Arrow, Season 7 (2018)

 

Five months after being exposed as Green Arrow and sentenced to life imprisonment, Oliver Queen tries to maintain a low profile in Slabside Maximum Security Prison.  This isn't easy, of course, not least because his most recent nemesis, Ricardo Diaz, is still out there and trying to kill not just Oliver, but also all his friends.

Arrow has always been a show with a tendency to dwell over-much on the grim and angsty, and while it would perhaps be unfair to call this seventh season the worst offender in that regard, it is certainly no better than most of the previous seasons.  I'll admit my patience for the show's predilections in this regard has grown very thin.  I thought it worked early on, where overcoming some of his emotional issues was an aspect of Oliver's slow evolution from "lethal vigilante" to "actual superhero".  But at this point, he - and for that matter, many of his team - are making the same mistakes they've been making for six years already.  Or - and this is worse - not making those mistakes, only to be punished for trying to be better people.

I mean, I didn't like season six of the show, but at least Oliver had things go wrong because he wouldn't trust his friends, rather than because he decided to trust all the wrong people.

Season six of Arrow was also unusual because it was the only one - other than the very first - where Oliver and his allies were left with their primary adversary still at large.  Unfortunately, Ricardo Diaz is the least interesting antagonist the show has ever had.  The writers seem to have belatedly realised this during this season, but they wait way too long to actually deliver on an interesting alternative, and then have to rush that storyline to conclusion.  The main plotline of the season frankly feels a bit of a mess.

One innovation of this season that I did quite like, however, was the replacement of the frequent 'flashback' sequences with 'flash-forwards' instead, where we see a dystopic future in which Oliver's son works with Oliver's old allies to try and save Star City from a threat that the Arrow team are inadvertently creating in the current day.  This at least was a fun way to freshen up the show's dynamic, and I enjoyed seeing the future versions of some of the core characters, as well as the resulting increase of screen-time for characters who are not Oliver Queen.  The broader cast of Arrow has always been one of the show's main strengths, and it's nice to see them given more room to play.

It's not enough, however, to make me change my now long-standing opinion that the best time to quit watching Arrow is at the end of season four.