“Trust But Verify” is episode eleven of season one of Arrow.
The episode opens with an armoured car at night and the two guards inside it are disagreeing over the type of music that should be in. In the road ahead of them, a figure with a grenade launcher pulls on a gas mask and points the grenade launcher at the car. The driver of the armoured car slams on the brakes and another van pulls up behind them. The man with the grenade launcher fires a grenade through the car’s windscreen, which starts emitting gas. The two guards bail out of the vehicle and get gunned down. The three attackers open up the car’s doors and steal the contents.
At the Queen mansion, Thea is asking Oliver’s opinion on colours. He tells her that she’s been dropping hints all week and that their mother will still not buy her a car for her birthday. Thea complains, saying that Oliver got a car when he turned 18. He tells her that he could at least back out of the driveway without hitting a tree. Tommy enters and says that Oliver did scratch the side of his father’s Maserati though.
Moira and Thea leave on a shopping trip for Thea’s birthday and Tommy asks if Moira is okay. Oliver says yes, but Thea thinks she’s a little too okay, and that Moira has been acting erratically. Tommy thinks that Walter being missing gives Moira an excuse for being erratic, and Oliver had told Thea the same thing. The news comes on and the media are trying to get detective Lance to talk about the armoured car heist, the third one, but he isn’t cooperating. Tommy comments that’s why you keep all your money offshore. A traffic cam caught the heist and the footage is shown.
At Oliver’s lair, Diggle asks Oliver if, given all the men working above, he’s thought of putting a side entrance in for his ‘Arrow Cave.’ Oliver agrees and says to put one into the alley. He wants to show Diggle something – and he’s not asking for help setting up his online dating profile. The something is the armoured car heist; it seemed familiar to Oliver. It was done the same way the Marines took down a Taliban vehicle in Kandahar in ’09. Those carrying out the heist appear to be using the same playbook.
Oliver came across the Marines’ takedown whilst researching someone in the book, who works for Black Hawk Squad Protection Group. The man is Ted Gayner, who Diggle knows. He was Diggle’s commanding officer on his first tour of Afghanistan, and he saved Dig’s life. Diggle can’t believe that Gayner’s name is on the list but Oliver says it’s not all about the one percent. The hijackers used an M32 multiple grenade launcher, which was Gayner’s specialty, and not an everyday item. Diggle is not convinced and he points out that they have recently discovered the list wasn’t even written by Oliver’s father.
Oliver has another flashback to the island. In the one from “Year’s End”, the archer, Yao Fei Gulong, was captured by Fyers. In “Burned” Oliver had killed a soldier hunting him, purely by accident. Now he has the equipment belonging to the soldier, including a map and a balaclava. All of the soldiers wear balaclavas, which seems foolish, but Fyers provides an explanation. Oliver stumbles across one of the camps and another soldier asks him if he’s new. Oliver says he is and that he is supposed to be escorting a prisoner; the other man tells him that sounds like the person taken to east Camp, and he is heading there. Oliver climbs into the man’s vehicle, then Fyers joins them. Awkward.
Malcolm Merlyn contacts Tommy and says that he knows things have been strained between them, and that he simply wanted to jolt Tommy into adulthood. Now Tommy has his first job, his father says that his tough love worked. Merlyn invites Tommy to dinner, but Tommy says he has plans with Laurel. So Malcolm invites her as well. The dinner, later in the episode, ends up going wrong and Tommy says he is going to stop letting his father disappoint him. Some more is learned about Malcolm Merlyn, and he may not quite be what he’s thought to be. Even by his son.
At Black Hawk, Gaynor (Ben Browder, Farscape‘s John Crichton and Stargate SG-1‘s Cameron Mitchell), is taking a dongle of some type from a computer when Oliver shows up and point a bow at him. However, Diggle is behind Oliver with a gun pointed at him. Oliver shoots out a light fitting and leaves with the dongle. Afterwards, Gayner says if he wants a job, he’s hired. Dig does ask why the vigilante who normally only goes after the rich should target Gayner. A mistake is the supposed reason.
There’s a bit of a discussion between Oliver and Diggle afterwards. Dig accuses him of having too much faith in the list but Oliver says he found a message from his father a few years ago explaining the list. And that he didn’t find it on the island, but fails to elaborate more. Oliver says he wouldn’t do everything he has done if he wasn’t absolutely sure. Diggle tells Oliver that he now has joined Black Hawk and he will prove that Gayner is innocent.
Whilst Moira is out with Thea, Malcolm contacts her and she has a meeting with him. He says they have a problem with a friend of Moira’s, who wants to gentrify the Glades. Which isn’t part of the plan. Malcolm wants Moira to have a word with him; she wants proof of life for Walter first. Thea had followed and she saw them talking.
At home, Oliver is trying to get into the encrypted dongle when Thea enters his room. She says they need to talk; she has found out why their mother is acting weird. Because she’s hooking up with Tommy’s dad. Thea may have followed her mother but she evidently didn’t overhear the conversation. Thea says that it’s happening all over again. A few months before Oliver and their father went missing on the Queen’s Gambit, their parents were arguing a lot and their mother was having a lot of lunch meetings with Merlyn. Thea tells Oliver that he doesn’t know their mother, that she’s a liar and a cheat. When Oliver speaks to Moira, she says that her husband was repeatedly unfaithful to her, and that he was not always the man Oliver thought. Which Oliver does know. However, the unfaithful bit, on either side, is probably wrong.
Oliver gives the dongle to Felicity to crack and claims it’s part of a scavenger hunt run by a friend of his with a crate of red wine at the end. Felicity says she loves red wine. Oliver needs Felicity to get through this, which she says is a security fob. She also says that it has military level encryption on it. Oliver claims his friend got his bodyguard to set it up for him. When Felicity finally breaks the encryption, she tells Oliver that it’s got the plans of the armoured car robberies on it, and they should give it to the police because it will be possible to predict the next one.
Oliver tells Felicity to send it to him, so that she won’t get into trouble, and he will forward it to the police. Given that the Hood shows up and stops the next robbery, not the police, this may help Felicity figure things out. She’s not exactly stupid after all. So, is Diggle’s friend innocent of this or not? He did have the security fob before Oliver stole it; hardly the sort of thing you would expect an innocent man to have his hands on. Lots of things to do with trust in this episode.