Following the events of last week’s episode, Oliver Queen is left broken and Adrian Chase remains a continuous thorn in his side. As Ollie decided to hang up his hood and disband his team, he turns to his Bratva brother, Anatoly, for assistance in assassinating Adrian Chase and getting rid of this annoyance once and for all. With the team ordered to stand down, Felicity continues to use her Helix connections to track down Chase, and Diggle continues to lead what’s left of Team Arrow in an effort to protect Star City in the Green Arrow’s absence.

Arrow sad 🙁

Ollie is downright annoying in this episode, unbearable at times. Yet again, in this show’s fifth season, Ollie is on another guilt trip, buying into what Chase made him seemingly realize about himself and moping around his office. This is definitely the lowest Ollie has felt in a while, but we’ve seen him in this capacity before. I feel like we’ve seen Diggle give him the same speech before about how he’s a hero and not a murderer. All of this is very redundant, but at least it seems it will only be for this episode, as the episode concludes with Ollie changing his mind on his bad decisions.

And what bad decisions they were. Ollie allows Anatoly and the Bratva to steal medicine in order to concoct a street drug to sell in Russia and rise in power in exchange for the assassination of Adrian Chase. Ollie is willing to let someone else do his dirty work and let a bunch of people get hooked on a new super drug in order to finally get rid of Chase. This is not very heroic and disappointing to see. Despite this, it does add a new layer of conflict to the season as even though Ollie later orders Anatoly to call off the assassination, the Bratva are no longer allied with Ollie and are looking to get revenge for Team Arrow ruining their drug heist. This plot development could prove interesting in later episodes as Ollie has more to worry about now than just Chase.

“Disbanded” brings us a little closer into the inner workings of Helix, as we see Felicity continue to use their resources to find Chase. Even though the hacktivist group is committing illegal acts, they seem very nice on the surface, though they probably aren’t, and even don’t seem to mind much when Curtis finds his way into their lair. They even humble brag about quickly figuring out Team Arrow’s identities. I enjoyed seeing how Felicity reacted to Ollie’s decision, admitting that maybe he should allow the Bratva to kill Chase, despite it resulting in Ollie losing his soul, as Diggle so put it. The inclusion of Chase’s face blurring technology allowed for us to see Felicity, along with Helix and Curtis’ T-Spheres, successfully find a way to hack into it and out Chase as Prometheus. I would also like to mention that “Disbanded” gave us the second Kord Industries reference of the week, the first one being in this week’s episode of The Flash. Could the Arrowverse be setting up the first appearance of Ted Kord, a.k.a. the Blue Beetle? That would be cool.

Felicity continues to work with Helix

“Disbanded” concludes with Chase’s federal protection failing at containing him after he was outed as Prometheus. Chase escapes, killing the two federal agents tasked with protecting him in the process. This wasn’t a very surprising ending. Despite being one of this series’ most annoying villains, there’s no doubting how skillful he truly is in the art of combat. There’s no way he wouldn’t have escaped at the conclusion of the episode and I will say the use of “It’s a Beautiful Morning” as Adrian drives off was a bit too on the nose and cliché, but that’s a bit of a nitpick.

Overall, “Disbanded” wasn’t a terrible episode, but did suffer in regards to Ollie’s personal, redundant issues. The rest of the team and supporting characters kept the episode going strong. It was enjoyable seeing Curtis, Rene, and Dinah discuss who is the new Diggle in the Team, being that Diggle briefly became the new Ollie. Anatoly has evolved into more of a villain in one episode, and even though I usually hate the Russian flashback scenes, this time I didn’t mind so much as they showed the contrast between who Anatoly was and who he has become in Ollie’s absence. And as stated before, I really do look forward to seeing how Ollie’s new stance with the Bratva will play out in future episodes.

Arrow returns with new episodes Wednesday, April 26.. I know that’s a ways away, but in the meantime check out The CW’s official trailer for the next episode of Arrow entitled “Dangerous Liaisons” below and feel free to let us know what you thought about “Disbanded” in the comments.