Starring – Stephen Amell; Katie Cassidy; David Ramsey; Willa Holland; Emily Bett Rickards; John Barrowman & Paul Blackthorne.
Running Time – 976 minutes (45 minutes each episode) plus bonus features.
★★✩✩✩
 |
| IMAGE VIA WARNER BROS |
It’s been an odd time for Arrow, season two put the show at an incredibly high standard, but all the momentum the show got simply went away in season three to the point it lost fans. So what about season four, did it start building towards the highs of seasons one and two?
Ultimately, yes, but the show still has issues that this season didn’t address.
Season four started off pretty well getting introduced to his new Oliver and how he re-inserts himself in Team Arrow and as the newly named Green Arrow. The biggest and best part of season four was Neal McDonough, who was completely charismatic and intense, as this season’s villain Damian Darhk. Even when the episode was at its weakest, McDonough’s performance was brilliant.
 |
| IMAGE VIA WARNER BROS |
Amell, meanwhile, is still the stand out consistent positive in the show, but he does deserve the stories of seasons one and two.
The most enjoyable episodes were crossovers with The Flash and it was pretty awesome to see some form of the Justice League with Green Arrow, The Flash, Black Canary, Hawkman and Hawkgirl fighting side-by-side.
 |
| IMAGE VIA WARNER BROS |
After being the damsel in distress in season three, it was great to see Felicity slowly getting back to the character that made her a fan favourite in seasons one and two. Personally, I didn’t mind the relationship with Ollie as she seemed to humanise him. She also brought a lot of the humour to this season with her very own sidekick, tech genius Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum). Whose character kept on developing throughout the season and is set to become a Team Arrow member in season five.
The final positive is when the show was able to show off its good old-fashioned vigilante action. It’s a reminder of when the show is at its best when they're doing the ground level fighting. It helps to have fantastic directors like Lexi Alexander and James Bamford who elevated the action to another level.
 |
| IMAGE VIA WARNER BROS |
For all the shows positives, cracks were beginning to show and things from season three started entering. My biggest issue is, despite the fantastic performance of McDonough, Arrow should never be up against magic. He should be focusing on just mob bosses and maybe some metahumans.
For every “Green Arrow” episode and Flash crossover, we had to deal with weak arse villains like Cupid (Amy Gumenick) and Bug-Eyed Bandit (Emily Kinney). You could tell the writers were losing steam and quickly.
Their laziness showed most in the flashbacks because when you look back to previous seasons, the flashbacks meant something, either to Ollie’s character or the theme of the episode or his relationship with Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett). This season, however, didn’t do anything of it and could/should have been told in one episode and not a recurring throughout the season.
The season did get a boost near the end of the dramatic episode “Eleven-Fifty-Nine” with a death of a main character and help set up the final conflict between Team Arrow and HIVE, but the final few episodes were disappointing and the season finale was sort of disappointing.
 |
| IMAGE VIA WARNER BROS |
It had some cool moments, but it felt like all the momentum from the opening few episodes were lost and shows this show shouldn’t be 23 episodes and could easily cut down to a maximum of 18.
Verdict
Everything started off so well and things were looking like we were getting back to the levels of season two, but ultimately the season lost momentum and steam and ended in a disappointing season finale that doesn’t excite anyone for season five. At the moment, Arrow could be hanging up the bow sooner than later.
No comments:
Post a Comment