‘Arrow’: Breaking Down the Ending of “Due Process”

Tonight’s episode of Arrow saw some major developments in the hunt for Ricardo Diaz and they may have some huge impact on the season going forward.

Spoiler’s for tonight’s episode of Arrow, “Due Process,” below.

With Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) in prison the entire season thus far those he left behind have found themselves in some unusual situations and creating some unlikely alliances. One of those unlikely alliances? Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) and Laurel (Katie Cassidy). The pair teamed up last week when dealing with Silencer and continue their alliance this week.

The initially plan to get Oliver out of prison using the court system by claiming that the federal government has failed to keep up their end of the bargain with Oliver. That doesn’t work. The court acknowledges the atrocities at Slabside but declines to release Oliver despite a very moving speech about the difficulties of being a hero from Laurel. It’s a sharp blow but hang on because things aren’t over yet.

Diaz (Kirk Acevedo) is tracked down to the Star City gas plant, or rather, his bombs are but where the bombs are The Dragon doesn’t follow too far behind. After disarming the bombs attached to the pipes at the gas plant, Team Arrow plus the mystery Green Arrow apprehend Diaz. Once in custody, Felicity decides that she is going to do whatever it takes to eliminate the threat he poses to her family by killing him. This is a huge shift for Felicity who is not generally not the lethal force type, but a she tells Diaz its who he has turned her into and she’s prepared to kill him when Laurel comes into the room — she made a deal to get Oliver out of prison. The feds will free Oliver in exchange for Diaz.

Except, this is Diaz. It won’t be that easy. He pays off the transport guards who kill some other guards at Slabside and put him in a position to enter the prison presumably to go after Oliver himself. Meanwhile, Oliver has his own issues in his last hours at Slabside. Earlier in the episode his “friend” Stanley was hauled off to the hole for having killed Officer Dunbar. Stanley swears it wasn’t him, that Brick (Vinnie Jones) set him up, and it’s a believable claim. Stanley is a small, mild-mannered seeming man who has said from the beginning he didn’t commit the crimes he’s behind bars for.

Oliver investigates and finds Ben Turner/Bronze Tiger’s (Michael Jai White) shiv. He turns it in, Turner is dragged off, and Stanley is freed. However, when Stanley comes to speak with Oliver about the situation once out of solitary, he mentions the shiv — something he shouldn’t know about at all. Oliver reads this situation that Stanley really did kill Dunbar and had manipulated him the whole time. Stanley seems genuinely confused and continues to insist he is innocent.

While it is unclear where that tease will go or what reason Stanley would have for killing Dunbar, we’ve theorized before that Arrow’s Stanley is play on Stanley Dover from Kevin Smith’s “Quiver”, a young man with a special bond with a demon monster called Spot. If Arrow Stanley is the Stanley with the monster, it’s possible that it’s the monster — in this case a second personality — who killed Dunbar, meaning the mild-mannered guy who has spent the season thus far attempting to befriend Oliver truly innocent and truly bewildered. It would explain why he knew about the knife, too.

What did you think about tonight’s episode of Arrow? Let us know in the comments.

Arrow airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.