“Pilot” is episode one of season one of Arrow.
Yet another unimaginatively named pilot episode opens with a scruffily bearded and dressed man in a green hooded top running through some forest before climbing a cliff. The cliff overlooks the ocean and there’s a fishing boat close by. At the top of the cliff, the hooded man grabs a bow and arrows, strikes a spark and ignites one of the arrows. Which he then fires at a mound of wood on the shore which explodes into a ball of flame. Evidently it wasn’t just wood.
The man narrates how he has been stranded on the island, called Purgatory, for five years. His goal was to survive – and to return home. On the island he faced many dangers and had to forge himself into a weapon. He is no longer the boy he was but a man, and he intends to bring justice to those that have poisoned his city. His name is Oliver Queen.
A news report says that five days ago Starling City’s lost billionaire had been found in the North China Sea after five years. Queen was lost after an accident sank the Queen’s Gambit, and his father, Robert Queen, was lost too. Both were presumed dead, as was everyone else on their yacht. In a hospital a doctor is telling a woman, Moira (Susanna Thompson) – pretty obviously Oliver’s mother – that her son has extensive scar tissue over a large amount of his body. When Oliver gets home he is greeted by Walter Steele, who was his father’s friend from the company; Oliver seems more pleased to see the maid – or housekeeper – Raisa. And his sister, Thea.
At a legal aid office one of the people who works there, Lauren, is being lectured by her friend Joanna about their class action suit against Adam Hunt (Brian Markinson, Continuum‘s Inspector Dillon). Hunt has got an army of lawyers to set on them and Lauren thinks that if they can’t do anything for the hundreds of people that Hunt has swindled, they don’t really deserve to be called a legal aid office.
Oliver’s friend Tommy is pleased to see him and wants to take him to see the sights again. It turns out that Oliver’s mother is now married to Walter. Oliver has flashbacks during a storm to the storm that the Queen’s Gambit ran into. Oliver was with a girl, Sara, who was Lauren’s sister – and Lauren was supposed to be Oliver’s girlfriend. At the time, Oliver was pretty much a self-absorbed debauched playboy. The storm got worse and the boat capsized. Sara was washed out to sea. Only Oliver, his father and another man made it onto a lifeboat. There are more flashbacks from this during the episode. Oliver also has a box he brought from the island, that has some mementoes in it – including a small book.
Whilst out at the old, and now closed, Queen factory, Oliver and Tommy are attacked by men in masks who drug them both. When Oliver comes to he is tied to a chair. The kidnappers want to know what Oliver’s father told him on the island. However, Oliver is definitely not the same playboy he was when he was shipwrecked, and manages to both free himself and take out – as in kill – the goons with brutal efficiency. When questioned by the police, Oliver insists that he and Tommy were saved by a man in a green hood. Oliver’s little book has a list of names in it – one of them is Adam Hunt.
Oliver’s mother assigns him a bodyguard after the kidnapping, John Diggle, formerly of the 5th Airborne. Oliver appears to consider Diggle to be more of a nuisance than anything, and gives him the slip. He starts assembling a base and a training facility in the old factory; Oliver may be a mess of scars but he’s also in very good shape and really, really good with a bow. Oliver is going to go after the people on his list, starting with Hunt, and he’s definitely not afraid to pull any punches, killing or badly injuring a whole bunch of goons in the process. Unsurprisingly, when Hunt tells the same detective who questioned Oliver about being threatened by a man in a green hood wielding a bow, the detective suggests putting out an alert for Robin Hood.
Building up characters and relationships to a large degree, with this being a first episode, but there are already some surprises.