I really felt Arrow lost it with this season. Okay I felt that Arrow lost it with the Adrian Chase season, because it lost those villains with grand, epic schemes to destroy the world or some such, in favour of bad guys who really hate Oliver Queen and want to kill him. Yes, they also ran out of flashbacks, but the flash-forwards were… eh I don’t care about the kids when they’re being whiny and the aging make-up is so bad. I’m really only watching it because it was not bad at first, and now I just want to see how it all ends.

Synopsis

Arrow is a superhero drama that focuses on the vigilante archer Green Arrow and his allies, some of whom have super powers. It spawned a whole television universe of DC shows, affectionately known as the Arrowverse. Season 7 sees Arrow dealing with the aftermath of being imprisoned even as the criminal mastermind Diaz runs free, while also showing what happens in the future with the offspring of Arrow and his allies (he doesn’t father all of them).

Directors: Beth Schwartz and David Ramsey

Writers: Beth Schwartz and Greg Berlanti

Cast:

• Stephen Amell (Green Arrow/Oliver Queen)

• David Ramsey (Spartan/John Diggle)

• Emily Bett Rickards (Overwatch/Felicity Smoak)

• Echo Kellum (Mr. Terrific/Curtis Holt)

• Rick Gonzalez (Wild Dog/Rene Ramirez)

• Juliana Harkavy (Black Canary/Dinah Drake)

• Colton Haynes (Arsenal/Roy Harper)

• Kirk Acevedo (Dragon/Ricardo Diaz)

• Sea Shimooka (Green Arrow/Emiko Queen)

• Katie Cassidy Rodgers (Black Canary/Laurel Lance)

Green Arrow is not around for much of Arrow S7

Okay first, did we really need to have Oliver Queen in jail for so many episodes? I mean, isn’t the show called “Arrow”? Don’t we want to see the Green Arrow doing stuff? Granted, we get a different version of the Green Arrow running around, but no. This just breaks the whole premise of the show. And the prison storylines were such a drag and they ran on and on and on until I wanted to gag. At some point, I really couldn’t care if Oliver Queen lived or died in jail. And if we’re being honest, they only let him out of jail to join the Elseworlds crossover, otherwise he’d probably be in there the whole season.

The dearth of superhero costumes

Then, since Oliver Queen is in jail and all the members of Team Arrow are being emo and having petty quarrels with each other, nobody really runs around in their costumes until halfway during the season. It’s even lampshaded because it takes them until episode 12 for all of Team Arrow to appear together in their costumes. It’s a superhero show! It’s a fantasy drama! The point is to see colourfully dressed superheroes going around doing their shenanigans! Why were we cheated of this for so long? Did someone forget what show they were doing?

A lame big bad

Also, Diaz, the villain of last season… survives for so long in this season that he actually makes the heroes look incredibly ineffective. First of, Diaz is not charismatic and just comes off as a sleazy uncouth gangster whom the producers really like. He has no gravitas or presence, unlike the previous Big Bads. Secondly, Diaz is even really that interesting as a character, he has no schtick that dozens of villains don’t already have, and he’s just boring. Thirdly, if he’s not all that fearsome, the heroes look unbelievably stupid for not being able to take him down easily. This just befuddles me, seriously.

Rehashing previous plot points

The main plot (the one in the present) is also a rehash of things that we’ve seen before. Oliver has a secret family member! Oliver deals with his darkness (which he’s overcome then fallen prey to then overcome then fallen prey to then… dude just get some therapy and take meds, really)! Oliver deals with a betrayal! Where’s the “super” in this superhero show’s plots? Did we really not have any another famous Green Arrow or Batman (because come on, Green Arrow is as Batman as they can go) plot line to adapt for this season?

Unlikeable younger characters

Lastly, the kids. I don’t care about the kids. I don’t care what happens in the future. They don’t wear costumes and they don’t enrich the story. Even worse, because the future shows all the main characters alive (and in badly done aging make-up), it means they survive the events of the present-day plot, which kills the tension. It feels like the main story was too thin to support an entire season, because they really felt like they ran out of ideas for the flashbacks.

Should you watch Arrow S7?

I absolutely cannot wait for Arrow to end (okay it’s ended, but I want it to end in the sense that I want to finish the series) because it’s lost everything that made it fun to watch in the first place. Of course, it was already heading in this direction earlier, but Damien Darhk, as campy and unsuitable for the series as he was, was the last good villain we had. I hope the last season of Arrow isn’t more of the same.

Score: 2/10