With Season 4 embarking with a new status quo and Oliver’s missing history almost caught up, Arrow finds itself at a bit of a crossroads. Additionally, with Legends of Tomorrow’s backdoor pilot coming mid-season as well as the annual Flash crossover, Arrow has a lot on its plate this year, but it didn’t stop them from throwing twists and turns at us like it was going out of style.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The new status quo I was referring to is that Oliver Queen is no longer the Arrow. The identity was burned last year and Oliver and Felicity left Starling City for a life on their own, leaving the city in the hands of the team they left behind. The stark difference in the idealistic life Oliver and Felicity lead and the rest of the team fighting crime is shown with the use of an overabundance of light in with Oliver and Felicity and bleak darkness with the crime fighters. This isn’t a new tactic used by the show and it was used to maximum efficiency in the premiere.
Starling City has been rebranded as Star City and the team of Red Arrow (Thea), Black Canary (Laurel) and Diggle (in the most ridiculous costume yet) cannot fight off the gang they’ve labeled as ‘Ghosts’ who are slowly overrunning the city. The city leaders, including Captain Lance, are at their wits end in how to stop them when they are approached by the leader of the Ghosts himself, Damien Darhk (played by the always awesome Neil McDonough). Laurel and Thea decide it’s time to turn to Oliver for help when the Ghosts decide to target the city leaders in a sequence that was extremely reminiscent of The Dark Knight.
The team, despite reaching out to him, has a hard time accepting Oliver back, especially Diggle who hasn’t forgiven him for kidnapping his wife. Oliver discovers that Felicity has secretly been working with the team and there’s suddenly trouble in paradise… for 10 seconds. They end up tracking down the Ghosts and seeing Darhk using his powers before busting up the party and finding out the Ghosts next target. The team figures out the train is bringing in the explosives and work together to stop it from killing innocent civilians as Oliver suits up once again. Oliver has his first (and obviously not last) showdown with Darhk where the Arrow’s skills were proved useless. Diggle saves Oliver and they destroy the train, stopping Darhk’s plan.
And then the season set up rolled in. Oliver announces himself to the city as the Green Arrow (finally!). Captain Lance turns his most villainous as it is revealed he’s working with Darhk. And lastly, the final shot is Oliver at a fresh grave site where he promises guest starring Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) he’s going to kill the man responsible!
The flashback story involves Amanda Waller sending Oliver back to Lian Yu for an ARGUS mission where I assume the end of that story will synch up with the start of the show. Which, as I said before, puts Arrow at a bit of a crossroads.
The season premiere was both extremely gratifying as well as very frustrating. The gratifying part was actually seeing the writers follow through on the change they set up at the end of last season, even if it was as short lived as half the episode. It also had Oliver finally taken on the Green Arrow mantle as well as the introduction of the Hive and Damien Darhk. The shows willingness to embrace the more mystical side of the DC universe continues to surprise me but it does make for some damn good storytelling.
The set ups for the season just kept delivering blows long after the initial story was done. However, the biggest cliff hanger, involving that six month time lapse and a fresh grave tried just a little too hard to convince me that it was Felicity who was dead. There’s an outside chance its Laurel, but my money is on Thea being buried. However, who Oliver swears he’s going to kill is up for debate; Darhk is the obvious choice, but isn’t Captain Lance’s recent turn to villainy make him the more likely, and more morally questionable, Â target?
The frustrating parts were the usual for Arrow. It was, almost uncompromisingly, so much like a Batman story that I can’t even avoid using the word ‘stealing’ anymore. There’s also a suspension of disbelief that goes along with the show where Thea can become a deadly assassin in a year or Laurel can soundly trounce anyone she meets after six weeks of boxing lessons. However, when you say a bomb is ‘so powerful the next step is nuclear’, don’t have our heroes stand 20 feet away when they blow it up. I’ve also come to accept that Oliver and Thea are great with a bow, but don’t put them in a confined space with someone with his finger on the trigger!
Problems aside, this episode was a pretty great way to start off the season. It may have slid a little too far into schmaltzy territory, but the problems to be found were offset by the payoffs of long building expectations and some pretty serious set ups for the season. As Arrow propels itself further into the shadowy parts of the DCU and finally catches up with itself, this season is promising to be the biggest, darkest and (maybe) most violent season yet.
P.S. Since Oliver has sworn off killing people, isn’t it a little weird that Diggle’s signature move as a hero is to shoot people in the face?