Arrow has been a pretty interesting series for me considering how completely mixed the reception has been overall. The series started off with a pretty strong first season introducing our central hero followed by an amazing 2nd season incorporating a powerful villain alongside other great side characters and story arcs. The 3rd season is specifically when things started to get a little shaky for me despite having another amazing villain and the most powerful mid season finale to date for the CW DC brand due to a horrendous follow up poorly focusing on the side characters and forcing in the age of the Laurel Lance/The Black Canary arc (the dark ages of the Arrow series).
Now, with Season 5 being on the horizon, let's talk about the highly disappointing and rather dull 4th season of our green hooded archer. I find it interesting that a series can start off so strong, and in the span of a couple seasons, fall so low to its knees merely dragging along the same path as other new super shows that it helped ushered in. So, let's see what pros and cons can be dug out of Season 4:
Pros:
-The introduction to the supernatural side of the CW's DC universe which helps expands the reach of potential story lines and comic book characters to be incorporated down the line.
-Damien Darhk, although heavily under utilized throughout the show, was actually a pretty decent season villain as well as Hive overall. Neal McDonough does a great job in the role as Darhk.
-The two standout scenes from the season involved Diggle emotionally flipping out in rage at Damien's wife and Oliver's magical vision showing Slade, Malcolm, and Darhk fighting him back to back. Speaking of Diggle, the entire story arc regarding Andy being a part of Hive and the dramatic backlash that came with that reveal was an amazing concept for the character. It's nice to see one of the key characters on the show get their own side story for an entire season that actually has a bit of emotional weight to it as well adding onto the bigger story in a significant way.
-Mayor Oliver Queen is something fans of the character has been waiting to see, so it was pretty awesome to finally see the groundwork being laid out for the future. It's arguably one of the biggest evolutionary steps for the character which of course will significantly change the playing field for the show itself, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how the writers juggle these two personas.
We may just get that Bruce Wayne/Batman dynamic that we haven't really gotten with the character yet. Perhaps we can finally get some more daylight sequences in Star City instead of seeing the same old nighttime shots of smoky alleyways.
-The brilliant use of the "Who's gonna die at the end of the season?" element was a nice little twist for the show to take on as many of the episodes played around with the flash forward gravestone scene with Oliver and Barry.
Cons:
-A significant downgrade in action, fight choreography, and overall visual flare except for the dark magic vision scene as well as the missile explosion scene in Haven Rock. Arrow's strongest focus was always in its action dating back to the first season showing audiences that amazing fight scenes with superheroes can absolutely live on the small screen at home just as much as the theater screen, but this element of the series has seriously withered away recently. The action is simply not what it used to be and it shows during the various group battles with the team against Hive's army of expendable henchmen.
-The flashback sequences (which have been a staple storytelling element of the show) are quite possibly at its worst this season in overall quality and impactful relevance. Now, that's not to say that the flashback story lines of past seasons were perfectly executed and interweaved, but I felt that the entertainment value of watching Oliver and a random Russian woman survive in a refugee camp against a couple of dull and truly forgetful villains really didn't catch my eye whatsoever.
The only great thing to come out of this entire flashback story arc was the introduction of Constantine and that in itself didn't play a huge enough role to keep things interesting. Should the series quit doing flashbacks? Despite my overall feelings about it, I honestly wouldn't jump on that wagon right away without seeing what Season 5 has to offer. There still is a great deal of potential in this concept, but just as any other storytelling tool in a visual media, it's all in the execution.
-Here are the words that best describe the majority of the character drama for Season 4: boring, forceful, overdramatic, and sometimes unnecessarily dragged out. The less said about the soap opera moments of season 4, the better. Once "Nagging Felicity" became a central character during the season, things went seriously downhill for me.
-"Darkness". The amount of times one of the characters mentions the word darkness in this season is laughably ridiculous. We get it. There is a negative side to everything, but constantly using the word "darkness" to describe someone's psyche or the problems of the world eventually comes across as lazy dialogue writing more than being presented as something supposedly poetic and deep.
-During the previous season, I started to feel a bit crowded inside of the Arrow cave with the several vigilantes taking up home. What Season 4 did was showed me even more so how much I wanted to go back to the original 3 being Oliver, Diggle,and Felicity. The less character arcs being juggled around for the show, the more smoother things seems to go as far as the pacing and overall storytelling quality.
-The overall storyline of the season felt pretty dull in my opinion despite the stakes being larger this time around. Hive's take over on the city never felt as intense or rightfully dramatic as it should've and Oliver constantly getting his arrows stopped in mid-air by Darhk during their many encounters felt heavily repeated like when Wolverine would constantly rush at Magneto only to be paused and thrown back (except nowhere nearly as entertaining). "Repetitive leads to boredom" is the perfect phrase to be used here and Season 4 is filled to the bone with it regarding several story points.
Overall, you have a fairly weak story, significantly downgraded action and fight choreography, a pretty decent villain who felt highly under utilized or simply wasted throughout, forceful and unnecessary character drama at times, and only a couple of engaging moments as well as an amazing cameo to level things out.
This season of Arrow is definitely the weakest of the series without a doubt and a sign that even the greatest beginnings can lead to an all time low at some point in time. Let's just hope that the writers and producers have something truly special and redemption worthy planned for the inevitable 5th season.
Season Rating: 6/10
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