Curtis Holt


 * For the wrestler and Curtis' vigilante namesake, see Terry Sloane.

"Oliver's in prison. Even he couldn't outrun the risk that it takes to be out there fighting. This life has cost me my marriage, gotten me stabbed, and people I love shot. Maybe you and Lyla and everyone else has what it takes to cope with it, but I can't keep lying to myself. Being Mr. Terrific... it's just not me anymore."

- Curtis Holt to John Diggle

Dr. Curtis Holt is a bronze medal Olympic athlete and a former employee of Palmer Technologies who worked alongside then-CEO Felicity Smoak in the Design Innovations department. He is the ex-husband of Paul Holt and the boyfriend of Nick Anastas. After learning of Green Arrow's secret identity and the location of the Arrowcave, he joined Team Arrow as maintenance and tech support. While searching for Rene Ramirez to have him join the team, he took a beating from a group of street thugs. This inspired him to be trained and go out on the field, not wanting to feel helpless again. During his first time out, Curtis was jokingly called Mister Fair Play, after his favorite wrestler, Terry Sloane, and for his clean tactics. He was later directly named after Sloane's in-ring name; Mr. Terrific.

After discovering that Oliver Queen, John Diggle, and Felicity Smoak respectively had violated his privacy, he left the team, along with Rene and Dinah Drake to formed their own team known as New Team Arrow, until he rejoined Team Arrow to help Oliver battle Diaz, along with Rene and Dinah.

Early life
Curtis Holt was born in Starling City and grew up with a brother, to whom he was extremely close. Curtis is openly homosexual since early teenhood, though his mother could barely stand his coming out. As a kid, Curtis was a huge fan of wrestling, especially the clean fighting style of Terry Sloane/Mr. Terrific, on whom he had a crush.

In adulthood, Curtis graduated from college with a degree biochemistry but later pursued an athletic career, becoming a bronze-medal-winning Olympic decathlete. At some point in his life, Curtis started to suffer from Achilles tendinitis and needed it treated in order to qualify for the Olympics. For this, he met Paul, a physical therapist, and the two eventually began a romantic relationship. Sometime later, Curtis left his athletic career and was hired by Palmer Technologies.

In 2009, Curtis' beloved brother died of pancreatic cancer and he stated he would give anything to hear his voice again. In 2011, Curtis and Paul got married after the latter proposed by placing a ring in the reef while they were scuba diving for Curtis to find.

Due to the rising criminality in the rechristened Star City, Curtis and Paul came close to leaving the city in October 2015 until seeing Green Arrow's televised speech, which inspired them to stay.

Working for Palmer Technologies
Curtis created an algorithm to argue for company-wide pay rises, only for Mr. Dennis to intervene and ask him to use it to determine who to fire. After Felicity Smoak returned to Star City, he appeared at a board meeting to introduce himself and present her with the list of people. She called him back to her office sometime later, but he accidentally arrived late. She began to get angry at him, but he explained his original intentions. As they were talking, Karla Groves walked in and Felicity was forced to fire her, which she was able to infer straight away. Days later, Curtis ran into Felicity again in her office. He reminded her that the list of names was double-sided, and she realized that Curtis' was on the flip-side. He realized this and acknowledged that it was okay, as it was his own fault, not to mention it gave him time to holiday with his husband. However, eventually, Felicity re-hired him, along with the several people she had to fire, claiming that he had a revolutionary idea for the "technology of tomorrow", and would require all of the necessary manpower.

While working on his project, Felicity walked in and Curtis showed discomfort. After showing Felicity a few things that he has been working on, Felicity asks Curtis to scan a playing card, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Curtis notices some strange things about it and Felicity says she gambles, saying she thinks her opponent cheated. She leaves and Curtis begins tests on the card. After Curtis finishes the tests, Felicity visits him and he offers to look at her phone. After making comments about her name, he presents her with what he found out about the playing card. He reveals that it is not a playing card as it contains proteins and receptors. Curtis says that although they can track him, their ‘poker player’ can track them faster. As they attempt to leave, they get stopped by Jeremy, saying he will kill the one who says where they can find the Green Arrow. Felicity says to run while doing so, Curtis knocks down a shelf and requests to be told what’s happening. They go into a secret elevator into the Arrowcave and grab guns to ward him off. While Felicity is firing a rifle, Curtis tries to crawl away but Jeremy throws a card and knocks a light onto his head. Felicity then gets him and admits him to Starling General Hospital.

While Felicity continued to receive strange messages on her phone and showed them to Curtis thinking he was the one sending them. Curtis knew the code from somewhere but could not remember where from. He later tracked the source of the code to Ray Palmer's network and told Felicity that it had a message in it that she should listen to. She is skeptical at first but Curtis tells her about his brother and how he would do anything to hear something new from him.

Aiding Team Arrow
When Felicity finally listens to the message she noticed that there was something strange on it and ask Curtis to try and clean it up. He worked on it for hours but they finally found the rest of the message which revealed Ray Palmer was still alive and was in trouble. Later Curtis helped Felicity searching for Ray when he sends a new message, letting them know that he survived the explosion because his suit successfully shrank him down to a small size, however, is being held prisoner by Damien Darhk, who hope to get the technology from his suit. Team Arrow, also including Curtis, was able to break into the facility where Ray was being held and, with a device created by Curtis, they successfully save and restore him.

A pair of weeks later Curtis attended Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak's holiday party with his husband Paul, the couple revealed them for how long they had been married and how Paul had proposed to Curtis.

After Felicity remained paralyzed due to an attack at the hands of H.I.V.E.'s men, Curtis began to work on a bio-stimulant implant that would help her walk again and, one night, finishing later he is attacked by Roy Harper, who was being extorted by The Calculator to commit crimes, however Green Arrow intervenes knocking Roy out with an arrow. Some days later, Curtis and Paul attended Oliver and Felicity's engagement party, where Curtis gave Felicity the bio-stimulant implant he developed and Paul told her how much work Curtis had put into the gift.

When Brie Larvan launched an attack on Palmer Technologies trapping Thea, Felicity, and Donna inside, Curtis, being sick, was not at work and learned about it from the news so he managed to tracks down Oliver's hideout, discovering his secret in the process, and offered his help to the team. After Oliver was stung by one of Larvan's robotic bees, which slowing began to multiplying inside him, Curtis has Laurel uses the Canary Cry to cancel out the frequency that Larvan is using to control her bees and save Oliver's life. After he recovered, the Green Arrow burst into Felicity's office, where Larvan has taken her hostages and fired an arrow at her bees which held a virus developed by Curtis. After her bees were shut down by the virus, Larvan began to shot with her gun and to threaten everybody in the room so Curtis reactivated the bees himself making them sting her multiple times and causing her to fall into a coma. Later, Oliver began to harshly criticize Curtis for his positive attitude towards vigilantism explaining that his life as a vigilante is what ruined his relationship with Felicity and took him away from happiness, however after Laurel reminded Oliver that Felicity left him because of the lies he told as himself, he apologizes to Curtis and encourages him to go back to his husband, which he did.

Genesis Day
After H.I.V.E. leader Damien Darhk reactivated the reprogrammed Rubicon protocol with the help of Felicity's former boyfriend, Cooper Seldon; Curtis assisted Felicity and her father, the infamous Calculator, subverting all of Cooper's efforts to get control over Rubicon through computer hacking and managing to overload the man's whole computer. After that, Darhk decided to use Rubicon to destroy the whole Earth and showed up at Oliver's apartment, attacking Felicity, Donna, and Curtis to steal the laptop that keeps him locked out of the program and launch over 15,000 nuclear missiles. Later, as H.I.V.E. rampaged through Star City while attempting to execute Operation Genesis, Felicity managed to convince Cooper to rebel against Darhk, which resulted in his death, so that she and Curtis redirected all the nukes into space at the same moment in which Green Arrow managed to kill Darhk.

Joining Team Arrow
Five months after the final showdown with H.I.V.E., as his old team members have gone their separate ways, Oliver is encouraged by Felicity to build a new team by recruiting the amateur vigilantes now working in Star City, like Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog; Curtis is appointed in searching for the latter to have him join the team, but while doing so he is ambushed and beaten by a group of street thugs. Shaken and humiliated, not wanting to feel that powerless anymore, Curtis is inspired to be a vigilante himself and go out on the field, so he asked Oliver to be trained as well. Being accepted as a part of the new Team Arrow, Curtis showed up at a rendezvous building and began training alongside Rene Ramirez and Evelyn Sharp. The training turned out to be too rough for them and all the recruits except for Curtis quit working with Green Arrow due to his aggressive personality. However, after Oliver recruited Rory Regan/Ragman and revealed his identity to them all, all the recruits rejoined the team. After training for another week the team was starting to become agitated from not participating in missions, however, Oliver told them to keep training until he feels ready to let them help in the field. Rene impulsively went out to find the drug dealer Derek Sampson on his own but his recklessness led to Sampson falling into a pool of chemicals used to create Stardust presumably killing him. Sampson however survived and became stronger, unable to feel pain. Green Arrow later brought Curtis (dubbed "Mister Fair Play"), Wild Dog, Ragman and Evelyn (codenamed "Artemis") to stop Sampson handling his men and sabotaging his equipment to replicate more of the chemicals that made him invincible, while Green Arrow confronted him. After succeeding, Oliver brought the team to the Arrowcave and they found the display cases for Oliver's suit and the former members of the first Team Arrow.

Becoming Mr. Terrific
As the new team was finally allowed to become known to the public Curtis was officially given the codename "Mr. Terrific". However there was difficulty due to Rene's impulsive and recklessness tendencies and the team had trouble getting along, but they all knew they had to pull it together. After failing to stop the Green Arrow from breaking Spartan out of military prison, Curtis and his teammates returned to the Arrowcave where they got news of Tobias Church's latest criminal act. Felicity was reluctant to send them out against Church, though Rory's return to Team Arrow convinced her to allow the mission. The team engaged in battle but was forced to retreat when Curtis got a knife thrown in his back.

While recovering from the wound, Curtis stayed in the Arrowcave with Felicity and helped the team to track down Rene after he was captured by Church and his men. Later, he assisted the team in a plan to destroy Church's organization confronting them at the docks and defeating the masked assassin Scimitar with the help of Artemis and Christopher Chance. Prometheus's killing spree that started with Church's death forced Oliver to reveal to his new team his past actions as 'The Hood', leaving them all shaken and angered, believing Oliver to be a killer at heart. Despite this Curtis did not leave Team Arrow, declaring he believes Oliver has changed in the last five years. Curtis was later seen accessing the backstage of a concert with his friends, thanks to Oliver's connections. When the Spooky Crew, a gang of skull-masked criminals, began robbing banks, and a new trigger-happy Vigilante went after them, Team Arrow clashed with him posing as the gang and pretending to rob Star City Trust Bank to lure him in a trap. Vigilante saw through the ruse and knocked Artemis out, taking Mr. Terrific as a hostage. Allowing the rest of the team to go, Green Arrow shot an arrow at Vigilante before he could kill Mr. Terrific, strapping Vigilante to a pillar, although he managed to escape before the Green Arrow could unmask him.

After the alien invaders known as the Dominators kidnapped Oliver, Thea, Diggle, Ray, and Sara sucking them up to their mother ship and placing them in a shared hallucination, Curtis and Felicity hack the aliens' technology to help Cisco to locate and rescue their teammate.

Losing Paul
During the City Hall Christmas party, Paul witnessed Prometheus attacking and taking down Curtis, putting him in the hospital. Paul visited Curtis after he woke up, and told him that he could no longer handle Curtis being both his husband and Mr. Terrific at the same time as he began to feel worried that Curtis may never make it home alive after he started his vigilante activities; Paul told Curtis to choose before leaving. Less than 24 hours later, Curtis comes home and sees that Paul has packed his belongings and is moving out to his brother's house; Curtis is left devastated.

After "Laurel Lance" make an apparent return from the dead, Felicity held a party to celebrate the event, introducing her to Rene, Rory, and Curtis who, however, was not in a good mood due to his separation with Paul. Later, after Laurel is revealed to be the Earth-Two doppelgänger of the one they knew, and Oliver agreed to met her at the Black Canary statue as she insisted she was being used by Prometheus and not intentionally their enemy, Mr. Terrific attack her under Felicity's order and is knocked to the ground by Laurel's powers forcing Green Arrow to use a tranquilizer arrow to render her unconscious. After this, Curtis expressed his frustration to Rene, stating that it's unfair that he had lost his husband in order to be a vigilante and yet, no matter how hard he tries, he's not material. Later, as Team Arrow faced Prometheus and the escaped Black Siren into a warehouse when she was about to kill both Oliver and Felicity, Mr. Terrific used a dampening device to stop her from using her power allowing Felicity to spitefully knocked her out. That evening Rene tells Curtis to concentrate on what he can do rather than what he can't, stating that his skillset is "pretty badass."

A few days later, Curtis showed to Team Arrow video footages of "Tina Boland" fighting and using her sonic scream against bad guys. After agreeing that she was perfect to be the next Canary, Curtis, Rene and Oliver went together to Hub City to recruit her, eventually persuading her to accept after they helped her to take down Sean Sonus and his gang.

Continuing Vigilantism
With the arrival of Dinah, he still continued his vigilantism. After stopping the assassination of Oliver, he met up with Paul who served him with divorce papers.

Personality
Curtis is highly intelligent, kind, caring, selfless, moral, honorable, just and optimistic. Curtis also has a dislike for guns, to the point that he believes that guns should be outlawed. Rene Ramirez gives him an opposing viewpoint in this regard but Curtis is adamant in his beliefs about the weapons regardless.
 * -|As a civilian=

Just like the other heroes on Earth One. Curtis has a big belief in taking the law in his own hands. He wishes to make a difference in this way. Before he was feeling discouraged when he was getting beaten up on the battlefield, but gained much confidence when he made his T-Spheres. However, his vigilante activities cost him his husband Paul and he felt very affected by this emotionally.
 * -|As Mr. Terrific=

Curtis has a sense of justice, honor and good morals; when he learns that Oliver had him on surveillance (as he believed he could possibly be the witness that will testified against him in court - regarding his identity as Green Arrow) he became completely disgusted by his actions and more so when he discovers that even John Diggle and Felicity Smoak did not trust him; simply due to the incident with Evelyn Sharp, even after he had genuinely proven himself trustworthy, and after Oliver (unfairly) kicked out Rene - Curtis finally left the team, having lost complete trust and respect for Oliver.

Later, when Oliver finally apologizes for his unfair/unjust treatment towards him, along with Dinah and Rene, and despite the sincerity of his apology, Curtis could not return to the team, having lost complete trust and respect for the original members of Team Arrow - firstly for the violation of his privacy and trust, but foremost because they never trusted him in the first place and did not treat him as an equal, as he felt strongly that he could not be part of a team where there was no trust.

During a physical (violent/brutal) confrontation with Team Arrow, Curtis hack into John's chip implant in his right arm, to inflicted life-threatening injuries, in order to take him out of the fight, in order to stand a better chance against Oliver and get to Laurel Lance; a sign that Curtis has lost his sense of justice, honor and morality.

Curtis is a hypocrite, stating that he does not want anything to do with Oliver, John and Felicity anymore, due to them hurting Rene to the point where he needed to stay in the hospital because of the serious injuries Oliver had inflicted onto him, but Curtis himself has also inflicted life-threatening injuries to John, in order to find Laurel Lance (prior to Oliver putting Rene in critical condition) which he also does not apologise for.

Abilities
"Olympic decathlon medalist here. I got this."

- Curtis Holt


 * Peak of human physical condition: Curtis mentioned that he was a bronze medal Olympic athlete who competed in Beijing. He has shown to keep a regular appearance at his gym and has shown to get his inspiration from pro wrestler Terry Sloane. He has been seen showing his athleticism while evading one of Brie Larvan's robotic bees, chasing down drug dealers and evading attacks from Roy Harper.
 * Genius-level intellect: Curtis' most prominent feature is his intellect, as he has 14 PhDs, including one in biomedical engineering. Curtis graduated college with a biochemistry degree. He was able to localize the composition of the super-serum that gave Derek Sampson his powers. He led Palmer Technologies' Design Innovations department and was handpicked by Felicity to front the creation of several prototypes for the future. Curtis is also familiar enough with Morse code that he can decipher it without having to look it up.
 * Expert engineer: Curtis Holt is an accomplished engineer, able to invent new forms of technology, such as the T-Spheres and contact lenses with HD displays. He also developed software for tracking certain pieces of technology when the situation demands it, a program he later added to the T-Spheres. He also developed infrared cameras with facial recognition functioning that were later used to identify Andy Diggle. Curtis also assisted Felicity and Cisco Ramon in hacking Dominator technology in order to locate Oliver and company when they were kidnapped. His most noteworthy creation is a bio-stimulant chip that could repair major forms of paralysis.
 * Computer specialist: Curtis is also versed in the field of computer science, has created an algorithm which would improve Palmer Technologies efficiency by calculating the necessary number of layoffs needed to balance the company's budget. He also deciphered Ray Palmer's message hidden in the form of computer static, took over and disarmed Bug-Eyed Bandit's robotic bees, and is often backup computer support and mission control when Felicity is unavailable.
 * Multilingual: Curtis is capable of fluently speaking 6 languages such as English, French and Russian, though he's noted by Anatoly to have a "horrible" Russian accent while doing so.
 * Expert combatant: Curtis Holt has proven himself to be an amateur fighter when the situation demands it. This is evidenced when the highly trained Roy Harper, an expert street fighter who was trained by Oliver Queen, attacked him and Curtis managed to land two punches on him and evade some of his attacks. Since joining Team Arrow and being trained by Oliver himself, Curtis' combat skills have gradually improved, able to hold his own for a period against a skilled assassin in Scimitar with help from Evelyn Sharp and eventually after more training sessions by Oliver he was able to briefly stand up to Prometheus and both Liza Warner and Carrie Cutter. He has become skilled enough to the point of being able to defeat Nazis from Earth-X with ease. During the Outriders scuffle with Team Arrow, Curtis was able to hold his own against Oliver alongside Rene but was easily overpowered.

Equipment

 * Mr. Terrific suits: Sometime after becoming one of the new members of Team Arrow, Curtis constructed a suit for himself made out of what would be ordinary clothes including his favorite Fairplay jacket. To hide his identity he has his hair held back in braids and he wears a mask in the shape of a T, covering his eyes, nose, and mouth, effectively disguising his face, it is unknown how it is kept on his face. The suit later received some upgrades, making it more streamlined by adding white and red linings to the suit and added kevlar protection.
 * T-Spheres: Jokingly called his "balls" by other members of Team Arrow, are a pair of automated drones invented by Curtis originally as part of Felicity's program "prototypes for the future" while she and Curtis both worked at Palmer Tech. After he quit and became Mr. Terrific, Curtis continued to work on the Spheres as a weapon to aid him in fighting crime. The T-Spheres had shown the following functions so far:
 * Linking to computers/data via "quantum computing."
 * Self-targeting projectile.
 * Used as explosives, although this was originally seen as a fault in the original design.
 * Able to track any type of technology if given a piece of its circuitry.
 * Forming a laser grid between the spheres.
 * Can serve as surveillance drones.
 * Can be loaded with several CCs of adrenaline, should one need a jumpstart.

Arrow
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Season 7
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Trivia

 * From his own admission, Curtis is an atheist and has always found it very difficult to believe there's "a divine plan" behind life.
 * In Infinite Crisis #5 (April 2006) Mr. Terrific is seen getting into a theological discussion with Ragman, much like Curtis did with Rory in
 * In Season 4, Curtis would correct Felicity's grammar mistakes as a running gag.
 * Curtis is the only one of the five new recruits in Season 5 to be a main character.
 * Curtis is one of the many LGBT characters to appear in the Arrowverse, the others being Sara Lance, Paul Holt, Alex Danvers, Nyssa al Ghul, Maggie Sawyer, Leo Snart, Ray Terrill, David Singh and Hartley Rathaway.
 * Curtis is also the first gay man and the second gay character after Nyssa to appear in.
 * Curtis enjoys the arcade game Maximum Force.
 * He likes the movies Witness and John Carpenter's Escape duology.
 * Curtis has seen every episode of The Closer (twice) and Law and Order.
 * Curtis has 14 PhDs, including one in biochemical engineering, and is fluent in 6 different languages.
 * Curtis' birthday is sometime in November.

Behind the scenes

 * In the DC Comics, the character is named Michael Holt, the third smartest man on the planet, an Olympic-level athlete and expert combatant better known as Terry Sloane's successor as the legacy hero, Mister Terrific.
 * This has been further shown through the appearance of a T-Sphere in, as they are the character's signature weapons.
 * In the episode, Curtis picks up a gym bag with the initials "F" and "P", which stand for "Fair Play," the phrase used by the Mister Terrific on his costume.
 * At the end of after Curtis reveals the bio-stimulant he invented to help Felicity Oliver gratefully states, "Curtis, you're terrific." This is a nod to Curtis's code name from the comics.
 * In while wondering how his doppelgänger on Earth Two could be different from him, Curtis asks to himself, "What if I'm straight?" This is a reference to his comic book counterpart, who is heterosexual.
 * In the episode, Curtis added white and red to the color scheme of the suit, which made it appear closer to the comic book costume.