Review 663: Arrow (Season 7)

  

Inmate 4581. That's Oliver Queen's (Stephen Amell) newest identity at Slabside Maximum Security Prison, where he's been keeping his head down and avoiding conflict since he publicly revealed his alter ego as the Green Arrow five months ago. With Team Arrow protecting Star City while Oliver's behind bars, there have been no vigilante sightings... until a mysterious new Green Arrow appears. Meanwhile John Diggle (David Ramsey) and Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy) are leaving their costumes behind... but not everyone is following suit. Oliver's limits will be tested when he and his crew are pitted against the most ruthless villains they've ever faced, focing him to seek redemption for his family, his team and his identity while he questions what it truly means to be a hero.

The Season is split into roughly two halves, the first half focuses on Oliver in prison as Inmate 4587 and having to navigate Slabside Prison and it’s various inmates who he put in there including the welcome return of Ben Turner/Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White) Danny Brickwell (Vinnie Jones) and Derek Sampson (Cody Rhodes)

We see Oliver at his lowest. Out of his element and reluctant to his surroundings. Struggling to maintain his heroic ideals and then slowly realising that they wouldn’t help him thereby putting him on the same level as his enemies, especially considering he’s forced to reluctantly work alongside them at times.

The second half focuses on Oliver and the rest of Team Arrow being deputised by the SCPD and having to work alongside the police. This gave the show a chance to expore whether it's possible for Ollie and the rest of Team Arrow to coexist with the law and whether Oliver can be a hero who exists enitrely in the open. Unfortunately, the show didn't take nearly as much advantage of this new status quo as much as I would expect. Too often, it played out as an excuse to return to the way things were.

Outlawing vigilantism is an interesting and vary natural direction to take the show in but it’s not like operating outside the law is that new for the Team Arrow; They’ve kinda always been like that. They are vigilantes after all. The best way the latter idea was explored was how Ollie's identity as the Green Arrow evolved over the course of the season as an idea the mid-season finale: Unmasked, when Ollie rejected the mask and went into the field anyway was a really powerful moment and regardless Ollie work alongside the police and become fully embraced by the public without having to hide felt like the final payoff of that hero.

The Flashbacks which were a big staple of Seasons 1-5 and were completely absent (thankfully) from Season 6 were now replaced with Flashforwards to the year 2040. Here, an older William Clayton (Ben Lewis) sets out to recruit an exiled Roy Harper (Welcome back Colton Haynes) as well as other members of the older and newer members of Team Arrow to help save a Dystopian, battle ravaged Star City.

That’s not to say the season was entirely problem free during this status quo shift. Whenever the show wasn’t focused on Ollie in prison or the flashforwards it, more often than not, felt like it was spinning its wheels and the stuff the supporting cast was doing wasn’t all that interesting.

It became clear that the show is suffering from the same problem that's plauged it for the last couple of seasons or so. There are still too many characters. With so much time dedicated to the prison arc and the flashforwards, there wasn’t enough time to balance out subplots such as Felicity’s (Emily Bett Rickards) Diaz-induced PTSD and paranoia, Laurel’s (Katie Cassidy) stint as the new DA, Dinah’s conflicted loyalties between

While the flashforwards initially seemed like a promising shake-up for the status quo, the novelty quickly wore off after the first half. Exploring the dystopian future Star City and seeing Team Arrow: The Next Generation emerge as heroes never really held much weight

The Ollie/Felicity romance continues to be one of the show's more divisive elements this season. For every person who obsesses over the pairing, there's another who actively despises Felicity and everything she represents. Personally, I thought their relationship was handled very well this year. Felicity represents Ollie’s light in the dark. The hope that he harbours over having a normal life 

Much like Season 6, each half has its own distinct Big Bad. The prison arc sees the return of Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo) 

It’s almost impossible to talk about the final boss of the season without giving away the big twist from the mid-season finale. A mystery is set up in the first half with a new Green Arrow running around Star City hunting criminals in Oliver’s place. In the mid-season finale, the archer is revealed to be Emiko Queen (newcomer Sea Shimooka). Emiko is a very recent addition to the Green Arrow comics, inspired by Thea Queen of all people. Sadly, very little of Emiko from the comics leapt onto the small screen.

The fact that she wound up being another dark, hooded archer with a mysterious personal connection to Oliver who wanted to destroy Star City and torture him physically and psychologically just added to the sense the show was running on franchise fumes. Not helping matters was that Shimooka didn’t make a particularly convincing or menacing Emiko and didn’t possess the charisma to carry the latter half of the season.

Ollie’s confrontation with Emiko felt like “We’ve done this before and done it so much better and maybe this show has been going on for too long.” 

The season ended on a fairly mixed note with Ep. 22: You Have Saved this City 

From a production standpoint, the show has never looked better; directors James Bamford, Laura Belsey, Gordon Verheul, The score by Blake Neely and Nathanial Blume is pulse pounding and  the cinematography is terrific and captures the grittiness and granduer of Star City giving it more of a sense of the costumes are excellent, the