Oliver Takes on Damien Dahrk in Our Arrow Season 4 Finale Recap!

Not satisfied with just threatening Felicity, Damien Darhk throws Curtis across the room and does a force choke on Mama Smoak. To further make his point, he starts pulling the life out of her. Oliver and John burst into the loft to stop him, but he brought backup and they trade arrows and bullets. The whole fight comes to a halt when Thea puts an arrow to Darhk’s daughter, threatening to kill her (where did she get her from? Why was she there?) and he concedes before making a dramatic exit. The team realizes in his exit he took their laptop that held the anti-Rubicon program. They take Curtis back to the Arrow cave to give him medical treatment.

On the island, Reiter and Taiana stare at each other as one does when you’re powered by the souls of the dead. To escalate their fight, Reiter shoots Oliver in the leg and blows up the plane of survivors he sent away. Back in the present, Felicity asks about why Oliver couldn’t counter Darhk’s magic, and the simple answer was her hope wasn’t enough… he needs more, like a whole city’s worth. Felicity tracks down her laptop to an abandoned office building, which the group infiltrates. We know it’s no random building though, this is where HIVE has been set up for months, and as the room powers up, the alert comes through: 15,000 nuclear missiles just launched around the world. The team has maybe two hours before they hit, though there is one special one headed for Star City in the next 45 minutes.

Taiana and Reiter continue to fight on the island, but Oliver ends it by throwing a knife in Reiter’s back. Her eyes, on the other hand, glow ever more than before. In the Arrow Cave, Felicity calls forth Quentin and points him to a safe location for he and her mother. Diggle and Lyla talk to their daughter on the phone and she reveals she’s sent in an ARGUS team to the Nexus Chamber. Darhk is waiting for them of course, along with his daughter, and despite Oliver’s insistence that it’s a bad idea, Lyla sends them in. Team Arrow listens to the group die over their comm channels. As Felicity cracks the firewall on the laptop, Ghosts pour into the Arrow Cave. The team is scattered and without their equipment, but they make due and fight back. Diggle takes down a ghost and hesitates to deliver the killing blow, only for Lyla to save him. Merlyn even shows up and helps out, and though they win the battle, they’re losing the war. Also the cave is in shambles. Back on the island, Taiana begs Oliver to kill her.

Oliver and Felicity stand in the ruins of the cave and he says they can’t lose all of their hope, despite the fact that it seems the opposite. He then ponders if the two of them had never come back to Star City if Laurel would still be alive (gonna go ahead and tell you that more people would probably be dead if they hadn’t). Curtis heard their talk of hope and tells Oliver that he and his husband nearly left Star City after all the craziness, but the speech he made as the Green Arrow on TV inspired them to stay. That’s all Oliver needed, so he takes to the streets where the citizens of Star City are rioting and looting and delivers a “heartfelt” speech on top of a car about their city and hope and what have you. Let’s be real, it’s awkward. Curtis and Felicity work on a line of sight hack for the missile headed their way and diverge it to another path. As the citizens watch the missile fly past them and not explode, Oliver can feel their hope inside him.

Felicity delivers the code to their hack on the missile to Lyla so she can distribute it to the world. The good news is they’ve now found the hacker. Oliver orders Merlyn and Thea to accompany Felicity and Curtis to the hacker’s location while he takes on Darhk. Diggle protests but Oliver tells him it has to be this way. On the island again Taiana begs Oliver to kill her, to end this. She reminds him of the promise he made to visit her family in Russia should she die, and he snaps her neck. The bad news is one of the remaining prisoners saw him do it. While the other Team Arrow members are off, Diggle preps some guns just in case. Lyla confronts him about his hesitation earlier and he reveals the truth about Andy, it wasn’t a clean kill, he put him down. She understands, though John still hates himelf for it.

Oliver goes to the Nexus Chamber to fight Darhk, but when we come back from the commercials they’re fighting in the streets. Darhk’s really giving it to him, tossing him through glass and what have you. A crowd of Star City citizens arrive and yell at Darhk. It grows larger, and their cries louder, until Darhk just knocks them over with his magic. Oliver stands up, ready for the fight, but he’s not alone. The hope of the city is powering him against Darhk’s magic. Meanwhile, Team Arrow converges on Cooper Seldon’s location. He reveals that Darhk is controlling a bullet in his body if he didn’t launch the missiles, pushing it toward his spine. Felicity convinces him to “do the right thing” and when Darhk senses he’s stood up from his post, he kills him.

The fight between Oliver and Darhk has reached a fever pitch, and they both reveal they’ve brought backup. So now we’ve got a full-on rumble on our hands with regular people fighting Ghosts and somehow not dying all over the place. Back in the hacker warehouse, Felicity and Curtis go to work and redirect all of the nuclear missiles so they’ll explode in space, which cannot be good for the environment. Dahrk somehow gets his hand on Oliver’s bow and sends an arrow right into his chest in a bit of irony. Oliver pulls the arrow out and approaches his enemy. Damien tries to antagonize him about not killing Slade Wilson, but this is different you see, he didn’t kill his mom… he killed a girl he loved. Oliver does what we’ve been waiting all year for and stabs Darhk with an arrow, killing him.

The next morning, everything seems fine, there’s no nuclear fallout yet so that’s good. Quentin Lance reveals he’s leaving town with Donna because he’s been officially let go from the police force. Thea takes that cue to say she’s taking a break too, she needs to find herself. Oliver doens’t fight either of these decisions, and in fact encourages them. Diggle reveals he needs a break as well, which leaves Oliver alone to ponder what happened.

In our final Island flashback, Oliver tells the prisoners about what happened, and they just believe him, presumably because he has a way off the island for them – his comms back to Amanda Waller. Oliver buries Taiana next to Yao Fei, his father, and Shado on the island. Waller takes the idol away and tells Oliver that he’s been shown killing is the only path to justice, which is the most reckless and irresponsible thing a superhero show can say, but what do I know. She then brings Oliver his box with his bow and his OG hood outfit. He could go anywhere but Oliver sticks to his guns and decides to keep his promise and head to Russia.

Back in the present, Oliver visits Laurel’s grave, telling her he knows she wouldn’t approve of what he did. Felicity arrives and asks if he’s okay, and he’s not. His own darkness infected Thea and John, and he has to carry that burden. Ollie then gets an unexpected call from a city councilman who makes him an offer he can’t refuse: becoming the Interim Mayor of Star City. As Oliver is sworn in, the members of the team reflect on what they have and what they’ve lost. We see Thea alone and John wearing his miltary dress uniform; he kisses Sara and Lyla. In the busted Arrow Cave, Oliver stands alone, only to be joined by Felicity. At least she’s staying with him.