S01E03 Lone Gunmen

While Queen trains, he explains through voiceover what Arrow is all about. His latest target is James Holder (Tobias Slezak), responsible for defective fire detectors in low-income housing. Arrow confronts Holder, but someone else is watching through a rifle scope. Before Arrow can finish his speech, the rifleman kills Holder and grazes Arrow with another shot. Back in his lair Queen crosses Holder off his list, then falls to the ground, the result of a what he identifies as a poison bullet. He retrieves some herbs from his kit and ingests them as he passes out. Flash back to Queen meeting the mysterious hooded man who shot him when he first arrived on the island. He tells him he shot him to protect him and then pulls out the arrow and disappears. Queen gets to his feet. A drunken Thea (Willa Holland) is brought home by police after stealing some things from a clothing store. Queen criticizes his mother for letting her stay home from school. Lance wonders if Arrow might be behind Holder's shooting death. Queen analyzes the poison, figuring out the shooter was a well-known assassin known as "Dead Shot." He doesn't like this guy because he doesn't kill for justice or honor. Dead Shot is now at the top of Queen's list. Queen is planning to open up a new nightclub. Tommy wants them to check out the competition, a club named "Poison" owned by Max Fuller (Marcus Rosner), whose fiancé Queen happened to have slept with. Diggs points out that the new club Queen wants to open is in a rough part of town. Joanna talks to Laurel about still having feelings for Queen. She wants them to go out that night to help Laurel move on. Moira grounds Thea for two weeks. Queen climbs the side of a building to pull something out of a wall. The police gets back the ballistic report on Holder's murder. Lance still isn't sure and goes to get "my own evidence." Queen determines the shooter was probably working on behalf of the Russian mob. He goes to a garage and asks, in Russian, for someone named Alexi Leonov (Barry Nerling). He shows a tattoo and says his name is "Bratva." He asks for information about Dead Shot. A man named Karl Rasmussen is killed. Lance points out to Walter and Moira that Rasmussen was interested in purchasing a company they were also looking at. The auction for the sale is the following day. Queen and Tommy drop by Poison, making sure to leave Diggle (David Ramsey) at the door. Laurel is there, as is a very drunk Thea. She spills the beans about Tommy and Laurel's romantic relationship and things get awkward. Fuller shows up and promptly punches Queen in the face. Tommy and Queen end up fighting his bodyguards, with Laurel coming to their rescue with some snappy moves of her own. Another flashback to Queen on the island. He wakes up next to the man who shot him and runs outside. He quickly runs into a net. At a restaurant the guys meet Diggle's sister-in-law Carly (Christie Laing). Tommy apologizes to Queen about not telling him about Laurel. Queen doesn't seem worried about it. We learn that Diggle's job somehow got his brother (Carly's husband) killed. Queen gets a call from the Russians, who give him an address for where Dead Shot stayed the last time he was in town. We see Dead Shot looking at blueprints online. Arrow arrives at the hotel room, leading to a fight with Dead Shot. Dead Shot jumps out the window and gets away. Queen pays a visit to a woman named Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) in his IT department. He gives her Dead Shot's damaged laptop in the hopes she can salvage some information. Moira tells Thea a story about how good her father had been at getting through to her. This is first time he's come up in years. Felicity finds the blueprints on Dead Shot's laptop. They are of the place where the auction for that company will be taking place. Queen realizes there are too many locations for Dead Shot to fire from. He'll need help. Arrow grabs Lance and forcefully tells him what he knows about Dead Shot and his weapon of choice. Thea joins her mother and Walter (Colin Salmon) at the auction. Lance has a large team protecting the area. But Dead Shot has already killed one of the officers and taken his post. Tommy drops by Laurel's work to talk about the other night. She says she thinks it was obvious Queen already knew about them. Tommy says he wants to be the kind of man she'll want to be with. Queen is at the auction. He mentions the potential for a shooting to Diggle. At the last minute Lance pushes Walter out of the way, preventing him from being killed. Queen rushes up the stairs, grabbing his Arrow gear on the way. Diggle follows. Arrow and Dead Shot battle. Arrow eventually drops him with a shot through his right eye, but sees that Diggle has been hit. We flashback to the island, as the mystery man releases Queen from the net with a warning about others on the island. Arrow gives Diggle some of his organic antidote for the poison. Diggle struggles into consciousness and sees it was Oliver Queen, unmasked but in his Arrow leathers, who has saved him.