Arrow, Season 4, Episode 1: Green Arrow
I have to admit, I honestly am not very hyped to return to Arrow. It had an extremely messy third season that kept promising interesting things yet failed to deliver in almost every front that was not named 'Thea Queen' or 'Malcolm Merlyn'. Add the ridiculously convoluted season-wide plot, and, well, I wasn't looking forward to the fourth season at all. And this is why I watched the season premiere way after I caught up with basically everything else bar Gotham. And honestly, this is when the fact that there are so many superhero TV shows to choose from starts to get a little daunting. I haven't even touched (or considered touching, really) Supergirl or Jessica Jones, and Arrow's already being edged out. And this season premiere... well, it did get my attention back, but it doesn't really fill me with confidence.
You can always trust an Arrow episode to be solid in and of itself, building up to a larger picture and generally telling a good story within itself. But string together all the character developments and sudden plot twists and all the needless drama and it kind of gets exhaustive. This episode... well, delivers some of the familiar character drama that CW shows are so infamous for, but as always, still manages to do enough to at least pique my interest for the time being. Now whether Arrow's fourth season will manage to do its work and actually rope me in again, I can't say.
First up, well, the finality of last season's ending with Oliver and Felicity being happy and riding into the sunset gets revoked... though we know we're getting a fourth season even before that finale was out, so that point is moot. The backtrack is done rather tastefully, though, with the Oliver/Felicity romance being kept intact (we even have Oliver's adorable attempt to propose to Felicity through souffles and shit) and the show making it clear that, well, both of them miss the vigilante life, if in different ways. Felicty apparently already helping out the B-team behind Oliver's back, and them generally looking pretty bored with civilian life helps round it up. Though the short opening with Oliver running through a forest before cutting to him just jogging and returning and talking about omelettes and shit is pretty fun.
Meanwhile, we cut away from that to highlight all the changes in Starling City... or rather, renamed Star City to follow its real name from the comic books after Ray Palmer's "death" at the end of last season. A death, that, by the way, no one even so much as mentions. You'd think Felicity at least would be shocked by the apparent death of her good friend and ex-lover, but anytime anyone mentions Ray it's just done in the factual sense.
The city's plagued by a gang called the Ghosts, who are all using James Bond cyanide pills and shit. We see a pretty cool action sequence of the assault spearheaded by Black Canary,
Also I'm honestly a bit confused how Oliver isn't fine with Thea beating people up a bit excessively, but Diggle can apparently just alternate between shooting tranq darts and blowing holes in people rather randomly this episode. Huh.
But because the show's titled Arrow, the B-team, as it did back during the Brick arc, really fail to be effective as the Ghosts get away. No one (not even good ol' Walter Steel, who's namedropped) wants to be mayor, so the city's ran by a bunch of leadership figures that gets assassinated when villain-of-the-episode, the egomaniac Damien Darhk shows up, makes a deal, gets refused and sends assassins after the leadership figures. By the mid point of the episode, all are dead except for Quentin Lance, who shares a pretty cool action sequence with his daughter.
Quentin also makes it pretty clear that Star City is in pretty shit state as businesses are shutting down, and after all the bullshit that the city has suffered thanks to the events of the past three seasons people are getting the hell out of Star City. Wouldn't you? Some nice cute references to The Flash are made, with Quentin comparing Star City's shit state with Central City having Flash Days and shit. There's also a train station being made to connect the two cities, which end up being foreshadowing for what's to come.
Thea and Laurel go off to recruit Oliver (notsomuch Felicity, who's already on board) from his vacation to help wipe the Ghosts out, a decision they made behind Diggle's back. And the main conflict for our heroes is whether Diggle can forgive Oliver, and it's... honestly annoying at times. It's bearable because it makes sense for Diggle to be angry at Oliver, who kidnapped his wife and possibly jeopardized her life just to maintain cover; but again it's a leftover of stupid plot decisions from season three -- which is why Oliver didn't bring Diggle in on his plan. Lyla forgives Oliver, though, and by the end of this episode the two have a bit of a grudging friendship after working together to stop the giant train bomb.
Speaking of which, yes, the train bomb is the main plot for the second half of the episode, and I am absolutely pleased that the show seems to be dropping its faux-grimdark-realism that plagued its first season so badly. Using the excuse that in-universe the Arrow is outed as Roy Harper, Oliver dons a new sleveless costume, hacks every broadcasting station and proclaims that "I AM GREEN ARROW", a moment that sends chills down my spine, as ridiculously narmy and silly as it was.
We finally get the proper name! And it only took us like three years or some shit.
Thea goes from 'just going along with the flow and delivering fun quips' to 'being passive-aggressive when her brother confronts her about her anger issues'. Whatever. She looks good in the costume, that must be said.
Damien Darhk promises to be everything that Brother Blood and Ra's Al Ghul never was in their respective appearances, though future episodes will judge whether this is to be real. While the other members of Team Arrow (and myself) immediately assume that Damien Darhk being all death-touch is signs of him being a metahuman, Oliver corrects them, saying that, well, it's magic. Mysticism. And indeed we see Damien later pull a Magneto (always the Magneto) with Oliver's arrows, stopping the mid-air and launching them back at Oliver, and recovering from Diggle's tranquilizer bullet very quickly. And the fact that, y'know, he does a blood ritual at some weird voodoo shrine to... wait, is that motherfucking Trigon?
Yeah, it looks like Damien Darhk is worshipping Trigon the Terrible, who is Raven's demon daddy from Teen Titans. Yeah, looks like he's going to be subbing for a proper Brother Blood, not the stupid mayor wannabe we got in season two.
The flashbacks, sadly, are still around... though it wouldn't be Arrow without flashbacks, wouldn't it? We see just why Oliver got back from Hong Kong to Lian Yu, because apparently after the events of last season's flashbacks, Oliver tried his hand on vigilantism in Coast City and, well, got his ass handed to him. Amanda Waller found him, and after a faux-friendly drink, basically drugged him and gangpressed poor Oliver into airdropping back to Lian Yu to figure out things that happened there. Which is definitely better than the odd distraction that was the Hong Kong plot, but I don't honestly care.
No, what I cared, far more than Oliver and Waller and Suicide Squad, was the Green Lantern teases we got there. I mean, The Flash already teased a missing pilot in Ferris Air way back in the latter episodes of its first season, but in this episode, well, a billboard with Coast City has the words "In brightest day, in blackest night, come to Coast City, when money's tight". A hilarious corruption of the Green Lantern mantra... but to clinch it further, the first establishing shot of the bar that Waller and Oliver are hanging out in passes through a leather flight jacket with the name Jordan. As in Hal Jordan. Dammit, Hal, show up already!
Also, apparently Quentin is in league with Darhk, signing up for... something that obviously went too far. We'll see just what. It probably involves the resurrection of Sara. I dunno. I'm like nearly an entire month late to this party and stuff has probably already been revealed.
And we actually have a bit of a flash-forward at the end of the episode, an event that happens six months later. We see Barry Allen (hey hey hey cameo! We also get a quick Zoom reference there.) showing up next to Oliver in front of a grave of an unspecified fallen ally. Laurel? Thea? Felicity? Diggle? Quentin? Umm... Wildcat? Is Wildcat even still alive? We don't get to see just who it is, just that Oliver thinks he's not done quite enough and seems to be ready to go on a roaring rampage of revenge.
Also, from a writing standpoint not specifying who is put on the grave -- just someone important to Oliver -- and the circumstances behind what's going on kept ambiguous enough really is clever from a writing standpoint, because it gives the writers a large amount of leeway to revise their plans in case, oh, unexpected crossovers or actor problems or whatever shows up.
All of this combined has certainly piqued my interest, though just how soon I will be attempting the subsequent episodes remains to be seen. The inner fanboy is just happy that after so long... the Arrow is now the Green Arrow.
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