Now before you start reading ahead, I would like to point out something, I have watched all previous seasons, several times in season 1 and 2’s case, as I have them on Blu-ray, so please be nice, please.

Well, despite only doing reviews very recently, since May 2016 to be more precise, this is my first difficult review. Now that may give the sort of opinion that it may be somewhere in between good and bad and that making the decision is hard to go which way, well no I do not mean it in that sort of a way. The way I mean it will be difficult to review is the fact that I will most likely anger any ‘fanboys’ or ‘fangirls’ who may read this review because this season of Arrow has been by far the worst.

Now I do want to keep it quite short as to the problems, I don’t want to bore you with paragraph after paragraph of text like some reviews do, and so you will skip to the end read my final thoughts and be on your way. You are fully welcome to do that of course but I could not really mention all of the issues with this season in one or two paragraphs of a final thought. So please stick with me on this one, and if any massive fans of the show are reading this and think nothing is wrong with season 4 please remove your head from said backside.

GOOD

Now, this time, I will start with the good, usually, I start with the bad but I will get into that in a bit. The actors are absolutely fine, the introduction of Curtis Holt, who in the comics is Mister Terrific adds a refreshing nature to the season, and not having him in every episode keeps him refreshing and adds a dash of humour and wit to the episode he appears in.

Some of the stories end well, Laurel’s stories, well actually Episode 18 was an enjoyable episode as a whole, something I cannot say about any others episodes. But it does end on something that was needed for this season, the added threat that something bad could happen. I will not spoil it.

Finally, Constantine making an appearance is refreshing and allow the character to be almost reintroduced to us all slowly. The kind of issues and the use of magic and dark arts has been something that is hard to explain and utilize in TV and Film, evidence been how well his own TV show went and kind of died. So adding the dusting of him in Arrow allows them to introduce him, his abilities and magic and the dark arts slowly, and weave them into the Arrowverse, as people call it.

BAD

Now I apologise if this gets long winded, but here goes.

My main problem with the show is the relationship between Oliver and Felicity, both characters are performed superbly, and when they work together on a mission is enjoyable, and remind me of Oracle and Batman, of which Felicity been called Overwatch, *hint hint*. What I do not like to see all the time is a will they won’t they sort of story line between them. If I wanted that I could pinch my partners One Tree Hill DVDs and see that instead. It got boring, dull and infuriating, it was repeated near enough every episode and gave me the impression that the writers have nothing else to use for them. The two are fine bouncing off each other in missions, by then pairing them up as lovers, or gf bf type gave it an overload, and ruined the chemistry they have.

Alot of shows do this, Doctor Who been another example, again we do not need to see lovey relationships in every single show, we have girly shows like New Girl, Big Bang Theory, One Tree Hill, and others that give us that sort of story. Adding it into Arrow makes it too much. We already have Diggle, then you have Thea Queen bouncing from one relationship to the next. Felicity had the relationship with her mom, and later with her dad to deal with this season. Adding the Oliver Queen relationship made it too much, and turned the relationships in the show into overload, and made then boring.

My next issue was Damien Darhk. Oh god, he was boring. The actor tried the menacing voice, but he was very flat, now he could have been told that so I am not laying any blame on the actor here. Personally, I would put it down to bad casting, he just never fit. Damien Darkh looked more like a street thug rather than an Heir to the Demon and former best friend to Ra’s Al Ghul.

Also once they did the story fo Laurel Lance, and finished that off, we should have been a single episode or two from the end, but instead we had to endure a further 4 episodes before it finished. All in all the Damien Darhk story felt stretched to oblivion and back and could have been shortened a hell of a lot more.

Final Thoughts

This season was quite simply poor. Stories felt stretched, unimaginative stories, some rubbish special effects and fighting scenes, mainly the Damien Darhk scenes. A villain that seemed and appeared, and sounded about as threatening as someone attempting Christian Bales deep Batman voice, or someone with a sore throat saying they were about to shout and scream the house down. Malcolm Merlyn was reduced to almost a puppet, the League of Assasins reduced to a new type of gang in Star City, and Argus destroyed by a pathetic bunch of rednecks with guns. All in all just poor.

Luckily some brightness still lives, Curtis Holt, splashes of Constantine, and the occasional crossover, of which next season will involve Supergirl, fingers crossed. But I hope they reduce the relationship stories in the show, just keep it to Diggle, Thea and maybe Felicity from time to time. But splash it about and do not thrust it all in every episode like it felt this season.

But most importantly get a better villain whose is menacing, who actually makes you think are they going to survive, because except from that one moment in episode 18, there was no part of Darhk that made me think that Green Arrow or Speedy, or Diggle or Canary was going to die. So when he did show a hint of that it felt like they were getting a little desperate to add a sense of death into the show.