Five weeks have passed since our last new episode and five weeks have passed since Arrow took down Cyrus Gold and Barry Allen was hit by lightening back in Central City. We open tonight’s episode with Arrow chasing down a low life criminal. When he eventually catches up to him, Arrow wants to know from him who is the man behind the skull mask. The criminal says he doesn’t know who he is.

Back at the Arrow Cave, Oliver debriefs with Diggle that he got no where with that criminal and we learn that Felicity is in Central City to be with Barry. He is in a coma (something tells me, he will wake up in the Pilot for The Flash). 

Meanwhile, at the DA office, Laurel talks with Adam Donner about her suspicions on Sebastian Blood. Her evidence is how he is linked to the Langford Institute and Blood knew Cyrus Gold, the man that killed 4 Starling City police officers. Before they could discuss it more, Laurel needs to leave for her date with Blood.

This date is actually at a political rally held at Verdant where Oliver throws his support behind Blood’s mayoral campaign. Blood’s speech involves him talking about raising from being a street orphan to making something with himself and now he wants to help save Starling City.

While everyone is mingling, Oliver talks to Thea about Roy and wonders if he is okay after getting shot by Arrow (of course we know that Oliver wants to know if Roy is having any negative side effects on getting the Mirakaru injected in him). Thea says everything is peachy keen with Roy.

Meanwhile, we see a man in a van muttering his anti-government propaganda when he sets off a bomb in a building. This is man, we learn later, is called Shrapnel.

At the Arrow Cave, Oliver tasks Diggle to find out all he can about the explosion. Diggle, at first has some difficulty considering that he is not Felicity. Anyways, we get a location and Arrow takes off and manages to rescue one guy trapped.

In the morning, Oliver and Diggle figure out that the bomber is unrelated to the man in the skull mask and find his anti-government manifesto online. They need to learn more about this guy and thank goodness Felicity has returned to Starling City. And after updating Dig and Oliver on Barry, she sets a meeting between Arrow and Lance to get some more information to help them.

Laurel, who has a particularly strong presence in tonight’s episode, visits Blood in his alderman/campaign office. Laurel wants to learn more about Blood and his past as well as his connection to Cyrus Gold. Blood tells Laurel about his parents. His dad was a drunk who couldn’t hold down a job and abused him and his mom. His mom had enough, shot him dead and ran away thus never seeing her son again. Blood says that Cyrus was a reverend at the orphanage and was a father figure to him. Laurel seems touched by his story.

As Blood goes to meet with the media, Laurel does some snooping on his desk and sees a bill from St. Walter’s Hospital for a Maya Resnick.

At Verdant, Thea is worried about Roy. She wants to know if he is okay after his encounter with Arrow. Roy says he is fine and just wants to finish putting away inventory. Thea walks away thinking Roy is pulling away from her. Roy apologizes and the two start to make out. When a crate full of wine glasses falls on his arm, a big shard of glass goes pretty deep into his arm. Thea goes to fetch the first aid kit. His wound looks bad but when he pulls away the towel, the wound is no longer there.

At night, Arrow meets with Lance on their favourite roof top. Lance gives some dirt samples they found at the bomb site. Since Lance is helping Arrow out, he wants Arrow to help him get his hands on phone records of every Starling City police officer as he believes a mole within their department was the reason why they were ambushed back in episode 9. Before we hear Arrow’s answer another explosion happens, this time targeting a Starling City municipal building.

Felicity helps Arrow find Shrapnel through a car chase that involves explosions and smoke bombs. But Shrapnel manages to elude Felicity’s tracking and loses Arrow.

Back at the Arrow Cave, Oliver is pissed at Felicity for making him lose Shrapnel and thinks her head is not in the game but back with Barry in Starling City. Each plays the blame game with each other and Felicity walks off. Diggle observes that Oliver has lately been on edge with Felicity ever since she met Barry. Hmm….sounds like the powers that be are going to give us Olicity.

These bombings are going to stop Blood however. To unite the city he is holding a unity rally. However, Arrow doesn’t think that this would be a good idea and pays the alderman a visit to try and persuade him to not hold and endanger people’s lives. Blood tells Arrow that he won’t back down.

Even though things are tense between Felicity and Oliver, she manages to pull through with the dirt that the police found. Felicity manages to trace what was found to a group called The Movement and after hacking their message boards, finds that one of their followers is in Starling City and his IP address originates from a souvenir store that he owns. His name: Shrapnel.

Oliver tells Diggle to go to the rally while he goes to visit Shrapnel’s store.

Before I forget, Laurel asks her dad to look into who is Maya Resnick. When he reports back to her, Lance tells her that Maya is Bloods aunt and St. Walters is a psych faciity. Lance says that Laurel should stop being suspicious of her boyfriends and says that Blood is one of the good guys.

Back to our main action, when Arro visits the store, Shrapnel has rigged it with explosives. A television turns on and we see live coverage of the unity rally. Shrapnel taunts Arrow with the amount of explosives that he has planted at the rally. Also, if Arrow moves one muscle, the entire store will blow up. When Oliver sees his family at the rally, he calls Felicity to see what she can do to help him stop the bomb. Felicity manages to find out what Oliver needs to do and Oliver is safe from the bomb but not before Felicity thinking that he blew up until she heard his reassuring voice.

At the rally, Blood speaks to the crowd while Diggle and Felicity (who has gone to rally) find where the trigger is. Felicity goes to disarm it when Shrapnel tells them to stop and shoots Diggle in the shoulder. This gets the crowd to start to disperse and when Shrapnel tosses a bomb in the air Arrow shots it so it explodes high above people.

Arrow gives chase to Shrapnel. Arrow catches up to him but Shrapnel threatens to blow up all the bombs he has set. But a well targeted arrow stops Shrapnel and he is taken into custody.

During all the chaos, a light beam is about to fall on Moira but Roy saves her and has that beam fall on him. He lifts it off him with his back with Thea witnessing this feat of strength. Back at Verdant, Roy brushes off his super strength to adrenalin and when questioned why his arm was all good, Roy replies that he is a fast healer.

Back at the Arrow Cave, Diggle is okay and takes off for the night. Now alone, Oliver apologizes for his boorish behaviour. Felicity accepts the apology and wonders if she would get Employee of the Month now. Oliver tells Felicity that she isn’t his employee but his partner. When Oliver began all of his hero work, he thought he could do it by himself. However, he realized that he needs her and relies on her. And he couldn’t do what he does without her or Diggle. And the way those two were looking at each other in that scene, really shows what great chemistry they have. But their moment is ruined when Oliver brings up Barry and that she should be there when he wakes up. Felicity bemoans that she finally has a guy interested in her and goes and falls in a coma. Oliver says that Barry is probably dreaming about her but Felicity babbles on about whether or not coma patients can dream but her ramblings are cut short when Oliver gently puts his hand on her shoulder. Olicity better happen soon.

Island Flashback

Slade, Oliver and Sara are burying Shado next to Oliver’s dad (and possibly Yao Fei). Oliver hopes that Shado is with her dad. When Slade makes to give Shado’s green hood to Oliver, Oliver says that Slade should have it but Slade doesn’t want it as Shade cared for Oliver. Oliver takes the hood. When Slade walks away, Oliver wants to tell the truth to Slade that Shado is dead because he chose to save Sara thus Ivo shot and killed Shado.

But Sara stops him from doing so and tells her about all the research she read about the negative effects of Mirakura. Those that survived ended up with not only deformed skulls but became mentally unstable.

As the trio walk the forest, Slade wants to head back to the plane to gear up to take on Ivo. Sara says  he should because Ivo has a ship full of men at his disposal. But Slade is insistent in going after him. When Oliver steps in his way, Slade grabs him by the throat almost choking him to death until Sara manages to stop him.

Slade looks mortified at what he has done. Sara then suggests that they camp for the night. While they are sleeping, Ivo contacts Sara via the walkie talkie. He knows that Sara has the Mirakaru and threatens to blow up the island to get it and also use them as guinea pigs. Ivo proposes a deal while Oliver gets Sara to seek Slade but he is nowhere to be found. Something tells me that no deals will be exchanged.

Back to the present day, the episode shocker is that the Maya Resick that we thought that Blood is doing good by is actually his mother and not his aunt. We learn that Blood was the actual one to kill his father and put her in the loony bin. Maya calls her son the devil and is not to be trusted. As we hear Maya say those words, we see Arrow and Blood shake hands sealing the deal to help protect Starling City together.

So far season 2 has not had a bad episode. And I can’t wait for next week as it looks like Deathstroke aka Slade might be confronting Arrow.