While the first two episodes of Arrow had villains, they were mainly focused on introducing us to the main cast of characters and a little bit of everyone’s back-stories. With “Lone Gunman” however, there was more of a balance between the two, and it was a nice balance. The episode started off with the somewhat irritating voiceover. This portion of voiceover was telling us about James Holder and his lack of quality control when it came to his smoke detectors.

Cut to a beautiful overlook of nighttime Starling City thanks to James Holder’s rooftop pool. I’d be okay with having a pool like that. Lucky James Holder. Sorry, no, Bad James Holder! If Arrow is on your rooftop after dark, chances are pretty good that you are not a good person, no matter what the courts say. So, Arrow is up there doing his “you have failed this city” bit when lo and behold, someone new appears. Well, they don’t really appear but their handiwork does.

Who is it?

If you are at all familiar with Batman, then you know this man. It is none other than Deadshot! He lived up to his name because that pool I really loved? Well, it’s got a dead dude floating in it now. Suddenly, not as appealing.

In the exchange though, Oliver got nicked by one of Deadshot’s bullets. Oh bummer. Oliver has to stitch himself up.

I do have to wonder though, Oliver has the supplies in his lair to stitch up a bullet wound but he doesn’t have a damn band-aid anywhere? Just seeing him sitting at his desk with blood soaking through his shirt made me think of what a pain in the ass that would be to get clean. Come on Ollie, get it together. Then again, maybe it was the poison that made him forget about the band-aid. Poison? Oh yeah, Deadshot uses poison on his bullets. Which leads into a nice flashback and we got to see more of the mysterious hooded man on the island.

This answers the question of how Oliver learned to speak Mandarin; it’s none other than Yao Fei. It’s yet to be seen if they’ll go into Yao Fei’s long and somewhat detailed backstory, but obviously the physician and archer parts are playing a key role. We also see where Oliver learned about the “chew something that looks like rosemary to stop the poison” thing.

Ollie heads home after waking up from his drug induced nap, and well I’ll be, Thea’s been arrested. Is it too early to dislike a character? Because I can not stand Thea. I just want her to either pull her head out of her obnoxious ass and become a contributing member of society or them to make her into Speedy. I don’t really want her to become Speedy but I just want Thea to disappear. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. While we’re on the subject, what is the deal with Mommy Queen being so “I’m a good person and parent” in this episode? I mean, I know Oliver gave her crap for the Thea thing but not one hint to her darkside that we know exists. No mention of what Oliver knows or what his dad told him. I want the Evil Queen to return. Thea leaves, Evil Queen comes back. I’ll be pleased as punch if those two things were to occur.

It was only a matter of time before Oliver had to find a way to get to his base without always having to ditch Diggle. Apparently he’s decided to open a nightclub. How stereotypical privileged party boy of a move is that? Come on. I loved Diggle calling him out on the “white knight” thing Oliver has going on.

Perhaps the second best part of the episode is when Oliver decided that he needed to go find a bullet that Deadshot used. To do so he had to go all Assassin’s Creed and climb the side of a building. But unlike in Assassin’s Creed when you can hear people question what on earth (insert name of preferred ancestor of Desmond Miles here) is doing, not a single soul comments on Oliver’s wall climbing stunt.  Perhaps this is the best place to open a nightclub/have a secret lair.

The bullet led Oliver to the Russian mob that he apparently became a ranking member of during his time as a shipwrecked castaway. Come again? I daresay that took me by surprise.

I do wonder what kind of timeline this episode had because one minute Oliver is showing Tommy and Diggle the location of his new nightclub, and the next Laurel is reading about said nightclub online. She’s telling her coworker that she’s totally over Oliver but I think we all know the truth. But who cares about the truth because hello! This happened!

You go girl! Now all she needs is some fishnet stockings and a tight fitting bustier and the Black Canary will take her rightful place in the show. So exciting as I’d actually feared they’d keep Laurel as that helpless chick she was in episode two. Thankfully my worry was all for naught.

So while Oliver was climbing buildings and planning night clubs openings and then getting his ass kicked by bouncers at another club, Deadshot was tattooing names onto his body. There was quite a few names already there but one stood out in particular- Andrew Diggle- especially considering that we learn that Diggle had a brother who was killed doing the same type of work. Did Deadshot kill Diggle’s brother? Is the tattooed name just a shoutout to Andy Diggle, who wrote Green Arrow: Year One? I’m guessing we’ll find out soon.

Speaking of Diggle, his sister in law works at none other than DC Universe’s own, Big Belly Burger! This was the second time I had a DC Universe “moment”, the first being when the annoying voiceover let us know that Deadshot had killed people in Markovia. It’s those kinds of little things that get fans really excited about your show so kudos to Arrow.

Non-kudos to whoever was doing DirecTV’s captioning because they seem to think this woman:

is named Felicity Smoke. Come on people, get with the program- that is Felicity SMOAK and isn’t she just the cutest little IT girl ever? That scene did provide some fun back and forth as Oliver tried to claim the laptop he brought her needed help due to a spilled latte. Nothing gets past that Felicity though and she deftly points out that those are bullet holes, not spilled coffee. Oliver’s only recourse is to admit that “my coffee shop is in a bad neighborhood”. Chuckle, chuckle.

That coffeehouse was actually the hotel room of Deadshot and the latte was his wrist mounted machine guns but hey, let’s not get bogged down in facts here. The rest of the episode was the predictable auction, with the predictable saving from Deadshot’s bullet by Detective Lance, and Oliver’s predictable stashing of his Arrow get-up in the stairway trashcan and then the fight with Deadshot.

Two things that were not predictable-

One: HE KILLED DEADSHOT?!?!?!

Surely not, right? I mean come on. If they are going to kill a DC villain each episode, the show isn’t going to last too terribly long. I know there are a lot of them but there aren’t an infinite number. So I’m choosing to believe that Deadshot is not dead but perhaps just unconscious and yea, that eye is not going to make it, so I’m guessing he’ll be a one eyed Deadshot. [Ed. Note – Not for 1 second do I believe Deadshot is dead. The character has a long history of faking his own death…]

Two: OH MY GOD HE TOLD DIGGLE!!!!
Diggle gets shot, Arrow rushes him back to his base so he can give him the grass stuff that looks like rosemary. Diggle wakes up to see Oliver standing there still in his Arrow clothes but the “mask” is now gone and he just says “hey” and the episode ends!

So much for “no one can know”, but seriously, how long was he going to be able to keep it from him? The man has already told him that he’s going to have to watch him pee so it was only a matter of time before he found out any way. I was just not expecting them to do it so early.

Overall, not a bad episode. I’m still a little miffed about Deadshot possibly being dead and I could not care less about the whole “Laurel used to date/sleep with Tommy” bit and as far as I’m concerned, Thea can take a long walk off a short pier but for the most part I liked it. I’m going to go with three and a half bears on this one. Get rid of Thea, make Laurel the Black Canary and we’d be at a solid four.

Next Episode – “An Innocent Man”. I can’t wait!