“Honor Thy Father” is episode two of season one of Arrow.
It opens with Oliver Queen narrating about how he spent five years in hell, how he was forged into a weapon and how he intends to honour his father’s memory. Oliver’s father had told him that the truth, that their family’s wealth was built on the suffering of others. In the previous episode, “Pilot”, Oliver had been taken by some men who wanted to know what his father had told him. It turned out that these men hadn’t been sent by the obvious candidate, Walter Steele, the company’s former CFO and now Oliver’s stepfather, but Oliver’s mother, Moira.
Oliver is fighting some goons on the roof of a building, easily taking them all out before grabbing their boss and holding his head close to a spinning fan. Oliver tells the man to give all the pensioners their money back.
The next day Oliver is at home and in the background a news story is on the television about how people received their money back. The family is heading into court and Walter tells Oliver that this is just to get Oliver’s death in absentia lifted. Oliver says that he is no stranger to courtrooms; his best friend, Tommy, enters and recites the reasons why Oliver has been in court before. Which Moira would probably prefer he didn’t.
Oliver tells the judge that he was the only survivor of the storm that sank the Queen’s Gambit, and that his father didn’t make it. Not exactly true; there were three survivors, including Oliver, but his father killed the third then himself so that his son would survive.
After the hearing, Moira wants Oliver to come to the office, but Oliver claims that he found the court heavier than he thought. Which may actually be true. As Oliver and Tommy leave they bump into Laurel; both want to know why the other is there. Laurel is doing her job and Oliver explains why he was there. Oliver had warned Laurel to stay away from him; going by her reaction, this did not go quite as well as it could.
Outside the court a man named Martin Somers is giving a press conference. Oliver gets into the car, and then drives off leaving Diggle, his bodyguard, and Tommy behind. Tommy comments about this happening a lot to Diggle.
In court Laurel is there on behalf of Emily Nocenti in a civil case. Laurel says that Emily’s father, Victor, worked as a stevedore on the docks and discovered that his boss, Somers, was receiving bribes from the Chinese triads. Somers has friends in the DA’s office, which is why Laurel is leading a civil case. Victor was killed on Somers’ orders, his throat slit.
Martin Somers is one of the names given to Oliver by his father. So Oliver goes and pays him a visit and tells Somers to testify that he had Victor Nocenti killed. The father of Laurel – and Sara, her sister who died on the yacht – is Detective Lance, and he’s not exactly Oliver’s biggest fan. Lance pays a visit to Somers, after Oliver, and Somers claims that nothing happened. Then essentially threatens Lance and his daughter.
Moira wants Oliver to take a leadership role in Queen Consolidated, which he isn’t interested in doing, but she isn’t going to take no for an answer. Walter wants Oliver to come to a ceremony where the company is breaking ground on a new applied science centre, which will be named after Oliver’s father.
Somers doesn’t seem interested in testifying and the triad comes to help, in the shape of China White (Kelly Hu, who played Abigail Chow in Warehouse 13). Lance assigns police protection to Laurel and her associates; he isn’t happy about how she’s putting herself in danger. Which causes friction.
There is more from Oliver’s early days on Purgatory, which reveals something totally unexpected. Whatever Moira Queen is up to is definitely suspect, and some more is revealed. Diggle gets a bit suspicious of Oliver when the latter demonstrates some unusual skills.