Time to break up the band
What They Say:
After defeating Ra’s Al-Ghul, Oliver’s decided to put the vigilante life behind him and retires out in the suburbs with Felicity. However when a new threat run by Damien Darke appears, Oliver must once again take up the hood. This time, though he’s decided to take on the title of “Green Arrow” and vows to be the symbol of hope the old Arrow wasn’t, but will Oliver be able to escape the darkness of his past so easily?
The Review
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
Arrow began it’s fourth season centering around the theme of hope v.s. darkness. It’s been a bit of a rough ride getting there, but now we’re here at the season finale, and it’s time for the show to put that theme into practice. With how incredibly uneven this season’s been I wasn’t really sure if it could really pull it off, but what we get here is one of the show’s strongest showings in a long time, and it also manages to set up some interesting possibilities for the next season.
Kicking off from last week’s cliffhanger, Darke arrives at Felicity’s loft, looking to get Rubicon back online and attempts to threaten her into cooperation. He seemingly backs off when Thea threatens to kill his daughter, but manages to steal back the codes in the confusion, and activates Rubicon as nukes launch worldwide. The team finds themselves in their most hopeless situation yet and between that and Laurel’s death, Oliver begins to feel his return to the city wasn’t worth everything that’s happened. However, Holt tells him that Oliver’s Green Arrow declaration at the beginning of the season is what inspired him to stay in the city despite all the chaos it’s been through, and it inspires Oliver to try bringing that same hope to everyone else by giving a speech to the people of Star City.
His speech gives some much-needed hope back to the team as well, and after Felicity manages to disarm one of the missiles, they manage to track down where Rubicon’s being kept. While the rest of the team moves to shut it down, Oliver prepares himself for a direct confrontation with Darke. Unfortunately with all the soul power he’s running on, Darke is still way too much for Oliver to handle alone, but his actions inspire the citizens of Star City to stand with him and their hope gives Oliver the strength he needs to cancel out Darke’s magic. It all eventually comes down a fist-fight (and one that honestly kind of feels like what the Ra’s Al-Ghul one should have been) but when Darke remarks that Oliver doesn’t have the guts to kill him considering he couldn’t even kill Slade, this time he doesn’t hesitate and he puts Darke down for the count.
The city is saved and hope is restored, but it’s not quite a triumphant victory for Team Arrow given everything they’ve gone through to get there. While Oliver doesn’t regret killing Darke he still understands it wasn’t what Laurel would have wanted and still feels at conflict with his darkness. At the same time, though, Felicity reminds him that he also managed to give everyone their hope back and that while they’re at odds, the light and darkness inside him counterbalance each other. It’s a good place to leave Oliver’s character arc for the time being, but everyone else’s issues weigh a bit heavier. Thea realizes that she jumped into the superhero thing too quickly and in the process has become too much like her father while Diggle still can’t come to terms with what he did to Andy. Both of them decide to leave for a while and do some soul-searching while Lance decides to get out of the city with Felicity’s mom, leaving only Oliver and Felicity behind as the former ascends to a new job as mayor.
As for the flashbacks, they end on a bit more of a solemn note. Reiter attempts to kill Taiana in order to get the idol back, but the backlash from attacking her while he’s no longer in possession of it just ends up killing him instead. But even with Reiter gone, Taiana feels herself being consumed by the idol’s power and begs Oliver to kill her. He decides to comply with her request, and by the time Amanda Waller arrives to clean up everything, Oliver feels like this whole exercise has been pointless since he gave into his darkness by killing Taiana. Waller’s own goal in this, however, was to get him to see that sometimes murder is the only way to deliver justice , and given how the Darke situation ended up, that’s a philosophy he still can’t abandon. Now Oliver’s free to head back to Star City to begin his father’s crusade, but before that he decides to head to Russia to fulfil his promise to see Taiana’s family, and that’ll likely be the location of next season’s flashbacks.
All in all, the season 4 finale was one of the show’s stronger showings and certainly a lot better than the one we got for season 3. For a while I was kind of worried the show was going to put everyone else’s character arcs besides Oliver’s on the backburner given how little they were touched on in the last few episodes, but leaving them to be resolved for next season works too and hopefully will allow for a lot more breathing room in giving them more to do. If there’s one complaint I have about this development, it’s that Felicity didn’t leave too. She only really came back to the team out of necessity and still has enough of her own stuff to deal with (like indirectly killing a few thousand people) that her exiting too would have felt more appropriate. Though at the same time it would feel weirder having Oliver totally solo again so I suppose a price had to be paid somewhere.
Looking back I’d say that as a whole, Arrow season 4 was a step up from how overly melodramatic season 3 was. That said, it was still really uneven and while it ended on a stronger note, it sort of fell into the same trap of having a strong first half and stumbling during the second. It seems like the glory days of Season 2 are more or less behind us now, and while it hasn’t totally gone off the deep end for me it definitely feels like a shell of its former self. Much like the season’s theme of hope v.s. darkness the show itself seems to be struggling between its usual brand of “gritty” melodrama and mimicking the more comic-book tone of its sister series The Flash, given that it’s enjoyed a lot more success. Sadly this season couldn’t quite catch the balance it was looking for, but given that it ended on a solid enough note, maybe there’s hope that Season 5 could bring it all together
In Summary:
Arrow’s 4th season ends on a high note as the team faces their final battle against Darke. Said battle makes for one of the show’s best action offerings in a while, and it also delivers on the season’s core theme of fighting darkness with hope. Of course, the victory’s not without its consequences and now that Team Arrow seems to be splitting up for a while, it definently has me curious where things will be headed for the next season. In the end, though, while this season was an overall improvement over the 3rd it’s still nowhere near the highs of the second season, and it doesn’t seem likely it’ll ever return to those highs. Still the ending here gives me some hope for season 5, so if nothing else I can at least say that the theme here got me somewhere.
Grade: A-
