green Arrow and his team would know? There’s no reason that anyone would randomly ask a woman if that was her maiden name. Then at the end when he makes the comment to her about almost bringing the house down, that’s a little suspicious as well, if she didn’t already know who he was.
Then there’s the fact that Thea figured out that Oliver has a son named William. Sure, he didn’t break his promise to Samantha, since he’s not the one who came out and told her. But now somebody else knows. And he already knows that Malcolm Merlyn knows. Which begs the question, why can’t Felicity know? She’s very smart and tech savvy, she theoretically could have figured it out herself. Samantha would never know that Oliver told her. How does it protect William for Felicity not to know about him? It doesn’t. The whole ultimatum that Samantha required of Oliver in order to see his son is ridiculous. She doesn’t even know that he’s Green Arrow. Oliver Queen is no longer a billionaire, so it’s not like people would kidnap William and hold him hostage for ransom money. It makes no sense, other than a plot device to drive Oliver and Felicity apart when she finds out from someone else that Oliver has a son and didn’t tell her. Which is annoying.
Anyway, so now Damien Darhk has William. Wonder how that happened, and what he plans to do with him…
Josh’s Thoughts: Arrow, Season 4 Episode 14: Code of Silence
I think the best part of this episode actually had to be the gift that Curtis gave to Felicity–the chip that would give her the ability to walk. I had a feeling Felicity would not be bound to the wheel chair for long, and while it is a bit gimmicky to give her some piece of tech to walk again, I still like the idea of it, as the emotional meaning behind it is pretty awesome. One thing you have to think about though–This piece of tech combined with the new battery Palmer Tech has invented, Palmer Tech could be raking in the dough. I guess we will see if this piece of tech will have wider usage within the the story.
One thing I thought was a big cheesy this episode, was when Oliver and Thea are stalking Darhk’s wife. They use loud motorocycles, performing acrobatic stunts to follow her, and they are surprised when they know that she is being followed. How in the world were they not expected to be discovered? It seemed really odd, despite being some pretty cool stunt scenes on their own.
I didn’t really care for the storyline this episode either, though. It seemed like based on what happened, people should easily be able to figure out that Oliver Queen is the Arrow. I still contend though, the action scenes in Arrow are done very well, and seem nearly movie quality. It does surprise me that they are able to pull off such scenes given how small TV budgets are.
Scenes from Arrow, Season 4 Episode 15: Taken
Here are scenes from the next Arrow episode, titled Taken:
I still need to start watching arrow. I’ve heard good things.