Originally published on Set The Tape
The last season of Arrow did a lot of good. It introduced several new characters to the series that brought in a some much needed new energy, it gave Oliver a more diverse and entertaining team of people, and it gave us a villain that was a huge improvement on the year before. Despite all this, it was still the weakest of all the CW DC series.
Fortunately, the sixth season has continued to maintain much of this improvement of quality, and has even got better in a number of areas.
One of the biggest of these changes has been the shift in Oliver’s (Stephen Amell) personal life, with his son William (Jack Moore) now a part of his life and living with him full time after the death of his mother. This is a huge shift, one that gives Oliver a sense of responsibility that he can no longer dodge his way around. Yes, he’s been a company CEO and is the Mayor of Star City, but he’s always found ways of balancing these with him being the Green Arrow. Now, this is something he can’t do.
Now comes the time that Oliver has can no longer split his time between his personal life and his career as a vigilante, and as such comes the second major change to the series this year, Oliver has stepped down as the Green Arrow. Yes, this seems like something that won’t last for long, and has already come undone in a way as Oliver has taken up the mantle once again to allow Diggle (David Ramsey) time to recover from his injuries so that he can take on the role once again, but the show very much seems to be pushing this as a temporary return to the role.
How this will play out when the series returns is anyone’s guess, but it does look like Diggle will be taking over as Green Arrow again at some point. Hopefully he does, as this has been some of the more interesting parts of the season so far. This year has also shifted the villains around slightly, focusing on a group of much smaller level adversaries than previous seasons have. Instead of one big bad guy we’ve got a team-up of smaller threats like Vigilante (Johann Urb), Black Siren (Katie Cassidy), and Anatoly Knyazev (David Nykl).
After years of putting Oliver up against single threats that all have to rival his skills and abilities, like Prometheus (Josh Segarra) and Deathstroke (Manu Bennett), having a collection of people that couldn’t really pose a huge threat to him one on one, but together make a group very capable of destroying his world is a good change to the standard season narrative that we’ve come to expect.
The addition of the FBI investigation sub-plot also works particularly well this season, and feels like a nice call back to earlier years of the show. It’s good that this story hasn’t already been resolved, that it’s lasting for more than a handful of episodes, and that it feels like it’s going to have major consequences once it reaches it’s conclusion. Plus, Sydelle Noel is great as Agent Samandra Watson, and acts as a very different kind of threat to Oliver and his team.
So far season six of Arrow has proven to be incredibly solid, a series that is using everything that is has built in the past to deliver a strong season, bringing back dangling plot threads, using smaller villains from the past, and showing some huge character growth from previous years. Hopefully this will continue to the conclusion of the season.
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