apinknightmare

And in addition, Sara loved Sin - she would've never been in town and not let her know or stopped by to see her. Another big clue-in.

No, nothing like that that I've seen. Just that it exists and there's a set, but it wouldn't be used for Oliver. They never specifically said it wouldn't be used for anyone else though.

I think it has already showed up. Isn't that what Ra's was stepping out of when we first saw him in The Magician?

Regarding MG's tweet about the feeling about the back half of the season being "I can't believe we're doing this," Oliver's joining the League, right? And in the finale we'll get some "Unthinkable" style flashback that shows Oliver's either in cahoots with Ra's to take down Malcolm? I'd say in cahoots with Malcolm to take down Ra's, but that seems too obvious. So...could be it, but is the fact that Malcolm's bugged the foundry going to come back? I can see Oliver using that as a tool to fool Malcolm (like he did Slade), but then that would mean that either Felicity and Diggle and the rest aren't in on it and they're being tricked for the back half of the season to lull Malcolm into a sense of comfort knowing what's going on, and thus Oliver lies to everyone for the next handful of episodes, or we're being tricked and they're all in on it. I don't like either scenario for a multitude of reasons. Maybe the spying was a one-time thing that will never be brought up ever again. Using Ra's to defeat Malcolm would leave Ra's intact to be a villain further down the road. Unless Oliver infiltrates the LoA and takes them down with Maseo's help at which point Oliver disbands the League, and...someone reforms it and comes back for revenge further down the line? I don't even know. Throwing spaghetti against the wall here.

Sadly, I think those are Emily's. And ditto on the hair.

It could go either way. I mean, he definitely needs to be an idiot for this plot to work, but I can't tell if him being an idiot is in character in this instance. He reacts rather than thinks when the lives of the people he loves are in danger, so I think it's both in character and not. I fully believe he'd make some dumbass alliance to keep Thea safe, but after knowing all Malcolm has done it seems ridiculous to me that he really wouldn't try to get her away from him somehow, or at least open her eyes to what he's been doing to her - I mean, it is in character for him to keep secrets in the name of "protection," but to let her live with a man who drugged and manipulated her? Nah, son. I get that we're supposed to believe Oliver has some twisted guilt inside him for Thea losing her father and losing Moira and so (conveniently forgetting Walter) Malcolm is all she has left of her parentage biologically speaking, but he was never a father to her, is manipulative and dangerous and crazy, so...yeah, I can't believe Oliver would put her wants above her safety, especially when he's going so far to ensure her safety. It's all stupid.

Yeah, it's not the best word. You described what I meant - I just don't think it's a hard and fast no for her like it Oliver wants it to be for himself.

I think Oliver is being a near-sighted dumbass, but I don't think the Malcolm team-up is just to delay Olicity. That's a repercussion, sure, but it's a lazy way of ultimately get Thea more involved in the Ra's plot to give Oliver a motivation to do any of this at all, among other things that I'm sure we haven't found out about yet. Now that Ra's has almost killed Oliver and will eventually be after his sister, why would Oliver ever willingly interact with Ra's again? Well, let's have him capture Malcolm and have Oliver at least consider going to Nanda Parbat to rescue his evil ass. Yeah, the plot is stupid and makes no sense, but it's not just an Olicity obstacle, of that I'm sure. Oliver's habitually a dumbass for plot reasons, but it seems to frequently serve many plots, not just one.

The only reason I thought it might be a bomb or something is since someone's getting hospitalized, haha.

I think the 5 seconds is in reference to something other than screen time, like there's a bomb situation and Oliver gets Felicity out of it with 5 seconds to spare or something (or Felicity gets Oliver out of it with 5 seconds to spare). That's why he's being cheeky with the 5 seconds response - because he never said that's how much screen time they'd get.

I'll disagree with the reviewer on one point - Felicity has always gone toe-to-toe with Oliver and called him out when she thought he was doing something stupid. That isn't something new that she's grown into at all. She's expressed her feelings about what Oliver's doing from the hot second she slipped into her chair in the foundry.

Felicity's always been a little wishy-washy with her stance on death. She didn't have an issue signing on with Oliver when he was killing people, but she didn't think that everyone who did bad things deserved to die (like the guy with the son she didn't want orphaned in the Dodger episode). It always seemed to me she stuck firmly to the no-killing rule because Oliver wanted so badly not to be a killer anymore. Maybe that wasn't the writers' intent, since they thought her telling Oliver to kill Ra's was OOC for her. I didn't get that at all in that scene. Hadn't she previously encouraged Oliver to kill Slade when he had Thea by telling him to "do whatever it takes?" Maybe I misread that as well.

Well, he obviously hasn't been working on his beer gut, so he must be exercising his mind.

I thought maybe the no-kill rule was going out the window when Felicity encouraged him to kill Ra's and he replied that he honestly didn't know if he was a killer anymore (like, why would he not know that? He hadn't killed anyone since the Count and made a pretty big fucking deal about that, and he talked Laurel down when she wanted to kill Komodo when she thought he killed Sara), but then he comes back and tells Malcolm "no more death." Unless Oliver's still open to killing people because reasons, but he wants Malcolm to be better for Thea which...what? Know how you all could be better for Thea? BY LETTING HER KNOW HER FATHER DRUGGED HER. It does not compute.

Not sure if this goes here since it's not technically Green Arrow, but DC's launching a new Black Canary book. There's really not much on it other than the announcement at the link.

Marc Guggenheim said on Tumblr that Malcolm planted the camera, which I suppose is supposed to not make her look incompetent, since Malcolm wouldn't have had to hack into her system in order to see/hear them, but then they had to go and put a huge spy cam right in her line of sight. C'mon, girl. I'm glad they didn't go with the hacked route, because no MIT grad (or anyone with common sense, really) would be stupid enough to bring any kind of camera down into a base for illegal activities, haha.

I get both sides here. I understand why Felicity's upset, and I understand why Oliver thinks he needs to do what he's doing. I think Oliver is pretty consistently a dumbass when it comes to protecting the people he loves and I find that oddly endearing, but I really don't understand how he can jump in with both feet with Merlyn to do whatever he has to do to keep Thea safe from Ra's while leaving her completely exposed to Merlyn, considering he, you know, drugged her and made her kill someone. The secret keeping on the show is ridiculous.

With whichever EP (AK, maybe?) saying she'll become Katana by the end of the season, maybe she's one of the "legitimate heroes" or whatever DR called them, that frees Oliver up to be a real boy.

Maybe Malcolm offed him and we just haven't found out about it yet.

Based on the spoiler pics of him getting slovenly looking (for a billionaire), I think she's worried he's getting lost in the mission like Oliver did, not that he'll go out and get killed like Oliver almost did. Gotta have those parallels.

True. And even though to me it seems like they found out ages ago, they did discover Thea did it after Laurel quenched the bloodthirst. Does it even really matter if he actually does it at this point? With Thea in danger, why on earth would Oliver even consider going to save Merlyn when Ra's could kill them both? All this noble bullshit to protect her, that he'd even consider leaving her to go save some scumbag murder is just beyond to me.

Well, there was a very real reason to believe that Laurel would go ripshit on Thea considering she was out for blood with everyone else. Now, maybe not. Before? It's a good thing no one told her.

I love that the reason Oliver shows her the foundry is because Digg tells him she's gonna be pissed when she finds out he's been lying to her. Tell her the least bad secret then, the less damaging one of the three you're keeping from her, you beautiful moron. That's the ticket!

If she does, god, what is wrong with her? If she doesn't, OLIVER, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? It's stupid either way.

I can just see him standing on a cliff, raising his hands in triumph, yelling, "FINALLY, WHAT IS MINE!!!!" and he's standing in front of an empty field.