Arrow - Midseason Finale Recap: The Arrow Christmas Carol

Episode 9 of Season 2 of Arrow was the mid-season finale, and “Three Ghosts” was certainly a whopper of an hour. Spoiler: Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) didn’t die at the start of this week’s episode, thanks to Barry Allen (Grant Gustin). Most of the hour centered on The Arrow’s quest to take down this Cyrus Gold, who wasted no time attempting to redub himself as D.C. fan favorite Solomon Grundy. Speaking of the antagonistic undead, Ollie was visited by three "spirits" that came along with some severely mixed and convoluted messages. With a little help from Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy), Roy (Colton Haynes) and Thea (Willa Holland) continued their search for answers in the case of Sin’s (Bex Taylor-Klaus) dead buddy. Here is the Recap and Review of Season 2 Episode 9 of Arrow, “Three Ghosts”!

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If this midseason finale was intended to mirror the classic Dickens novella A Christmas Carol, then Oliver Queen certainly proved to make the perfect Scrooge! If you recall, Ollie wasn’t looking too hot at the close of Part 1 of this finale, but Barry was quick to connect the dots and point the finger at some sort of a chemical blood coagulant. Luckily, Thea’s club is infested with rats! A small injection of rat poison, an extreme blood thinner, brought Oliver’s vitals back to normal. Waking from his near-death experience, Queen thanked Barry and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) with a tirade over her audacity to risk exposing his identity in order to save his life. Hmm… I don’t get? Am I nuts? Dead is dead, Oliver Queen. Is it that important to protect your identity post-mortem when there is a veritable amount of chaos for you to handle, alive, on the streets at this very moment?

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Perhaps most importantly, the residual effects of the rat poison in Oliver’s system included some very realistic and quite tangible hallucinations. Shado (Celina Jade) was the first “spirit” to appear to Queen in the moments following his waking, but everything all seemed somewhat vague. There was a bit of begging to quit fighting and to lay down his bow, but mostly, Shado’s reappearance off the island and in Starling City sort of served to clue us in to the fact that she’d passed away before we got to witness her actual death. Flash back to the island sequence this week, and things became a lot clearer. Given the choice between saving Sara (Caity Lotz) from execution or saving Shado, Oliver found himself in the toughest predicament he’d faced yet. Unfortunately, the clock ran out of time before he could dare to make a decision, and that awful Dr. Ivo (Dylan Neal) aimed his gun at the back of Sara’s head. Ollie, desperate to save his former flame, dove in front of the barrel of the gun, prompting Ivo to kill Shado instead. See, this was all kind of purposely unclear. I’ll talk more about this later in the recap, but diving in front of Sara is different that choosing Sara over Shado. Still, R.I.P. Shado. Thus, we were counting down the minutes until Slade (Manu Bennett) shot back to the world of the living.

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Refusing to visit a hospital, Roy somehow dragged his horribly impaled leg up into Thea’s super comfy bed. Ollie, who was tipped off by Moira (Susanna Thompson) to Thea’s funky behavior, did a little bit of snooping and was inevitably, and quite fittingly, the person to yank The Arrow’s gift from Roy’s thigh. Thea, enraged that the vigilante had hurt her boyfriend seemingly out of the blue, decided to continue digging for information on Sin’s deceased friend. Laurel offered a bit of assistance, using her power at the DA’s office to find some answers. Interestingly enough, Sebastian Blood (Kevin Alejandro) began seriously attempting to court Lance this week, placing her square in the middle of all of this Brother Blood drama. When it came to Thea’s arc during Episode 9, Laurel served to tip her off to the fact that the blood drive, which seemed entirely legitimate, required its participants to undergo some sort of strange psych evaluation. Needless to say, the results were kept under lock and key.

So… any plans for Christmas?

Lighting my menorah.

Thankfully, Barry and Felicity did a whole lot of sitting around the Arrow Cave during Episode 9. Meaning, we were able to witness much more of their awesome tech-wiz chemistry. Again, this is another example of something that was very entertaining to watch yet caused some confusion. Were we supposed to root for Barry Allen to win Felicity’s heart from Oliver knowing that he’d be leaving Arrow by the close of the episode? Maybe this simply served to encourage Felicity and to build her confidence. It’s not fair to her that Ollicity had, up until this point, been so one-sided. Barry, pulling some fingerprints from the grip marks left behind on Oliver’s neck, also managed to pinpoint this Cyrus Gold as the man who’d successfully undergone the serum injection. With some simple security cam tracking, Felicity managed to tie him to a specific location.

Diggle (David Ramsey) offered to do the recon work with Oliver acting as a nearby wingman. In “Solomon Grundy’s” apartment, Diggle had his first encounter with the superhuman, and Oliver’s right-hand man certainly got his ass handed to him in a matter of seconds. Never fear, folks. Diggle managed to scramble his way back to his getaway ride just in the nick of time. Mostly, Diggle’s discoveries were important because they prompted The Arrow to call in Officer Lance (Paul Blackthorne) and his team for backup. After a bit of convincing, Lance managed to drag his partner into the mix, along with several other willing cops. Unaware that Mirakuru and generic steroids are on entirely different levels, nothing seemed to prepare Lance’s men for what they would encounter. Grundy wasted no time annihilating officer after officer, eventually landing Lance out cold under some rubble before murdering his partner in cold blood. Happy Holidays!

Laurel’s shopping date with Sebastian was cut short by word of her father's severe injuries, and she was subsequently forced to break the news of the loss of his friend after he later awoke in the I.C.U. I’m curious as to what Sebastian Blood is trying to do here. Showing up a the hospital to comfort Laurel makes me want to believe that he has ulterior motives beyond simply dating someone working at the DA’s office, or, well, just dating Laurel because she seems to be the hottest commodity in Starling City among these men.

The second spirit to visit Oliver was none other than his old buddy Slade! When Slade swiped Ollie’s arrow out of midair during his impromptu private target practice, though, I was pretty sure this was actually Slade. See, Slade came with a different kind of a message than Shado. Spirit Slade seemed to be looking for blood. An actual brawl broke out after some demoralizing words from Oliver’s former bestie, and this had me wondering two things. First, because I was about half sure that this was actually Slade back from the island after all of the extremely tangible moments he shared with Ollie, I found myself wondering how Slade was in that same outfit. I know, silly, but seriously, the same one. After that, I figured all of Ollie’s confusion could be solved by simply looking at the footage from the Arrow Cave security camera, whether he believed this to be a hallucination or not. The Cave looks like an Apple Store, and there isn’t one security camera to reveal whether or not Slade actually kicked the crap out of Oliver? Spoilers from Scream 4 (aka Scre4m) below, but would the security camera footage look like this?..

After analyzing a sample of Oliver’s blood, Barry managed to deduce that The Arrow was perfectly fine. The illusions were simply reflections of his psyche rather than a side effect of the injection of rat poison. Diggle, offering Oliver some sound advice, recalled witnessing “ghosts” after returning home from Afghanistan. The “ghosts” disappear when you learn the message they bring with their return. If that was truly the case, I have to say, those were the most realistic hallucinations I’ve ever witnessed. Slade was throwing furniture!

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Roy decided to continue meddling where The Arrow warned him not to. Breaking into the office that contained the file of Sin’s fallen friend, Harper intended to get to the bottom of this drug overdose confusion. In truth, her buddy had essentially died of an overdose, but Roy had never encountered Mirakuru in his days butting heads with Vertigo dealers in The Glades. Unfortunately for Roy, the snooping caught up to him, and in no time at all, he was snatched up and handed over to Brother Blood as another one of his guinea pigs. Luckily for Roy, Officer Lance had tipped off Oliver to the location of Blood’s lab with a key he’d swiped during his intense scuffle with Solomon Grundy. On the flip side, The Arrow arrived just a moment too late to prevent Blood from injecting Roy with the serum. Harper died as yet another “failure,” and Oliver fell to the ground entirely defeated. Thankfully, Arrow had room for one more friendly face from the past this week in the form of Tommy Merlyn (Colin Donnell)! Finally, an actual hallucinatory friend! Tommy, refuting the nasty sentiments shared by Slade and Shado, gave his best friend the pep talk he needed to avenge his death and become a hero. Oliver, having gotten his groove back, popped back up and fought the good fight, eventually incapacitating Cyrus with a blast to an explosive. Brother Blood fled, leaving Ollie to attempt to revive Roy. Pleading with Harper to fight like hell, The Arrow was successful in guiding Thea’s beau back to the world of the living. Only time will tell what this means for Brother Roy.

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To close the recap, Episode 9 of Season 2 closed with an amazing twist. Brother blood reported the destruction of the serum lab to his higher-up… Slade Wilson! A more distinguished looking Slade (Now, that is what Deathstroke looks like!), complete with a badass eye patch, is behind the manufacturing of the serum in Starling City, and his own blood is used as the sample formula! Flashing back to the island once again, we became privy to the survival of Slade, his utter destruction of Ivo’s remaining men, and his discovery of the murder of Shado. Thinking fast, Sara covered for Oliver, but it’s clearly only a matter of time before Slade learns the true nature of Shado’s death. In the present, Slade reminded Sebastian Blood that he is replaceable and that the vigilante is not to be harmed. Before Oliver Queen is to meet his death, Slade wishes to destroy his world from the inside out. Only then will he drive an arrow through his old friend's eye. Just a bit of a tangent here, but I guess we now know for sure that “ghost” number two, Slade with both eyes, was an illusion as well. Oliver, please dig up some sort of security cam footage for our viewing pleasure. If you don’t have it, then, come on, it’s time to invest in some protection for your lair! Poor Barry Allen almost left on a gurney just for saving your life, and you don’t have a camera watching the place for intruders? I digress.

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Speaking of Barry Allen, the wide-eyed wiz kid returned home to Central City where the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator was launched before promptly exploding! I mean, this was supposed to be a controversial new piece of technology, but shouldn’t we assume that if it was to blow it would happen sometime in the distant future? The moment after it turned on, a rogue storm blew in and destroyed everything? What kind of scientists worked on this project? Well, I guess Barry had to become The Flash somehow before his pilot airs on The CW! A whirling of chemicals and a massive shock of energy rendered Allen unconscious and electrified.

Back in the Arrow Cave, Felicity pointed Oliver towards a gift left behind from Barry. Inside the box, Oliver Queen pulled out a mask crafted from the perfect form-fitting material. You look like a hero, Oliver Queen.

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What did you think of the Season 2 midseason finale of Arrow, Episode 9, “Three Ghosts”? Were you surprised by how tangible the “ghosts” were, too? Do you like Felicity better with Barry or Ollie? What should we expect from Roy after he received a decent dose of Mirakuru from Brother Blood? What does Sebastian want with Laurel?

Thanks for reading my Recap and Review of the Season 2 midseason finale of Arrow, Episode 9, “Three Ghosts”!

By the way, if you’re interested, here’s a piece I wrote earlier on the one D.C. character I’d most like to see Arrow bring to life next… Harley Quinn!