Arrow Episode 17 ‘The Huntress Returns’ Recap and Review

Arrow Episode 17 'The Huntress Returns' Recap and ReviewSo, that Huntress is one mean bitch, huh? Within a single Arrow episode she managed to kill 10 or so guys without breaking a nail, nearly snap Tommy’s arm and leave his wrist sprained, rob a sporting goods store, tie up Felicity and force her to do dirty and cruel hacking work, shoot poorly at Oliver with a shotgun, and for an encore blast Janina Gavankar right off the show.

After all that, Helena and her dad are still on the loose. She’ll be back.


For all the killing and hunting in episode 17 ‘The Huntress Returns,’ Thea made sure to balance it out with her own special brand of sappiness. For some weird crush reason she can’t leave Roy Harper alone and stalks him into agreeing to take a job at Oliver’s freshly opened nightclub, Verdant. Roy doesn’t show for his first day as valet, so Thea unwisely wanders into the Glades again to confront him and ends up getting mugged by a trio of thugs on her way out. Lucky for Thea, Roy showed up to use a parkour move and take out the robbers. Unlucky for Roy, he ended up with a knife would in his side as a result. Or the wound is possibly lucky if you consider his wimpy reaction to a needle in the arm scored him a lengthy smooch from the “rich bitch.”

Over in Laurel’s world of partial normalcy, she tricks her dad into a meeting with freshly returned mom Dinah to look over evidence that Sarah might still be alive, including a picture taken by a tourist. Detective Lance is too upset to deal with opening old wounds and shoos them both away, but he comes around by episode’s end and agrees to take a look at Dinah’s detective work. The Lance reunion is lacking intrigue arc thus far, but it’s giving Katie Cassidy more screen time than she would otherwise have, which makes sense considering what’s going on in Oliver’s corner.

Arrow Episode 17 'The Huntress Returns' Recap: One Mean Bitch

The big Verdant nightclub opening was a hit for guests with DJ Steve Aoki spinning away, but not so much for Tommy and Oliver. Tommy looks perpetually upset and Laurel knows he’s not telling the truth about why. Meanwhile Helena shows up, gets Tommy into the Arrow lair somehow, and forces Oliver to help her find her dad else she’ll snap his arm. Ouch. How did she get him down there, anyway?

After a botched attempt by Arrow and The Huntress to nab incarcerated dad during transport, Helena gets captured and interrogated by Detectives Lance and Hall. In a clever bit of writing she answers the question “who is the Hood?” with “Oliver McQueen,” then changes the subject to tell Hall that she’s bound to get hurt if she continues dating him. In one of the worst displays of police competence yet on the show, Arrow pulls a fire alarm and uses tear gas to rescue Helena whilst the entire police department is unable to do a damn thing about it.

Over in the island flashback, Oliver and Slade cleverly take out soldiers about to launch a series of long range rockets at some unknown target. Oliver gets the clever idea to swipe the rocket launcher’s circuit board and use it as leverage against Fyers to get off the island. The odds of that plan working out in the upcoming episodes: zero to none.

The grand finale comes when The Huntress gets her father’s safe house location from Felicity after Oliver tried to bribe Helena to leave the country with a plane ticket and forged passport. Instead, The Huntress uses a newly stolen crossbow to go after dad and swiftly kills a small army of cops protecting him. Arrow shows up and tries to kill her, but she actually catches the arrow shot at her chest like an X-Men mutant. After The Huntress explains that she’s been practicing that move for just such an assassination attempt while her dad is still running away, Rebecca Hall shows up after ignoring orders to wait for backup and gets popped by The Huntress with a shotgun as payment for her ignorance.

Arrow Episode 17 'The Huntress Returns' Recap: One Mean Bitch

Hall’s wounds require a year of physical therapy so she’s switching coasts to go live with her sister. Bye bye, Janina Gavankar. I suppose someone had to be jettisoned off the show with Colton Haynes as Roy Harper coming into the picture. At least Janina can tell her friends that she made out with Stephen Amell multiple times. Technically she’s not dead so she could pop up in Season 2.

Other notable moments and observations:

  • What were the odds of Thea randomly bumping into Roy in the Glades?
  • Roy’s parkour wall kick gets graded a 6 out of 10. He needs Arrow training.
  • Was the cop who missed shooting The Huntress from 15 feet away on the staircase a rookie? Or blind?
  • Helena must have been on the Verdant opening night guess list, or Tommy’s security plan is really lax.
  • No one seemed to mention or care that Walter is still missing.
  • Diggle loves the word “psycho.”
  • Sarah got violently sucked into the sea in the pilot. She couldn’t have survived that, right?
  • The second decoy van was in decent traffic when The Huntress stopped it. Then all traffic instantly vanished and cops magically appeared.

Arrow Episode 17 'The Huntress Returns' Recap: One Mean Bitch

‘The Huntress Returns’ got a little hokey when Arrow easily sprung Helena from jail, but otherwise it was a nicely paced episode that balanced the requisite CW drama and an abundance of action. Amell got a chance to let his emotions loose a little while trying to save Tommy’s arm which was a nice break from Oliver’s usually calm demeanor. It’s amazing that despite being on screen for less than a minute total, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) was once again the scene stealer and once again shared a subtle “moment of connection” with Oliver without uttering a word.

Twice now The Huntress had a weapon trained on dad and Arrow stopped her from completing the vengeful deed. Maybe a third time will be the charm.

– Dan Bradley

Watch ‘The Huntress Returns’ in streaming high definition at Amazon.com.

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