Friendly reminder from your friends at Arrow, Ray Palmer was working on shrinking technology when his lab exploded and he was presumed dead. That was six months ago. At Oliver’s campaign office, he, Alex, and Thea go over his platform and where to host his fundraiser. Ollie has a place picked out, but it seems to be pricey. While Oliver contacts Felicity about her missing the meeting, Alex asks Thea if she wants to go check out Oliver’s spot, as a date. Thea gracefully turns him down. Felicity continues to go over Ray’s message at Palmer Tech, but she can’t figure out how to trace its origins. Curtis and Oliver get a chance to meet, where Curtis eliminates Oliver from the list of Arrow candidates, and Felicity reveals Ray’s message to Oliver, which he sent six days ago.
On the island, Oliver brings Reiter and Conklin to the temple he went to with Constantine last week. Reiter uses a device to find a hidden message “from the ancient ones,” that will lead to what he’s actually looking for, “a heart of water.” He tasks Oliver with taking workers to a nearby cove, and sends Conklin along to watch Oliver after he puts up a stink. In the present, Sara calls her mother to tell her once again that she’s alive and the Lances have a collective bonding moment. Oliver takes Felicity back to their loft to try and convince her to rest, but she’s not ready to let it go. On cue, her phone alerts her to its succesful trace of Roy’s message and a live feed from Ray pops up on her computer. Whoever has him wants his suit, and they’re keeping him in a tiny glass box. Luckily there are schematics for a machine that can resize Ray, it’s just a matter of building it.
At the cove, Oliver orders some of the workers into the water, but when they complain he lets them take a lunch break instead, he’s a good boss. Oliver heads off into the woods to “eat his lunch,” and Conklin sends one of the workers to follow him. Felicity goes over the device schematics with Curtis, who is amazed at what Ray was able to do. They just need one part, a part that is patented and owned by Kord Industries, their biggest rival, and to make matters worse, Mama Smoak has arrived and is ready to hit the town with her daughter. Team Arrow assembles outside Kord to break in and take the Quantum Manifold, which goes swimmingly at first until Thea picks up the device and the guards open fire on them. They manage to subdue one while Sara beats the snot out of another, to the point of almost death. After they succesfully take the part, Ray calls Felicity on the video feed where she’s able to surmise his location, Damien Darhk’s hideout.
The team goes over all the new info, and Sara’s little spell, knowing they can use Lance to get to Ray and use Curtis to work on the Manifold. In the meantime, Oliver made dinner plans for him, Felicity, and her mother, which does not sit well with Felicity. She can’t put off working to save her friend, but Oliver says she needs it. Back on the island, Oliver takes food to his friend hiding out in the cave and asks her if she’s ever seen Reiter do anything magical. She offers some inconclusive, anecdotal evidence, but nothing for certain as drugs seem to be his main concern. Meanwhile in the present, Damien Darhk tries to appeal to Ray to just work with him and offers a thinly-veiled threat to Felicity, since they were able to intercept his messages and all.
Oliver arrives late for the big family dinner, which Mama Smoak managed to burn anyway. She ducks out to pick up take-out prompting an argument between Felicity and Ollie. Felicity would have picked up on Ray’s distress calls if she hadn’t left and “gotten lost” in Oliver. Ollie offers to give her some space while she sorts this out. In the Arrow Cave, Oliver tries to work the computers and he and Diggle share a drink while talking out his relationship woes. Lance alerts them that he’s about to meet with Lance, and we see a brief aside to the island where “Vlad” attacks Oliver and forces his head underwater. Lance uses his meeting with Dahrk to propose helping each other out, which Darhk accepts but then tells Lance never to summon him again. As he leaves, Diggle follows to find out where he’s going. Back at the loft, Felicity and her mom have a heart to heart about her own relationship with Felicity’s father, and how Felicity shouldn’t worry about getting lost in Oliver, because that’s what love feels like. She gets a text from Oliver that they’ve found the location.
They call it the Latin Building and note that it’s the most secure building on the west coast, and everyone seems trepidatious about going in. Not only that, but they’re not done building the device to resize Ray, so Curtis will have to build it on the move. Furthermore, Sara wants in on the action. As they prepare to infiltrate, Oliver walks across the rooftop where he’s knocked out by a guard. The guard chains him up and displays him for Damien Dahrk who sends him away, revealing to us that the guard was Diggle and it was all a set up. Curtis and Felicity fly into a window in the building via parachute with the device as the two Canaries and Speedy engage the guards in the building. In the basement, Darhk decides to peek and see who the Green Arrow is, though he claims to have a guess. Oliver flips around and attacks him, since the binds weren’t well tied, but Darhk uses his magic and sends the chains around his neck, choking him. The team finds Ray in his little box and sets the device up to resize him, which works without a hitch. Oliver uses a little bit of magic himself to distract Darhk and make his way back topside. As Thea, Laurel and Sara finish off the guards, the bloodlust gets to her and she kills one of them.
Ray’s health is all in order and he explains to them the misadventures he had as a tiny person while Oliver catches him up on Damien Darhk and HIVE, who are in fact like SPECTRE Ray, yes, we know, the movie just came out. Felicity offers to update him on his company, but he reminds her that it’s actually her company until he decides to not be dead anymore. On the island, Oliver fights back and subdues Vlad, killing him. Conklin emerges from the jungle and feigns anger. Thea and Laurel try to talk to Sara about her condition, but she claims she needs to handle it in her own way, and she’s going to do some traveling. In fact, she’s going to take a trip to DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, I hear the weather is nice there this time of year.
That night, Oliver and Felicity clear the air and make up, and both express surprise that their relationship has made it this long, which might as well be the kiss of death because being a superhero automatically means you’re not allowed to have a happy love life. Captain Lance has a drink, club soda thank you very much, when who else but Mama Smoak sits next to him. They compare the troubles in their lives and introduce themselves to each other. The next day Alex brings some documents to Thea for Oliver to sign and she turns the tables asking him back out for that drink, which he accepts. Meanwhile at Damien Darhk’s hideout, one of his engineers explains how Ray was able to escape and they think they’ve figured out how to replicate his technology. Darhk unfolds a cube to reveal an elaborate pattern and tells him to try it out on this.
You can watch a preview for next week’s episode, titled “Brotherhood” and airing on November 18, in the player below.
