Arrow 1.11: "Trust But Verify"

“You guys forgot one thing. I’m the one with the grenade launcher.”
- Diggle

It’s nighttime in Starling City and we witness an armored car being robbed by three guys with a freaking grenade launcher. Oliver spots it on the news and learns it is the third one in a few months. While watching said newscast, Tommy drops by and Thea and Moira are off to (maybe) get Thea a car. In the man cave, Oliver and Diggle quickly come to blows when Oliver reveals he’s been looking into the robberies because they have the same signature as military in the Middle East. Our bad guy for the week turns out to be Diggle’s commanding officer from his first tour overseas. So it’s quite obvious why he is skeptical to even think his old commander would be in on the robberies. But Oliver is convinced that he is involved, seeing as his name is in the book. Diggle of course takes the time to point out it wasn’t actually his father’s list. It was compiled by someone for the Dark Archer. Oliver says Diggle can sit this one out if he wants but Oli is going to have a conversation with Dig’s former officer.

We catch up with Oli on the island pretty much where we left him last. He dons a mask and sneaks into base camp and is about to head off with some guy to find the Archer when a group of guys comes back and their leader is pretty irate. Back in Starling City, Tommy is busy bossing construction crews around when he gets an unexpected call from his dad. I have to say I think we need more John Barrowman screen time (unless of course he’s busy off shooting stuff for the 50th Anniversary TV special for doctor Who). But he wants to have dinner with Tommy and Laurel to try and reconnect. Tommy isn’t really into it but says he’ll broach the topic with Laurel and get back to him.

That night Oliver breaks into the private security firm where our baddie works and is going to have his conversation when Diggle shows up, gun drawn. This is going to get ugly. Oliver ends up shooting a light and dashes away with a flash drive. Diggle manages to get hired by the security firm courtesy of his old mentor. Our heroes have some choice words back in the man cave, though. Oliver believes in the list because of his father. He confesses to Dig that he found a video a few years ago from his father explaining the list. Which is a little sketchy since he was still on island at that point. Meanwhile, Thea and Moira’s clothes shopping spree is interrupted by a call from Malcolm. He needs to have a chat with Moira. One of their cohorts, Carl, wants the spruce up the Glades so Moira’s job is to put a stop to it. But she wants proof of life for Walter before she does any more of Malcolm’s bidding. Thea looks on, and it’s clear she thinks something sketchy is afoot. Oliver flashes back to the island where he’s in a jeep with the guys heading to the other camp to see the Archer and I swear it was like they were in an episode of Lost. Questioning people about how they got to the island and that there wasn’t a submarine of new arrivals in. Gotta admit, it was fun even if it wasn’t intentional.

Meanwhile, Diggle and his mentor end up at the burger joint, chatting about how for the most part, all they can do is babysit rich, spoiled brats who couldn’t last a day in the real world. They head off to a gig (after another of their military comrades shows up). Diggle seems convinced that his mentor is still innocent. Oliver is going to prove him so wrong. Before we get to our wonderful tech guru cracking the code on the security fob Oli snagged at the start of the episode, he confronts Moira about Thea’s accusations that she’s sleeping with Malcolm. She says that Robert had been quite the cad and that made their marriage difficult. But she begs Oli not to tell Thea anything. We jump back to the island briefly where Oliver gets tricked and locked up in a cage by the annoying British guy.

Things for Tommy and Laurel aren’t going so well, either. Dinner starts out okay until Malcolm wants Tommy to sign papers closing down his deceased mother’s free clinic (we learn that Mrs. Merlyn was gunned down in a street when Tommy was eight). This pisses Tommy off and even Laurel gets angry about it. As pretty as Barrowman is, Malcolm Merlyn is a real prick. But they’ve got my interest piqued as to what really happened to his wife and what he and Moira are trying to do behind everyone’s backs. Anyway, Felicity lets Oli know what she found on the fob is all the routes for the armored car routes in the city. He manages to stop a heist in progress but we see that it isn’t the guy he thought involved; it’s the other guy from Dig’s unit (the one he doesn’t like).

At Thea’s birthday bash, things get a little hinky. Moira gets proof of life on Walter but Thea again accuses her of cheating and says she wishes her mother had gone down on the boat (and then goes and gets high off a new drug called vertigo). Oliver apologizes to Diggle but says he wounded one of the guys. So Dig is off to investigate. Diggle finds the van with blood in it and discovers the guy he suspected is involved. And Oli was right, too. His mentor is heading the whole thing. And they’re signing Diggle up to the crew by threatening to kill his sister-in-law. Luckily, Oli slipped Diggle a bug and is on the way to intercept the chaos. Diggle doesn’t end up shooting the oncoming truck. He turns the grenade launcher on the baddies and manages to hit one of them. His sister-in-law takes off running and Oliver swoops in to save the night. Meanwhile, Thea is out driving in her new convertible while on drugs, swerves and crashes into a tree.

We cut to the hospital and Thea pretty much dismisses her family. And it’s clear she’s still under the effects of the drug. Malcolm has resorted to calling Laurel now to try and reach out to Tommy but he’s still not interested. He admits his dad just shut down and abandoned him for a couple years after his mom died. We cut to Malcolm in his own little man cave looking at a picture of his family as Tommy bitches about how his dad just leaves him all the time. We jump down to our heroes where Oli lets Diggle cross off the name in the book. And then things get really messed up. Thea gets arrested at the hospital for being on vertigo and we cut to the island where it’s revealed that the Archer was one of the soldiers who led Oliver to the trap. Damn, I was starting to like that guy!