It is our first episode with out Laurel and we see a showdown between the Diggle brothers, Thea and Alex take a vacation and Oliver takes Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons from an old friend of Constantine. Also, the Arrowverse really loves Harry Potter as we get another reference here.

Hub City Hogwarts

Damien Darhk is out of prison and back at his hidden lair meeting with his council. Darhk tells those present that Malcolm said they weren’t willing to help him out while incarcerated. Milo Armitage and Ms. Nixon tries to plead their loyalty. When the council assures that Genesis is on track, Darhk ends up killing Armitage and Ms. Nixon for their lack of confidence in him.

Felicity is alerted to these deaths and Team Arrow knows that Darhk is behind it. Oliver tells the team that he got in touch with Constantine and he told him about a friend who can help him combat Darhk’s magic. Oliver lets the team know he is off to Hub City to meet his magic tutor. Felicity comes along to as she doesn’t want Oliver to go alone.

When they get to Hub City, Oliver and Felicity are in fancy dress as they are headed into a high rollers casino to meet their magic tutor. The two end up at a Blackjack table where Felicity is quite successful and generous too as she offers some of her chips to a woman who just lost her last few. When Oliver thinks that Constantine’s friend is a no show, it turns out the woman at their table is their Yoda. This woman is Esrin Fortuna (Gabriella Wright), an immortal shaman, and she magically transports them to a candle-lit chamber that contains an idol that looks like Darhk’s. Oliver mentions how the chamber looks like the one on Lian-Yu. Before she transports them to this area, Esrin mentions that the two should trust her if they want to learn to defend against the dark arts. Not quite a direct Harry Potter reference but close enough. Esrin said the way to combat Darhk’s magic is to counterbalance the darkness of it with light. Oliver needs to tap into the light within or if the darkness takes over, then Darhk will become too powerful.

Esrin’s first attempt, Oliver easily deflects the darkness. However, when Esrin tries again, Oliver starts to see all the darkness that has been in his life like his father sacrificing himself, him mom being murdered by Slade, being beaten up by Deathstroke, Felicity breaking up with him and Laurel’s death. When Oliver emerges, Esrin tells him that there is too much darkness in him and tells him that it is hopeless. Esrin is the worse Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher since Gilderoy Lockhart!

Oliver seems to have given up and tells Felicity that she was right that he would revert back to what he was on the island. Felicity thinks otherwise and gives him a pep talk.

The Brothers Diggle

Diggle goes to see Lyla and baby Sara (who was so adorable throughout the whole episode) in their safe house, which is a mobile truck. Lyla doesn’t want Diggle to go after Andy but while out getting diapers for Sara, he gets an alert on where Andy is at and decides to go after him. Diggle gets into a gun fight with his baby brother but this was all a trap and he gets captured. In an abandoned industrial kitchen, Diggle is strung up and Andy is prepping him for Darhk. Andy stabs Diggle with an ice pick. We see that Andy is too much under the influence of Darhk as he renounces his family for his HIVE family. Andy even talks smack about Lyla and baby Sara. Diggle ends up getting loose and handcuffing Andy. Diggle points a gun at Andy. Andy wants him to shoot and kill him to avenge Laurel. But Diggle doesn’t. Andy tells Diggle that Laurel would be ashamed. Diggle says that he spared him because one of them is still a human.

When Diggle returns to the mobile hideout, Lyla is pissed and tells her husband that she is acting like the man she divorced and not the man she married. Diggle realizes that Andy let him escape as we see that he and Darhk planned everything in order to track Diggle to Lyla.

The mobile truck is stopped by Darhk and Diggle escapes with baby Sara. HIVE and Andy go after Diggle and thankfully Felicity arrives to hit HIVE soldiers with her van and she takes Sara to safety. Meanwhile, on the truck, Darhk is after something in Lyla’s arm but the Green Arrow arrives to stop him.

Darhk uses his magic to stop Oliver and when it looks like the magic will defeat him, Oliver taps into the light in him to stop Darhk’s magic but he still escapes. Later, Oliver tells Felicity that it was her voice encouraging him and the voices of Thea, Diggle and Laurel that helped him combat Darhk’s magic.

We get the showdown between Diggle and Andy. Honestly, Andy is being such an ass spewing all of Darhk’s rhetoric, denouncing his familial relations, talking smack about Team Arrow that I am so glad that Diggle actually had the guts to pull the trigger. Just before Andy died, he tells Diggle that Genesis is coming.

Back at the Arrow Cave, Diggle tells a recovering Lyla that he had to kill Andy because he was too far gone and he wasn’t gone to stop and his family would not be safe. Lyla comforts her husband but then realizes that what was in her arm is gone.

Lyla tells Team Arrow that what Darhk took was the Rubicon. It is a device that can stop nuclear weapons from being launched however it can be retrofitted to actually launch and attack the world. The team wonders why Darhk would want to do this. Diggle mentions that Andy said that Genesis was coming. Felicity being Felicity says she doesn’t think so as  Phil Collins said the band wouldn’t reunite. Genesis is actually a biblical reference to the flood and Noah’s ark. The team realizes that Darhk has something up his sleeve that would still allow him to rule a destroyed Earth. The team wonders what is Darhk’s version of the ark. This leads us to what Thea was going through in this episode.

Ghost Town Vacation

Since Thea is not needed to take “Harry Potter” magic lessons, she takes off on a romantic weekend getaway with Alex. Alex has whisked them away to the suburbs and at first everything seems great and relaxing. Alex has made a nice breakfast for Thea and the two take a quiet stroll around the neighbourhood. But Thea starts to notice things are quite right. Thea notes that the ambient noise in the neighbourhood are on a loop and that it is still daylight at 8pm. Alex thinks she is over tired. When Thea sees that Alex is taking vitamins that look like the pills that were given to Darhk’s followers that got them under control, she know something is up and leaves.

As Thea runs around the neighbourhood looking for a way out, she sees HIVE soldiers and when she thinks she is running into an open field, she hits an invisible barrier. We see that Thea is under a domed city that is beneath Star City.