‘Arrow’ Season 6 Episode 13 Recap: Lack Of Trust Keeps The Team Divided
Spoiler alert: Every detail of this episode will be discussed, including the ending.
Trust issues were explored in full force on Season 6 Episode 13 of Arrow, titled “Divided.” We were last left with Team Arrow breaking up, sparked by the discovery that Rene “Wild Dog” Ramirez is the FBI mole and lead witness potentially outing Oliver Queen as the Green Arrow for good. Oliver was even more upset because this caused his arrest right in front of his son, William.
It also didn’t help that Black Canary, Dinah Drake, was caught meeting with her ex-boyfriend Vincent Sobel after they discovered he was the murderous villain Vigilante, who has evaded their capture time and time again.
But Oliver wasn’t without blame. His lack of trust and leadership call to actively follow his team members without their knowledge (although it appears to have been justified in both Rene and Dinah’s case?) caused the three newest members of the team to leave in a huff.
At the beginning of “Divided,” the remaining member of the Bertinelli mafia family, Jerry Bertinelli, is threatened by the evil mastermind and tech genius Cayden James and his own large team of criminals. Cayden wants Jerry to give up the port, which is his sole remaining stronghold. Of course, Jerry isn’t used to being bossed around and isn’t going to back down until he gets one of Black Siren’s powerful kisses, along with an equally amplified threat to his daughter’s life.
The original three members of Team Arrow — Felicity Smoak, John Diggle, and Oliver — are in active pursuit of Cayden, but despite many sleepless nights at work, he’s managed to escape detection. Felicity has seemingly met her match in the tech arena.
Until current business partner and ex-Team Arrow member Mister Terrific, Curtis Holt, returns to the secret lair to help John cure his shaking hand. Felicity and Curtis have been working on a chip, similar to the miraculous tech that allows Felicity to walk, that should steady John’s aim once planted in his arm.
Although the chip didn’t work, it did cause an echo. Felicity accurately guesses that the echo was from tech interference and realizes that Cayden must have had Black Siren bug them when she was their prisoner.
Meanwhile, both Dinah and Rene try to continue on with their lives as normal, non-vigilante people. Rene tries to spend more quality time with his daughter while Dinah’s been getting help catching criminals when Vince hand-delivers them to the police station. Although Dinah isn’t completely smitten, he seems to be doing it out of an act of romance.
Jerry reaches out to Green Arrow for help with Cayden, reasoning that their common enemy makes them allies. When Felicity is able to discover Cayden’s location through a license plate caught on Jerry’s security footage, Green Arrow decides to do a surprise attack on his own.
Unfortunately, he discovered he’s completely outnumbered when he meets the rest of Cayden’s evil team, which includes his old Bratva buddy, Anatoly Knyazev, and Vigilante. Despite their clear advantage, Cayden orders his team to stand down and allow Green Arrow to escape unharmed.
Once Oliver safely returns, John, fueled by this new information, tries to persuade him to make amends with the team so they can join forces against Cayden’s team. However, Oliver still has trust issues and will only agree to share intel regarding their covers being blown by Cayden’s secret surveillance of their headquarters. Oliver aptly concludes that Cayden must have a reason for keeping their identities a secret even though he’s known who they all are for months.
Meanwhile, Dinah now understands that Vince has been playing her for a love-struck fool (disturbingly, she does seem like she was about to fall for him despite his sociopathic tendencies) and unsuccessfully tries to arrest Vince for his involvement with Cayden.
Afterward, she shows up at Rene’s home, where Curtis is now helping him hack into FBI files to destroy the incriminating evidence they have against him so he can recant his testimony against Oliver. When Curtis discovers that the evidence is an audio tape taken from Cayden’s secret surveillance, they decide to join forces and become their own new team of vigilante superheroes.
Oliver does end up joining forces with the Bertinelli crime family to fight Cayden and lures him into a trap using Jerry as bait. Despite an epic gun battle and quite the tussle between Green Arrow and Vigilante, Cayden wins once again. Oliver barely escapes after Jerry is killed. Cayden orders for the dead body to be used “to send a message.” Who that message will be sent to remains to be seen.
https://youtu.be/e59SYvPNXmA
Meanwhile, Thea and Quentin explore their own trust issues when Quentin confides to her that Black Siren let him go alive when she had the chance to kill him. He senses his own daughter, Laurel, in her otherworldly doppelganger. At first, Thea thinks Quentin’s plan to turn bad Laurel into good Laurel is bonkers. But, in the end, she decides to ignore her gut and believe in the old mantra that anybody can change. She reasons that even her own evil father managed to do a good deed by sacrificing himself to save her. Of course, Quentin doesn’t know that Cayden is keeping all the members of Team Arrow alive for some unknown reason. So Black Siren’s mercy could have nothing to do with her daddy issues.
Lastly, Oliver finally realizes that he needs his team members back and decides to own up to his part in their dispute. Although he gives a damn good apology, the team politely declines re-joining Team Arrow. They instead start their own team using the abandoned Helix headquarters as their new base.
We’re then left with two juicy pieces of info in the end. One, Cayden confronts Vince with video footage of Dinah’s failed arrest attempt and is very concerned she knows about his involvement with his crew. Two, Felicity and Curtis finally figure out their chip tech and John’s arm is now steady as ever. So there’s some hope for Team Arrow after all!
Arrow is on the CW on Thursday nights at 9 p.m.
