Arrow: Season 7
Based on: DC comics character Green Arrow, created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp
Developed by: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg
Starring:
Stephen Amell (Oliver Queen/Green Arrow), Katie Cassidy (Laurel Lance/Black Canary), David Ramsey (John Diggle), Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak), Echo Kellum (Curtis/Mr. Terrific), Rick Gonzalez (Rene/Wild Dog), Juliana Harkavy (Dinah Drake/Black Canary), Kirk Acevedo (Ricardo Diaz), Sea Shimooka (Emiko Queen)
As a repeat of my Flash and Supergirl review intros, the "Arrowverse" refers to a shared on-screen universe of multiple CW network TV series based on DC comics properties. Arrow aired first, and the other series have been spinoffs of it.
The show follows Oliver Queen, playboy heir of a billionaire corporation, whose life is turned upside-down when he's the sole survivor of a boat wreck. After the boat wreck, he remains stranded on a remote island for five years before he's able to signal a rescue. The series premieres as he returns to society, now a skilled archer and bent on revenge against those who had wronged his father and the city as a whole.
Season 7 opens with Oliver in prison: in the previous finale, he had plead guilty as being the Green Arrow--a vigilante and therefore criminal--in order to save his family and teammates from going to jail with him. Those teammates agreed to receive official pardon in exchange for working alongside the police, to use their skills to bring down criminals by the book.
This admittedly made for a slower season, in my opinion. Half of it was spent with Oliver in prison, trying not to make waves in hopes of securing early release, but inevitably being targeted by the inmates around him and forced to use his Green Arrow skills to defend himself or others, and therefore getting in trouble. Meanwhile, his teammates on the outside try their hardest to cooperate with the detective and police force to bring down criminals, but continuing to bump heads with their very different methods of approach. Felicity, Oliver's wife, in particular, fervently searches for the serial killer (Diaz) they failed to apprehend last season, no longer safe from the killer's devices with Oliver behind bars.
While these earlier episodes were slow, they at least set up a spectacular mid-season finale. Laurel, a lawyer, successfully arranges an early release for Oliver. On the day of his release, Diaz is apprehended and brought in to the same prison. Diaz and his men manage to slip away from the guards inside the prison and secure the whole building, planning to arrange a revenge against Oliver. The entire episode, "Slabside Redemption," is a chaotic but energetic and exciting fight between Oliver and Diaz and their allies. I was honestly quite impressed and exciting the entire time. Up till this point, Oliver had been holding back, doing his best to stay under the radar, keep a low profile, and keep everyone alive so the guards would have no reason to extend his sentence. But in this episode, he finally goes full out. Diaz and his men have taken over, and it takes Oliver's full strategic and fighting capacity, as well as those of his few allies, to beat Diaz's men back, rescue the innocent guards, and escape the prison to return to Felicity and the others. It was my favorite episode of the whole season and it was hugely satisfying to watch Oliver put an end to Diaz, once and for all--he had very much outstayed his welcome.
It was a welcome change to have Oliver out of prison, but the remainder of the season continued to feel... bland. The primary villain for the rest of the team when Oliver was in prison was cooperation with the city's real police force, and when Oliver got released... that didn't change. The team's target changed from episode to episode, but at the end of the day, they claimed victories when they used their own methods, then got berated by the police, or they cooperated with the police, and lost against their targets.
The two somewhat interesting factors this season did not secure my emotional investment. The first was the introduction of Oliver's half sister, Emiko, as a new vigilante in the town, and a consistent target of the team after Oliver's release from prison. The latter half of the season wavered on her allegiances, with Emiko initially bent on revenge against Oliver himself for the way their father had outcast her, to the team wanting to believe they could sway her to forgiveness and joining their team against larger foes. However, I don't feel that Emiko was given enough space to breathe--either on her own or in backstory--to attain more emotional weight or become an interesting plot point.
The other new factor this season introduced was flash-forwards to Star City in the 2040s, which was an interesting contrast to the series' history of flashbacks. Unfortunately, like Emiko's subplot, I didn't feel that this ever caught my interest or emotional investment. The flash-forwards centered around a sort of future Team Arrow consisting of the adult children or sidekicks of the current Team Arrow. Over the course of these flash-forwards, William (Oliver's son, played by Ben Lewis) leads the young Team Arrow teammates as they search for a chaotic and dystopian future Star City in search of Felicity, who has gone into hiding. Together, they strive to bring down the oppressive new government. These flash-forwards are sprinkled throughout each episode of the season as the young heroes discover new and old teammates, learning alongside the viewer what's happened to the old (aka current) Team Arrow in the future. As I said before, this whole plot-point fell flat to me because it didn't feel important. Neither the current nor future seemed to effect one another to any significant degree, and there was no character in the future who I felt a strong emotional connection to.
The last thing I want to touch on regarding season 7 is Laurel Lance's arc because I felt that this was done very well and it's held my attention over the course of multiple seasons. Laurel Lance became my favorite character as early as the first season because of her fierce convictions, talents both in the court room and out, and ability to stand up to Oliver and support him. Sometime around the fifth season, she was killed by a major villain. Around that same time, the multiverse had been established, and Laurel's villainous doppelganger from another world enters to cause havoc with her own team of baddies. This made for a tumultuous season 6 (if I remember correctly) as our heroes have difficulty either coming to terms with the face of their loved one committing crimes, or clinging to the belief that the soul of the hero they knew still resides someplace in this criminal. I found myself square in line with this struggle, hoping against hope that my former favorite character could still be reached again. Season 7 brought this to a head, with the new Laurel having been convinced into completing enough heroics to earn her a spot on the police force with the rest of Team Arrow, but still harboring enough inclination toward crime to not be fully trusted. This subplot has kept my interest over the whole series, and I enjoyed how it played out this season as well.
Now that this blog has gotten plenty long, I'll cut it off. I'm excited that I only have one season left, and a shortened one, at that! Definitely can't wait to see how things end up, if anything else happens with Laurel, and how the Crisis crossover event changes things!
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