We can debate anything except Legends of Tomorrow. It’s one of the worst shows I’ve ever willingly subjected myself to. You’re all bad humans for defending it!
Oh, come on - it was never out right bad if you enjoy comic book stuff, and the last third of the season was actually really fun.
I’m not entirely sold on the new team, but I’m pretty happy to see more of Holt. The Mr. Terrific jacket and T-mask were awesome - now we just need him to get those T-spheres going. And I always found Ragman to be interesting whenever he showed up in the comics. Wild Dog and the girl aren’t doing much for me yet, but maybe they’ll grow on me.
I was surprised by how much I actually liked the new team (Wild Dog I enjoyed more than you, Ragman I think is really cool, and Mr. Terrific’s mask looked incredibly on point). The girl I don’t know anything about though, but she aquitted herself well. I’ve been enjoying this season so far, and I like how many little stories it has going at once (and I’m really digging the flashback stuff, though I think this is the last year they would make sense to exist).
Yeah, not gonna lie, S5 is absolutely winning me over compared to 4. A couple of lampshade hangs re: problems from the last couple of years, a series of awesome villains, great fight choreography and effects (man, how about Sampson getting shot up by the cops in real time?), and genuinely compelling B and C plots.
If they keep this kinda momentum through the rest of the year, Flash is gonna have some serious competition for best show on the network :)
Maybe Im just tired of the Arrow but Im not seeing what you all are. I see a hard reset thats attempting to recapture the feel of season one and failing. They spent seasons trying to let Oliver recapture his humanity and now hes back to killing and maiming both friend and foe. Hes back to being Oliver the asshat. The Diggle storyline is even worse. He leaves team Arrow because of family and the need to be there for his new born daughter ( son?) and promptly joins up with a military covert strike force that is stealing nukes in foreign countries? Felicity dumps Oliver and then jumps in bed with the first guy she meets ( and he wasnt me damnit ) who of course will turn out to be bad somehow. Its great you all like whats going on, I hope you continue to enjoy the show but for me the Arrow has pretty much jumped the Orca. Im going to give it a few more episodes to settle in (Im only 3 eps in so far) but if it doesnt improve, Im done.
Still really enjoying this season so far, but if the final scene this week isn’t a fake-out and actually means what it’s suggesting, that twist is going to be a pretty hard sell.
So, I used to watch Arrow but started losing interest pretty hard towards the end of season 4 and never ended up finishing the season. I’ve heard some good buzz about 5, has it kept that going? Or just kinda more of the same?
To me it’s more of the same, but I loved it since the pilot and still enjoy the cast and stories they are telling a great deal. So I’m probably the wrong one to answer this question, now I think of it, but I already typed this much so no going back now!
Caught up on Arrow recently. It’s not gotten any worse in season 5, which is enough to keep me watching. Definitely last on the list of CW superhero shows for me, though.
Why do live-action shows never seem to manage to cast an actress with a Middle-Eastern look for Talia? Not that I’m complaining about Lexa Doig, I’ve loved her ever since she was the Andromeda. Just saying it would be nice to see someone with more of a flower-of-the-desert look in the role for a change.
I think season five is as good as it’s been since season two.
In terms that don’t matter if you’re not watching all the other CW shows, Arrow is the strongest of the four this year. Legends of Tomorrow gets the award for most improved, Flash and Supergirl are both having rocky seasons (although that’s in line with the first season for Supergirl).
I don’t really guard myself against spoilers for any of the comic shows I watch—at least not the kind of production and casting details that leak out in advance.
In this case I kinda wish I was more vigilant about it though. But whether you knew where it was headed or were caught by surprise by the final scene, this week’s episode was definitely a fist-pumping “hell yeah!” moment.
I think Arrow had the strongest season of any of the CW shows this year, and it’s probably the second best season of Arrow (behind season two of course).
The finale didn’t really give me what I’d hoped for though. It was great to have Deathstroke back, but it was almost weird having him be just a straight-up ally. If he’s much of a presence going forward, I actually worry it will weaken the character if he’s practically a part of Team Arrow.
As for the rest of the episode, it was great having such a reunion. Several fun showdowns. But it sucks that Team Arrow never truly got the best of Chase. It’s already such a tired trope to have the villain always ten steps ahead, where every move and supposed win for the good guys turns out to have played right into the villain’s plan, but to have the Oliver and the team never really recover from that is pretty unsatisfying. Pretty much everything goes Chase’s way up to and including his death, as far as we can tell. Not even this cool uneasy alliance of frenemies Oliver pulls together really seems to phase to Chase or his plans.
And then obviously we have a big dumb cliffhanger in the finale moments. I don’t necessarily mind a cliffhanger between seasons, but it needs to have stakes I can care about. They cannot seriously expect to get any tension out of the ridiculous idea that they just killed over a dozen characters off screen—including all the series regulars other than Oliver.
Also odd that the deaths we’re supposed to trust (based on casting news) are done off screen as well instead of being definitive. In fact everything with that land mine was stupid. There have got to be half a dozen more dramatic and effective ways for that character to sacrifice themselves and go out in a blaze of glory.
If I suddenly started giving things letter grades, season: A, finale: C+
I actually liked the finale a lot. I liked the season as a whole, but fell a couple episodes behind, so skipped straight to the final.
I do agree about the aspect of Chase being too far ahead at every turn. It works well at the beginning of the season, but by this point loses some of the edge. However, I think the use of Slade helped with this; Chase and his allies bought that he would turn on Oliver because they are so blinded by revenge that they think he would be too.
As for Wilson himself, I do not think he will become a series regular simply because he does not have the time to, but it was great to see him back again and I hope he has more cameos.
I did not mind the final moment. Oliver did beat Chase; he saved his son without killing Chase, but Chase cheated. As for the deaths, we obviously know it will not be everyone. I do however hope there are some and they don’t just hand wave it away that the Waverider showed up just in the nick of time and warped everyone out to safety. It would really rob the episode of its punch, and to be honest the cast could use a bit of a shake up.
I did like that this episode really brought things full circle by tying up the flashbacks and literally blowing up Lian Yu. Fun facts I saw on Reddit:
-Series started with a father and son on boat, episode ends with father and son on boat
-Chase shoots himself in the head just like Oliver’s dad
I had my doubts about Prometheus at first, and was very much in the camp that was hoping he would end up being a Lazarus Pit twisted version of Tommy Merlyn, but he ended up being a great villain. This season will be hard to top.
The actor that plays him is on another show I read (Shannara?) and he’s only back for this one show, and it’s really amazing they pulled that off actually (EDIT- Oh, especially since he and someone that works on Arrow were having some sort of Twitter spat recently, too…?). I adore that guy, and his Deathstroke makes him one of my favorite characters across the Arrowverse, so I was really glad he was back. And his story made perfect sense - he was behaving like he did prior to taking the miru kuna whatever stuff that drove him mad (but saved his life). I loved it, and I hope we see him come back.
The finale to me was pitch perfect (and I guess I’m not alone, IGN gave it a 10) but what really freaked me out was my son called the very end. Partway into the show he goes, “I know CW would never have the balls to pull this trigger, but wouldn’t it be cool if they blew up the island and only the Arrow survived?” and that sounded just dumb to me. And they those maniacs did it!
Super strong season. If I had to rate the CW shows this season, I’d say Arrow had the strongest season but Legends was right behind it with “most improved”, Flash was solid but not specifically memorable (though it featured some excellent episodes), and Supergirl was fine as it always is. The weakest of the bunch (and the most poorly written; so many baffling plot gaps) but still more enjoyable than a lot of TV.
(Agents of SHIELD remains the best of all the super hero shows of course, that one is like a snow ball rolling down a hill with each episode making it bigger and better.)
I enjoyed this season much more than the previous few. It had it’s issues like Chase’s omniscience. That was way overplayed. The parallels in the final boat scene were pretty obvious and in case you missed it, they made a point of replaying his father’s death scene, earlier, to be sure you got it. The island explosion bit, I didnt care for. It seemed like a cliffhanger for the sake of having a cliffhanger. I would have liked it if they had actually closed out the season with resolution. Like maybe when Chase shot himself, have no explosion and then have Oliver toss a signal blocker onto Chase’s body saying, “I guess you weren’t as far ahead of me as you thought” I doubt the explosion will have any real consequences, although its possible the mother doesnt live, which would leave Oliver with full time parenting duties, next season. There is the Argus bunker/prison there for them to ride out the explosions, so they could easily save them all.
Yeah, I felt this was a return to form for Arrow, the past few seasons had languished a bit - even though Dahrk was such a cool villain, a lot of the plot stuff seemed to revolve around events on a scale too “big” for Arrow, plus there were a few too many whiplash-inducing plot twists. This season, being mostly centred around a straightforward struggle with a human-sized villain torturing Oliver pschologically, worked much better. (Although it’s true that Chase did get annoyingly omniscient at points.)
The funny thing is, this kind of story might not have worked earlier, when Amell was more wooden, but he’s gotten pretty decent as an actor, at least in this role, and he was able to carry it off quite well.
The return of “good” Deathstroke, and him giving Oliver that final bit of clarity, was sweet.
Great cliffhanger and of course one does worry for the welfare of our heroes, but my vote’s for the bunker/prison too.
I also really enjoyed the conclusion. I can’t help but feel that leaving everyone’s (but Oliver) future in jeopardy gives the producers an edge in contract negotiation.
Did I miss getting resolution on who Vigilante turned out to be? I actually read the old Wolfman book that originated that character. I was embarrassed that I didn’t recognize the name Adrian Chase until much later, but that turned out to be a smokescreen anyway.
You didn’t miss it. They said we’d find out who that was sometime next season, and they teased (very vague hint) it’s someone we’ve seen before, not a totally random new character.
Jeez, enough with the camera swooping already. They seem to have a new camera toy and it’s swooping around all over the place constantly, never still.
Otherwise fairly good episode. Now the show takes place 5 months after the end of the last season, and the Lian Yu flashbacks are gradually revealing what happened after the explosion. Quite clever. Should be interesting.