“Burned” is episode ten of season one of Arrow.
The episode opens with a factory on fire with multiple fire crews on site. The fire chief on the outside contacts one of his men on the inside. The one inside sees another fire-fighter and says that he needs some help. However, the second fire-fighter sprays a liquid all over the first, who then catches fire. It seems likely that the second fire-fighter may not be a fireman after all. Perhaps an arsonist.
Oliver is training, but his aim is somewhat off. In the previous episode, “Year’s End”, Oliver had gone up against another archer, and he did not come off victorious. More escaped with his life. The second archer’s identity came as a bit of a surprise – Malcolm Merlyn. Diggle enters and tells Oliver that his contacts at the FBI and Interpol tell him the same thing; Walter Steele either doesn’t want to be found or someone doesn’t want him found. It’s been six weeks since Walter disappeared, and there has been no contact from whoever took him, so Diggle says, and Oliver agrees, that he’s most likely dead.
Except that probably isn’t the case. Walter had continued digging into things and Moira had Merlyn kidnap him and take him away. It was either that, or Walter would have been killed.
Diggle wants to know when Oliver is going to get back to work, as he looks to be back in shape after the beating he took at the hands of the other archer. Oliver says that the names in the book aren’t going anywhere and with Walter missing, his family needs him. Oliver has another flashback to the island. Edward Fyers had told Oliver that the island had been a prison, for the worst of the worst, and he and his men had been sent in to kill the inmates. Only two survive; the archer who rescued Oliver and the man in the black and white mask who tortured him.
Laurel is talking to her friend Jo when Laurel’s father comes in. He does not looks happy. Laurel asks her father if everything is okay and he says no, and that he needs to talk to her friend, and he is accompanied by the fire chief from last night. They tell Jo that her brother was killed in the line of duty the previous night; he was the fire-fighter who was doused and set alight.
At the Queen mansion, Oliver tries to convince Moira to join Thea and him for takeout and a movie. Moira says she’s not hungry, and doesn’t join them. Thea has already seen the film that Oliver picked; he points out that he was away for a while. Thea tells him that, when Oliver and their father went missing, their mother stopped doing anything and eventually stopped leaving the house. Oliver asks what snapped her out of it, and Thea tells him it was Walter. He came around and made her leave the house. Thea hopes that Walter hasn’t been abducted; that he is simply having a midlife crisis with a younger woman. A futile hope. On the news, there’s an article about the Hood and the anchorwoman is saying that, in the four months since the vigilante became active, crime is down across the board. So where has he been for the past six weeks?
Laurel is in her apartment with Tommy when Jo knocks on the door, saying that she needs help. Jo doesn’t think her brother’s death was an accident; she thinks he might have been murdered. Laurel says, that when Sara died, she did research into it, looking for a reason why the Queen’s Gambit went down (because it was sabotaged, that’s why) but Jo says it’s not that. She has the incident report from the fire. Her brother’s turnout coat was doused in turpentine, but the owner of the factory said there was no turps in it. His turnout coat was designed to withstand fires in excess of 500 degrees, yet the fire never exceeded 250. So Jo asks how her brother burned hotter than the fire that killed him.
Laurel goes to see her father who says that he doesn’t see the crime of a fireman dying in a fire. According to Laurel, another fire-fighter was killed in exactly the same circumstances the previous week. Lance says he can’t investigate. Then a tech returns the phone that Oliver gave Lance; he says that the only fingerprints on the phone are Lance’s and that the hardware is military grade. He can’t even trace it. Laurel inquires about the phone and her father explains it; she asks if the Hood answers. Regarding the fire-fighters, Lance says that there is nothing he can do and departs. Leaving the phone on the desk. You can guess what’s going to happen.
And it does. Laurel takes the phone and calls Oliver, asking for his – the Hood’s – help. So Oliver shows up and mentions that he heard what Laurel said to Detective Lance about him being a killer in “An Innocent Man”. But he does look into the matter. And tells Diggle if they find anything, to tell the police.
Above them, Tommy is arguing with the contractor about the progress with the nightclub Oliver is building to hide his base. In “Vendetta” Laurel had suggested that Tommy asks Oliver for a job, because he was ideally suited to the nightclub business, and it looks as if Tommy is taking it seriously. He even suggests holding a fundraiser for the fire-fighters, and holding it at the club to keep expenses down. A big enough of a change that Oliver asks who he is and what he’s done with Tommy.
The COO of Queen Consolidated wants Moira to step into Walter’s job, because this is the second time in five years that their CEO has disappeared under mysterious circumstances (both of them married to Moira too, although that is not explicitly pointed out). Moira is not interested and would rather sit around moping. For, once again, she is at least partly responsible.
Oliver’s battle with the other archer has shaken his confidence enough that he’s not on peak form. Not physically, but mentally. At the moment, he couldn’t be the Hood, not until he gets out of it. Laurel is a bit concerned, in a different way, because her relationship with Tommy may be becoming serious.