‘Arrow’ Recap With Spoilers: “Fundamentals”

“Fundamentals” begins with a pair of cops walking down the hallway of City Hall. The lights start flickering and Oliver arrives, asking them where Diaz is. The department goes on lockdown, and Oliver begins fighting dozens of officers.

He gets one of the officers to spill the fact that Diaz is holed up in a room in City Hall secured by numerous police officers.

We go back 10 hours to see Oliver and Felicity watching TV reports about a potential impeachment in the wake of Oliver firing the district attorney and police captain.

Oliver and Felicity are arguing about ways to take down Diaz when Diggle arrives. Felicity lured him to Arrow HQ by telling him that his arm implant needed a code update.

Oliver and Diggle still refuse to work together.

Oliver and Lance are meeting with Councilman Collins to go over potential obstruction of justice charges. Collins warns Oliver that impeachment proceedings will get underway later that afternoon. The attorney warns Oliver that he must have concrete evidence against the DA and police, otherwise it’s a guarantee he’ll be impeached.

Oliver has to leave City Hall to take William to a science fair. He returns home to speak with Felicity about ways to gather evidence in favor of Oliver, but Felicity reminds him that the only evidence that they have would directly connect Oliver to the Green Arrow.

Felicity and Oliver begin to argue, and in a fit of rage, Oliver accidentally destroys William’s science project. Felicity tells him to leave.

Oliver’s taking some time at Arrow HQ, and Felicity arrives to tell him that they need some space.

Lance arrives at Arrow HQ to comfort Oliver. Oliver starts venting to his mentor, making note that Lance is really the only one to not leave him yet. Lance leaves, and Oliver begins hearing noises come from the elevator.

He arms himself and when he opens the elevator, Adrian Chase is there with a gun. Chase begins to open fire. The two fight for a minute before Oliver’s able to put him in a chokehold. After threatening to go after Felicity and William, Oliver snaps his neck.

Oliver turns away in disbelief and when he turns to look back, Adrian’s body is gone. Oliver hallucinated the entire fight.

Oliver decides to run a blood test on himself and finds out that he’s been drugged with Vertigo somehow. He questions whether or not the lawyer he met with earlier somehow introduced the drug to him when they shook hands.

Oliver wants to go speak to Lance about the situation, but Oliver begins to hallucinate and see Adrian again. The hallucination tells Oliver not to go speak with Lance in his current condition. Chase tells Oliver that he’s his own worst enemy. Oliver leaves the bunker and gets a call from Lance informing him that he’s late to his impeachment proceedings.

When Oliver goes to exit the elevator from the bunker, he finds himself in his old mansion. He’s immediately approached by a younger version of Laurel Lance.

Oliver begins to having sudden random hallucinations. He sees Laurel in the hospital on her deathbed. He sees Rene in the hospital. He arrives back in his current apartment and finds his housekeeper stabbed in the stomach. She warns him “the man with the dragon tattoo” is still in his apartment before she dies. Diaz steps out and shocks Oliver with a tazer, causing the mayor to fall to his knees.

He then wakes up in the bunker and is promptly approached by a hallucination of himself as the Hood.

Oliver arrives at his hearing over an hour late. Lance pulls him aside and lets him know that the evidence that would connect him with the Green Arrow, and reminds him that it’s their only card to play.

Oliver mentions to his council that the Green Arrow gave him financial documents that connects the city employees that he fired with Ricardo Diaz. Lance pulls him aside and tells him to go back to the bunker and get the Vertigo out of his system.

After Lance leaves Oliver’s office, the Chase hallucination shows back up and tells him the only way to get out of this predicament is to nab Diaz himself, and informs him that Diaz is at the police station every night.

Felicity and William return home from the science fair when Felicity’s phone starts buzzing, an alert has gone off showing Oliver’s gone to the police department. She calls Lance, who chases Oliver down in an attempt to stop him, but Oliver quickly knocks Lance out.

Felicity arrives at the police department to find it in shambles, sometime after the events we saw at the very beginning of the episode. She tracks Oliver down and has to convince him that she’s real and not a hallucination. She tries to convince him not to enter the room where Diaz is being held, but the hallucination of Chase shows up again playing devil’s advocate, trying to get Oliver to go in the room.

Felicity puts her hand over Oliver’s heart, and he realizes that she’s real. Waiting impatiently, Diaz orders his men to exit the room and pursue Oliver. He’s able to escape with Felicity without getting injured.

Oliver returns to the bunker with Felicity and Lance, and Felicity gives him a concoction to counteract the Vertigo effects. Oliver informs Felicity that if he’s going to continue being the Green Arrow, he needs to get back to basics with no team surrounding him.

Lance walks in and turns on the TV. Oliver’s been impeached, and Lance, as deputy mayor, has been named his replacement.

Back at home, Felicity approaches her husband about being fired, but Oliver assures her she wasn’t fired. He simply needs to do his missions alone.

Oliver goes to talk to William for the first time since destroying his science project. William expresses concern over his father’s impeachment. Oliver explains that he was accidentally drugged, and William tells his father that Felicity explained the situation to him.

At City Hall, people are cleaning up the mess Oliver caused the previous night. Diaz is operating in the open in his own office when Black Siren shows up. She asks Diaz why he just didn’t shoot Oliver in the head, and Diaz explains that he wants to dismantle Oliver bit by bit.