Arrow Season 4 Midseason Finale Recap: "Dark Waters"

Dark Waters.
It's the holiday season in Star City and Oliver's throwing a mayoral party to get everyone in the spirit. After an attack on the city, Oliver makes a bold move against HIVE that will ultimately cause Darhk to retaliate in a brutal manner while the festivities are occurring. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Team Oliver Queen is running a Star City bay cleanup for his political campaign when the crew and volunteers are attacked. A young girl is almost shot, but Oliver runs in to save her. Felicity is able to disable the plane and send it into the bay, but people are still injured. Luckily, no one is dead. It's HIVE who's behind this and Oliver's distraught because there were kids there and they could've gotten hurt, or even worse, killed.

Donna's decorating Oliver and Felicity's apartment for his campaign holiday party and while she's going through the boxes of decorations, she finds a pretty little box with a pretty little diamond ring inside. Felicity and Donna now know that Oliver has an intention to propose, and they are very excited about it. Their reaction made me even more excited than I already was. The happiness is spreading.

Oliver Queen is sick of Damien Darhk and he decides to expose him to the public. Damien's opinion? He breaks his TV with his telekinetic powers. Is he angry? You bet. Definitely going to cause consequences for Oliver Queen, but the world needed to know. He sent the message that he wasn't afraid anymore, and even though he wants to cancel his holiday party, doing so would be the opposite of that. Oliver's concerned that they didn't do the right thing, but they'll be ready for when he does retaliate. They've got some extra security.

At Oliver's holiday party, Felicity, Oliver, and Diggle meet Curtis and his husband. Felicity gets very frazzled after she says her and Oliver are practically engaged and Oliver looks at her with such an excellently executed face of confusion. And because Felicity is freaking out about it, she tells Oliver that she found the ring and she's worried about why he didn't propose 3 months ago. Everything changed and Oliver had to rethink things because their lives are in danger and he didn't know if their relationship could survive.

In the middle of this conversation, Damien Darhk crashes the party and gets past the security Oliver had to protect everyone from this happening. In order to punish him, he's taking everyone Oliver loves most. Oliver was thrown through a window and doesn't wake up until after they're gone. He's rampant on asking the Ghosts where they are and he still can't find them. The only person he has with him is Laurel to help.

Laurel got a tip that her father is working for Damien Darhk and she then finds out that Oliver knew about this also. He tells her straight out that the reason why is because he was protecting her and she's pissed, but it's true and she understands that they've both kept secrets from each other.

Oliver, Laurel, and Lance are meeting in the lair when Malcolm shows up telling Oliver to work quickly. His plan is for Oliver to turn himself into Darhk. It's the only plan he has. And he does turn himself in so that he would let his friends go. He gets a look inside of what Damien wants him to help with. He has a project using gas chambers that he wants Oliver to help with as mayor.

Oliver gets to say "goodbye" to Felicity and he lets her know that he needed to turn himself in order to know Damien's location. They're fighting their way through danger together, not running away from it, showing their relationship can survive this sort of life. And she even tells him that if he were to have asked her to marry him, she would've said yes.

Oliver had a deal with Damien: he turns himself in and he lets his friends go, but Damien's not one to follow deals. Oliver and Felicity are led back out into the chamber room where Thea and Diggle already stand inside and they grab Felicity and put her in as well. Darhk's logic is that if they live, Oliver has something to keep fighting for, and he doesn't want that. Oliver can't get in and as they all panic, all he can do is watch.

Luckily, Laurel shows up and uses her canary cry to disrupt Damien's death party and also break the glass, saving everyone. She's also got another Green Arrow with her and that's Malcolm in the suit. Lots of Darhk's prisoners are let out of their cells and attack the team, but Lance shows up with a team of his own and they help out. Meanwhile, as Darhk's fighting Malcolm as the Green Arrow, Oliver steps in as himself and takes him down. Darhk begins beating him up, but this allows Malcolm to shoot him in the chest a few times and then leave an explosive arrow by his side. Would be nice if it killed him, but of course not.

Oliver Queen has a tree lighting event in front of the entire city to light united. It is here when he pulls Felicity up on stage with him and gives her the most words before asking her to marry him and she says yes! The beautiful couple is finally engaged.

It would be awesome if the episode ended like that because it would be such a happy ending, but instead, as Felicity and Oliver are driving off, the car is attacked by Ghosts and is shot at multiple times. Oliver protects Felicity, but when their driver is shot dead, Oliver jumps in the front to drive the car away and Felicity's shot and unresponsive. Not to mention the Little Drummer Boy playing behind it, which added so much to the scene, as well.

Emotional and excellently done midseason finale for Arrow. Such a sad, but well done ending. Such a well done episode. It's exactly the midseason finale it needed to have. In January, we'll see Felicity rushed to the hospital and what happens with where she was shot. I can't wait to see what happens next. And I, personally, strongly think Felicity will live. What did you think of tonight's midseason finale? Feel free to leave your thoughts down below.

Arrow returns January 20, 2016 on the CW.

Other things worth mentioning: 
↠When Oliver asks if they did the right thing about Darhk, he got down on one knee to ask Felicity, who already knows about the ring. Her reaction was amusing since they were in the middle of the lair and it would be an odd place for a proposal.
↠Diggle's still trying to get through to his brother Andy, but he's still not cooperating. Andy says that he fails to see the man he is right in front of him the whole time, which is a ghost, and so Diggle will treat him as one.
↠Donna Smoak and Quentin Lance are officially a thing and Felicity wants to be able to get rid of the view she got of them together. Funny moment.
↠Damien's got phase four of his plan working and it involves a massive corn maze in an underground area. He's also a family man, who knew?