“Suicide Squad” is episode sixteen of season two of Arrow.
Oliver is in bed with Sara when he jolts awake. When he speaks to Sara, she says nothing. So, he reaches out to her and his hand comes back bloody. It’s not Sara; it’s Shado and she calls him a murderer. Then he wakes up again, this time for real. In the previous episode, “The Promise”, Slade had reminded Oliver of his promise that Oliver cannot die until he has known complete despair.
Oliver makes a phone call, in Russian, and heads out to meet Alexi and the bratva. Oliver wants Alexi to find Slade Wilson, a rich Australian with a missing eye. He needs to know where he lives. Alexi wants a favour in return; Oliver is not willing to cooperate. And takes down Alexi’s men when they surround him. He tells Alexi that he knows how their brotherhood works, and right now it works for him.
When Oliver returns, Sara is up and she asks him when the last time Oliver slept was. Right before he found out that Slade Wilson was still alive. Even though neither of them are good at sharing their feelings, Sara is there if he needs to talk. Oliver states that he isn’t scared. Slade has an agenda. First, the mass production of Mirakuru, then he showed up at Oliver’s mother’s house. Oliver intends to kill Slade and make sure he stays dead this time. He just needs to find him.
Diggle is sitting in his car on a street when Felicity comes out with a mug of cocoa. Dig is watching out for her, just in case, as Felicity puts it, Slade decides to break her neck in her sleep. There’s extra security on Moira, Roy is with Thea and Sara is staying close to home. Felicity tells him he can’t stop Slade from killing her, so he should go home. Before Dig leaves, he gets a message to meet in room 1141 of the Ostrander Hotel. Inside which is Lyla. Dig says that he can’t stay. She asks if everything’s alright. To Dig’s affirmative, she replies that he can stay after all.
There’s a flashback to Afghanistan, and Dig, Lyla and some other soldiers are escorting some women. One of whom tells Lyla that there’s something she needs to know. One of the women isn’t a woman but a man Gholem Qadir, who is on the high value target list. An opium drug lord, people trafficker and arms dealer.
As Lyla and Dig leave the room, Amanda Waller is there. Something has come up. She needs them to come with her – both of them. There’s a nerve agent that was about to hit the open market, but it was stopped and all but one sample was accounted for. 1 ml of the agent has a kill radius of ten miles. It’s been tracked to an estate in Markovia, and it has to be off the book. Amanda tells Dig that she knows how he and Oliver spend their free time. She doesn’t want to involve the Arrow, though; she just wants Dig. Because of Gholem Qadir.
The DoD turned Qadir loose a few years ago – not a bright idea, Dig thinks – and last month he tried to buy Malcolm Merlyn’s prototype earthquake generator. Waller is sure that Qadir remembers the man who saved his life. Qadir is having a party on his estate. She doesn’t need Dig to get the nerve agent out, but his team in. Task Force X. Which Deadshot calls a Suicide Squad. The other team members Dig will be working with are Bronze Tiger, recruited in “Tremors”, and the bomber Shrapnel, from “Blast Radius”. There’s a woman at least who isn’t coming with them. Waller says they have useful skills. And Dig says they can all be written off. He isn’t happy.
At Verdant, Laurel is attempting to fill in a CV. Sara spots Oliver, who heads to see Felicity. She has had no luck tracking Slade. She’s followed his donation to Moira’s campaign, looked at credit card and even car agreements. He has to get around somehow, after all. Oliver says that Slade knows how to be a ghost. When a report of a robbery in progress comes in, Felicity says to Oliver that they are still fighting crime. After Oliver has finished dealing with them, there’s a figure on a roof behind him. Oliver senses this and goes to look. He finds the black and white mask with an arrow through its eye.
In Markovburg, Markovia, Dig ‘bumps’ into Qadir. Diggle claims that he is out of the military and in a more lucrative kind of work. The kind that isn’t spoken about, and requires security, provided by Bronze Tiger. Qadir claims that Diggle changed his life; the intelligence he provided the U.S. saved lives. He’s now a free man and can give back what he can. Then Bronze Tiger is shot – by Deadshot, so it’s just a ploy. Shrapnel bolts and doesn’t return despite Waller’s warnings. Said warnings were backed up by explosives in the Squad’s heads. Dig is definitely upset with Lyla.
Sara is co0ncerned about Oliver, as Slade is getting inside his head. He’s not eating, barely sleeping and is having nightmares. Oliver is concerned about Slade hurting Sara. Slade has been planning this for a long time and is always one step ahead. Laurel ends up giving Oliver relationship advice about Sara. Oliver needs to change how he’s handling this, because he isn’t handling it very well. Eventually he reaches out to someone who also thought Slade was dead.
Much of the time is spent on Dig’s mission. Diggle and Lyla argue about motivations. She doesn’t see anything different about how Waller is doing things that how Dig and Oliver are. Until, perhaps, she does, when Waller gets a little bit too ruthless. Dig ends up having several chats with Deadshot, of all people, including about the latter’s daughter. Dig actually seems to be getting on better with Deadshot than he is with Lyla for much of the episode.
Nothing from the island this episode, but there are more flashbacks from Afghanistan. Diggle had saved Qadir’s life when their group got ambushed.