Cayden James introduces himself as Ben Gale, and I immediately smiled at that - he played Benjamin Linus on Lost, but he first pretended to be Henry Gale to the Losties.  There’s no way that wasn’t a easter egg - they spelled the last name the same (Gale vs Gail or Gayle) in the closed caption.  So I got sidetracked for a moment, before I went back into how bad he was being.  Interesting that we finally got some clues about his son, and later a little more that Felicity and Alena dug around for.  a giant OY at the 10 million EVERY NIGHT, poor city.

Vince and the newbies, blah blah blah.  information sharing went out the window when they heard from Vince, I guess.  Felicity tried, and she shared. And the newbies shared just that Oak Street was a target, but no hows or whys or anything beyond that that might have been helpful to know - it would have been bad if Oliver or Digg took out Vince because they didn’t know he was helping (or is he? I think he is, but he could be playing both sides, we’ll see).

Like father, like son, William helps get the kids out of the bus.  (if I were guessing we’d converge back at #FiCoN canon, maybe this is the start of his desire to be a fire fighter ;) @so-caffeinated @dust2dust34  We find that he’s still going by William Clayton, not Queen. Honoring Samantha’s memory probably.  And he’s not surprised to see the Green Arrow helping him, but he IS surprised to see it’s his Dad.  awww, buddy.  One of the hardest pieces of conversation between Oliver and William is when O says “I promise...” and we have heard this before, he and several other characters are heavy on promising things they can’t be sure will happen.  I’d much rather they say “I’ll do everything in my power” or something along that line.  And W sees this, because he says “you’ve promised before.”  

My tweet last night at 9:42:

here’s how i wanted this to go. (looks at William) F: you should talk to him. O: (holds out hand) let’s go l go talk to him.

And then the show goes on to give me a nicer outcome, but I did have that in my mind.

We got some nice scenes with Felicity and John here and there.  I almost would have liked seeing him come to the family meeting, honestly.  I’m not sure they are giving him as much credit as being a part of the family as they do - but then again, because Audrey isn’t available as Lyla, we don’t see as much of Oliver and Felicity helping with his family as we could either.  It’s one of those things that fics do better because they don’t have to deal with actor availability!

When Felicity is explaining where she is at with tracking Cayden’s package that makes him think Oliver was responsible for his son’s death (which he can’t be, because he was off recruiting Dinah at this time last year), he follows her train of thought, and that made me smile.  She follows him across the platform and rests her chin on his shoulder which I always love, and they talk about William.

Newbie moment: I wasn’t feeling like Curtis would know morse code that well at only hearing it once, without barely looking.

But THEN, the best scene of the night is Felicity and William while the Green Arrow and Spartan are out fighting the bad guys.  The quote is in the image I made above.  Stephen had tweeted that Emily shined in this episode and shine she did.  Felicity said the right things, in her own Felicity-speak way that William is now following like a Queen who has been Smoaked :)  This was the PERFECT use of a voice over.  I replied to a tweet last night saying:

this is the show i love, the relationships make it so much more than an action show. this is why #FelicitySmoak is the perfect narration/exposition for the show and Emily is the perfect actress to present that emotion. 

It really was a perfect callback to Felicity’s history with Oliver and how she copes with the worry, and how she’s exactly the person to share her worries and coping plans (because of LOVE!) with William.  They declare that Oliver is BADASS. (i agree, buddy! and I’d add that so is he and so is Felicity.)

Team Arrow and the newbies, with some help from Vince who killed the guy I can’t remember his character (I’d been calling him The Stooge in my head) save the community safe zone.  But not in time for Cayden James’ deadline and everything starts to shut down. 

Family meeting break!  hello back to the loft.  and William gets it now, thanks to Felicity.  and he admits that before, he was worried of becoming an orphan, but it’s different now because now he has Felicity.  oh, my heart.  sweet kiddo.  But it also reminds me just how much he’s grown up since the season 4 episode he was introduced, and even since the beginning of the season.  Major props to Jack Moore for his acting this episode.  

A brief conversation between Oliver and Felicity, and Alena reports that she didn’t find the evidence they were hoping for.  So Oliver goes TO the office, where Thea is waiting to transfer the money.  Seems like that coulda been done over the phone, but whatever :P  So the city is safe for another day?  how many days worth of 10mil does the city have in its coffers?  Will it be a single day in Star City before the next episode?  We shall see.