Arrow - Recap: You Will Always Be My Girl

Episode 14 of Season 2 of Arrow, “Time of Death,” focused on the time-obsessed villain William Tockman , better known as the Clock King. While Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) felt left out as the rest of Team Arrow shared battle scar stories, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) worked on reintegrating herself into the Lance family. Laurel (Katie Cassidy) was receptive for, like, a few minutes. Finally, while Thea (Willa Holland) could feel the tension between her mother, Moira (Susanna Thompson), and her brother, Oliver (Stephen Amell), the entire game was changed by another unfortunate encounter in the Queen family living room at the episode's close. Here is the Recap and Review of Arrow Season 2 Episode 14, “Time of Death”!

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Preface: Joe loves Felicity. Don’t hate me yet.

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Episode 14 opened with some sweaty “stick” training in the Arrow Cave. I’m not really an expert on weaponry, but, you know, Ollie, Sara, and Diggle (David Ramsey) practiced combat with those big wooden sticks they like to whack others with. Felicity, meanwhile, began to feel pushed out following the decision to include another plucky blonde in the group. As Felicity moped, Sara began to cringe as her customary “welcome back from the dead” party loomed on the horizon. Laurel, for one, had no plans to attend the party thrown at Queen Manor.

The party reintroduced us to the friendship between Sara and Sin (Bex Taylor-Klaus), which I, for one, had almost forgotten about. Thea was surprised by the level of comfort shared between these two “strangers” who apparently had great hugging chemistry. Something that was slightly more uncomfortable to watch was Officer Lance’s (Paul Blackthorne) decision to formally apologize to Ollie for having been so hard on him upon his return to Starling City. It wasn’t entirely fair to judge this manned-up Oliver Queen as the young party boy “Paris Hilton” Ollie who’d been shipwrecked on that awful island. Unfortunately for both Ollie and Sara, the party was cut short. A homicide was reported in The Glades.

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Why would anyone murder someone using the minute hand of a clock? Well, we were previously introduced to the Clock King, a man who managed to acquire a very dangerous piece of technology during some of the show’s opening scenes. The Clock King, in possession of this “skeleton key,” could essentially activate any computerized locking system in the world, including those keeping the money in banks safe and sound. We became privy to the way in which the Clock King worked very quickly. This is a villain who operates from a distance and instructs thugs on very specific time intervals they’re to act upon. For example, when one of his chosen cronies decided to panic and work off the schedule, it inevitably ended up getting some security guards shot and killed. Also, it landed a minute hand of a clock in this thug’s heart as punishment for daring to doubt the Clock King’s intelligence and perfect planning. If he tells you to stand in front of a security camera for 12.4234 seconds, it’s for a reason! Punctuality and timeliness are great qualities for someone to have!

Luckily for Ollie and Sara, this master hacker had no way of realizing that the vigilante is now working with a partner. At the first bank heist following the acquisition of the skeleton key, the pair might have been just a few seconds too late to stop the criminals from actually carrying out Clock King’s orders, but his taunting via a hack in their communication line revealed just how unaware he was. Meanwhile, poor Felicity sat by idly in the Arrow Cave. The Clock King was very clever and an expert at computers, obviously. How could Oliver stop the crooks from running off with the cash if it meant allowing a train-on-bus collision to occur down the street. That’s right, the Clock King was even able to orchestrate something like that, though it didn’t seem like he was actually out to spill blood. One of the coolest scenes to watch during Episode 14 had to be the moment Ollie was nearly pinned between the speeding train and the halting bus after stopping the impending accident in the nick of time. Sara, meanwhile, did some dueling with the thugs as they attempted to speed away, nailing the peeking-out Clock King in the forehead with one of her Canary staffs in the process. I thought that part was more funny than anything else, but having a bit of residual flesh and blood left on her weapon proved useful later!

What do you know? Sara Lance is also an expert at analyzing blood samples due to her time spent working on Ivo’s freight ship freak show! Felicity’s sense of inadequacy began to swell, and Diggle certainly began to take notice. Guys, fun fact: MacGregor’s syndrome, the disease that causes fatal organ failure apparently plaguing the Clock King, is actually a fictitious disease. It’s what Mr. Freeze’s wife Nora suffered from! In any case, the man didn’t have long to live and his condition was fatal, yet he continued his crime spree. Why? Because he also happened to have a sister with cystic fibrosis who needed some cold hard cash to survive. The family couldn’t catch a break, apparently.

I’ll be honest; there was a whole lot of hacking going on during Episode 14. So much so that I’m going to go ahead and say it got a little jumbled when it came to decoding who could trace whose hacks via viruses, trails, etc. The Clock King usually seemed to have the upper hand. Oliver and Sara tracked the location of the Clock King’s moving warehouse of sorts thanks to some help from Felicity. Of course, the empty vehicle, save for a tiny internet router, was a dead giveaway to an apparent trap. The Clock King once again hacked through Felicity’s technology and seized control of the Arrow Cave using this small device from afar. In the end, a virus decimated anything technological housed in Ollie’s lair in one fell swoop of electrical explosions. Lots of sparks in this scene. Arrow loves the sparkler effects.

It didn’t seem like anybody blamed Felicity but herself, for what it’s worth. The Arrow Cave might have been a bit dank and dark following the Clock King’s attack, but they were set on having it up and running again in no time. I liked the heart-to-heart moment between Diggle and Felicity here. He'd recognized her funk from the get-go but never called her out on it in front of the others. Our Felicity is, indeed, irreplaceable, though she still failed to believe it at this point.

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Sara managed to convince Oliver to get dragged along to a Lance family reunion dinner hosted by… Laurel!? That’s correct, folks! Officer Lance seemed to be feeling a reignited chemistry in his relationship with his wife, Dinah (Alex Kingston), since the return of Sara to Starling City. Laurel, realizing that there was the potential for her family to get back together, offered to give Sara another chance and even managed to privately put down the pills for a change. By the time the pizza party began, however, things changed. First, Dinah Lance was in no way interested in rekindling things with her ex. In fact, she has a happy life with a new man in Central City. Sara, for one, was simply glad to see her mother happy, a sentiment that accidentally tipped Laurel off to her sister’s own revisited relationship with Oliver. Cue another Laurel explosion! Outside of Laurel’s apartment, Oliver sure laid into her regarding her need to blame others. I was all for that, though I thought his final statement pressuring her to go get wasted a little much. By the way, do we think this is the end of this couple for good? It sure seemed like Ollie left the conversation with any hope for a future left buried six feet under.

Under Oliver’s orders, $800,000 in liquidated company stocks were moved to his account at Starling International Bank in order to bait the Clock King into one last heist. Felicity, desperate to prove her worth and regain her title of “Best Hacker Ever,” decided to take it upon herself to handle the crime in person at the bank. I’m not sure whether it was fortunately or unfortunately for Felicity, but the entire rest of the team managed to meet up with her just before the thugs could arrive. I’m not really sure what Felicity was planning on doing anyway, but she managed to find a bank computer to use to her advantage. The Clock King sent the bank’s gas valves into overdrive in the basement, sufficiently occupying Diggle’s time as he fought to prevent a massive three-block explosion. Felicity, meanwhile, managed to tap into the enemy’s control over the gas valves in order to pinpoint the man’s location within the building. With Black Canary close by and Oliver fighting from afar, the two ladies managed to bump into the Clock King on their own. Sara, not realizing where the man was hiding to begin with, was lucky Felicity was around to knock her out of the way as a barrage of bullets came flying towards her. Felicity struggled through a bullet wound to activate a virus implanted in the Clock King’s phone, blowing it to bits and rendering him the official loser of the hack war.

Back at the Arrow Cave, Sara stitched up a super high Felicity, whose elation surrounding having earned a bullet wound scar was only escalated by all the “aspirin” Diggle slipped her. Unable to process the words swimming around in her brain, the most endearing moment this week was from Felicity, who admitted to feeling a little left out in a one-on-one conversation with Ollie.

I’m just used to being your girl.

You will always be my girl.

To close the recap, Episode 14 ended with three awesome moments, two positive and one uh-oh. First, Laurel met up with Verdant’s new bartender, Sara and apologized for her behavior, admitting to feeling like she’s slowly been dying inside since the shipwreck situation. The two hugged it out and ended things this week on a good note. Laurel then bumped into her father at her first meeting for her addiction issues. We did visit the island this week, by the way, though only to briefly witness a tiny plane being shot from the sky. The plane crash-landed in the jungle, and Sara spent the innocent pilot’s last moments with him alone. He slipped her a photo of his 12-year-old daughter, who was soon sure to become an orphan, and begged her to reach out. In the present, we learned that this little girl grew up to be Sin. Thus, we officially have our connection.

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Episode 14 ended with an epic moment. Thea, realizing that Oliver and his mother had some sort of intense tension going on, falsely reported an emergency back at Queen Manor to her brother. Ollie rushed home to find that he’d been duped. Unfortunately, however, Thea happened to take a lucky guess. Oliver was “introduced to” Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett) from the comfort of his own family home to close out Episode 14.

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What did you think of Arrow Season 2 Episode 14, “Time of Death”? Will you miss drug-addled Laurel? Do you like Ollie with Sara? What will transpire between Ollie and Slade? Were you happy that Felicity finally got shot?

Thanks for reading my Recap and Review of Arrow Season 2 Episode 14, “Time of Death”!