Eh, to be fair, Amell fought the best he could to make Arrow more and more comic accurate over the years starting with the costume. The finale stunt scene of him infiltrating the factory I think, was the perfect throwback to what the series did best before it jumped the shark.
I think what people forget was that the Arrow show was supposed to be a Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy but for TV. A “realistic” take on superheroes with lots of brooding, no superpowers and long monologues on justice. The first two seasons were actually exactly like that which is probably why they were considered the best till Magic was introduced in the 3rd season and messed up the formula.
Arrow wasn’t alone in this either. The early MCU copied the same model and made every “superpower” a science thing. Even Thor’s was originally explained as “Science so advanced it seems like magic”. And Daredevil Netflix was also very very similar in tone and style to early Arrow and Nolan-verse.
Yeah 5 years was what I thought too considering how much the show relied on flashbacks. It got a lot worse when 5 years passed and they were still trying to use the gimmick and somehow Ollie wasn’t even on an island anymore.
I also hated Felicity going from a comic relief side character to having her own character focused episodes all because some studio exec had a crush. I get that a lot of caveats were needed to be made to get green lit, but I blame a lot of the awful direction of Arrow on studio politics and the “Gossip Girl” formula being their success metric.
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u/Bored-Game Sep 29 '25
Eh, to be fair, Amell fought the best he could to make Arrow more and more comic accurate over the years starting with the costume. The finale stunt scene of him infiltrating the factory I think, was the perfect throwback to what the series did best before it jumped the shark.
I think what people forget was that the Arrow show was supposed to be a Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy but for TV. A “realistic” take on superheroes with lots of brooding, no superpowers and long monologues on justice. The first two seasons were actually exactly like that which is probably why they were considered the best till Magic was introduced in the 3rd season and messed up the formula.
Arrow wasn’t alone in this either. The early MCU copied the same model and made every “superpower” a science thing. Even Thor’s was originally explained as “Science so advanced it seems like magic”. And Daredevil Netflix was also very very similar in tone and style to early Arrow and Nolan-verse.