“An Innocent Man” is episode four of season one of Arrow.
In the previous episode, “Lone Gunmen”, Oliver went up against the assassin Deadshot. Although Oliver defeated Deadshot with an arrow to the eye – which is something that tends to be fatal, but the arrow his the thing Deadshot wears over his eye, so it’s possible it didn’t penetrate far enough – Diggle got hit by one of Deadshot’s curare-poisoned bullets. So Oliver took him back to his base and used the same substance he had used on himself to cure Diggle.
When Diggle wakes up he says that Oliver is the vigilante. Oliver tells Diggle that he could have taken him other places, but he brought him to his hideout for a reason. Oliver learned on the island that Starling City is dying, poisoned by a criminal elite who don’t care who they hurt. So Diggle asks Oliver if he plans to take them down by his lonesome. Oliver says no – he wants Diggle to join him. Former Special Forces based out of Kandahar, Oliver says that Diggle is a fellow soldier. Diggle replies that Oliver isn’t a soldier, he’s a criminal and a murderer. Well, that went well.
When Oliver arrives home he is greeted by Laurel who heard about the shooting and came to check that he was okay. Only to find out that no-one knew where he was. Laurel tells Oliver that she knows he’s self-centred, but he should realise that the people who care about him are going to wonder where he is and they deserve better than someone who cares only about himself. Oliver thanks her for coming and she tells him that maybe he should try caring about the lives of other people. Of course, in his alter ego, Oliver does. In his own way.
When Oliver goes to bed he has dreams about his time on the island. The man who shot him – and, it turns out, saved him from capture by a currently unknown force – gives Oliver a bird in a cage. And says something in Chinese. Oliver doesn’t grasp what is going on – although it seems likely his sort-of rescuer is giving him food. In a rather raw form.
The dream causes Oliver to jerk awake and he comes downstairs to find Thea watching the news. A man called Peter Declan was tried and found guilty of murdering his wife – whilst Oliver was away – in their baby’s room and is going to be executed. Thea asks why Oliver couldn’t sleep, and he tells her bad dreams. And that, although it might not look like it, he is not the same person he used to be.
The next morning Oliver comes down to find he has a new bodyguard. Diggle has resigned his position, claiming that he doesn’t like the way Oliver spends his evenings. Which has a double meaning. Oliver hasn’t given up on Diggle, and does speak to him again on the subject.
Peter Declan is going to be executed in two days. The boss of his dead wife is Jason Brodeur – who is one of the names on Oliver’s list. Declan had no alibi and all the evidence pointed to him. So Oliver decides that Declan needs a good attorney – and visits Laurel as the Hood.
Laurel does go to see Declan in prison. She tells him that the knife that killed his wife was from his kitchen, that his prints were found on it as well as his wife’s blood, and that it was found in the boot of his car. Plus the neighbours heard them arguing. Declan tells Laurel that his wife had discovered that Brodeur was dumping toxic waste into the Glades, and the fight was because he was worried about his family being put in danger if she blew the whistle. Which looks like a genuine concern, given what looks to have happened.
The investigation causes some friction between Laurel and her father. Laurel’s friend Joanna had told her to meet new people; she states when Laurel explains she was visited by the vigilante that this was about as far from what she meant as is possible. Detective Vance also gets pointed in a new direction in his Hood investigation and Laurel gets put in danger.
Walter is following up a $2.6 million withdrawal from one of Queen Consolidated’s Vancouver subsidiaries that Compliance has discovered. Moira tells him that she withdrew it, and invested it in a friend’s start-up. However, Walter summons Felicity Smoak to his office – who thinks he’s firing her and demonstrates a wonderful talent for saying things without thinking them through properly – to look into the withdrawal anyway. Walter gets a shock as a result. He seemed like such an obvious person to be a bad guy back in “Pilot”; it looks like that may be wrong.