Well I've kinda vaguely shipped them

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Oliver/Nyssa

as a one off pairing for a season/few episodes so that was amusing to me at that particular scene.

Really liked this episode actually. I'd stopped watching as of 4 weeks ago and decided to binge it all in one hit, and it comes together much better than it normally does on a week-by-week basis.

 

Yeah I sort of saw this coming. Also think we will see Oliver/Hawkgirl in the spin off just to emulate Bruce

I sort of think he might be faking to get close to the virus but at the same time I dont

Family dinners at Dig's place will be awkward from now on tho.

 

We saw the beginning of season1 Oliver imo in those flashbacks tonight. He was way more aggressive, but at the end he wanted to be alone, so I think he goes back to the island after whatever happens next season and decides to finally come home in the "pilot"

That ending with Felicity was tumbler-y.

Looks like him and Diggle wont be getting along for some time

Malcom oh god, its like AOS with Ward but better.

Also anyone notice the Nyssa-Oliver interaction? She was very defensive too when Diggle punched Oliver.

 

End flashback, looking at the ship over his shoulder. "Coast City." Season 4 Hal Jordan confirmed.

 

I've been wondering for a while, but how long does it take to get from America to Nanda Parbat? Seriously, it seems like every scene where they go there they get there and back in like a couple of hours, if that. One scene their in Starling City and the very next their in Nanda Parbat, it just seems to take a ludicrously short time to get there.

The fight on the dam between Oliver and Ra's was really...weird. It started out pretty awesome with the sword fight, but then watched through the sniper's lens it was just so slow. Ra's was pretty much walking. Weird. Finish was epic though, with Oliver stopping Ra's' sword with his hand, a great call back to their fight on the cliff.

Final note; Felicity flying Ray's suit. What.The.Fuck?!

 

This season really annoyed me. Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it, but there are things that I noticed that made me question if the writers know what they're doing.

1) What the hell have they done with Felicity? I didn't think it was possible for someone to surpass Laurel in being annoying - and I'm a fan that dislikes Laurel so much that I jump out of my chair like the opposing quarterback threw an interception whenever Laurel gets punched in the fucking face - but was Felicity always so judgmental and annoying? It's like Oliver says how they are going to do something and she argues back every single time like she's some kind of boss. I get that she's supposed to be the moral compass that keeps Oliver from being the killer he was in season 1, but I don't want a domesticated vigilante. Hopefully she'll be fixed in season 4.

2) When Oliver was "killed" by Ra's and he came back I wasn't a fan of how the team treated him. They kept throwing lines at him about how he was gone and they had to make hard decisions to get by. Oliver should've responded with something like "My niggas, I was gone for 3 days, not 3 years. You couldn't hold the fort down for a week without me!?"

3) Is it me or does every piece of advice Diggle gives Oliver turn out to be completely wrong?

4) Not sure if it's as prevalent in seasons 1 and 2, but in season 3 they sure use the dead a lot as an argument on why something should or shouldn't be done. It's like every single episode someone dead or missing gets brought up "Oliver wouldn't want you to..." "Sara would be ashamed..." etc. I'm all for manipulating emotionally unstable people with the memory of long gone loved ones, but at some point it just becomes cruel to keep doing it

5) Super!Thea >_> they really shoved it down our throats. I think Malcolm mentioned 2-3 times how far she's come in such a short time. It's like they are really hoping that the fans accept her sudden martial arts prowess by having people keep lavishing praise on her prodigal learning curve.

6) Ditto for Laurel becoming Black Canary. I get that she's supposed to be the real BC, but really, if the plan was to make her BC at some point maybe they should've had her be a martial artist from the beginning so that her taking on 3 League Assassins made sense. But if they did that Oliver wouldn't have had to save her on a weakly basis.

Things I liked:

1) Malcolm is such a bad ass. The reveal in the season finale about what Oliver promised him for his help was great. Such a sly bastard.

2) Ra's was cool. I liked how the actor played him. Thank god he slicked back his hair in the later episodes though. The shaggy hair he had in the beginning looked a bit more pedophile than deadly assassin.

3) Flashbacks continue to be some of the best story telling. Seeing Oliver bring out that dark side when he tortured the army general was great. Made me miss the Hood.

4) Ray Palmer and the whole ATOM stuff. I'd like to see them use him more. I especially liked it when he put Felicity in her place for trying to use his wife's memory to guilt trip him.

Over all I liked the plot and the future things they dangled for us such as Damien Darhk and H.I.V.E.

 

Looks like Olivers getting a new love interest in the flashbacks... Oh god. Im worried for her.

 

Constantine is coming to Arrow

 

It's cringeworthy enough whenever Barry and the superpowered Flash-verse crossover into Arrow. Adding magic and demons to that is going to get straight up convoluted.

Hopefully it's just a one off.

 

Best case is Constatine is a big enough hit with the Arrow fans that his show's revived.

 

Good to see this show back again. The season opener was a tad underwhelming but it had its moments, and I'll refrain from saying anything remotely spoilerish till folks have had the chance to catch up.

 

Really? I enjoyed Arrow more than Flash this week.

Spoiler

Wonder if we will see more Oliver/Amanda interaction of if thats the last of it and why he "wants to kill her" in s2...

The ending clip was pretty awesome, I think Felicity is a red herring and it will be Thea or Diggle. Also Lance you son of a bitch....

 

Arrow was better set up to deal with a time jump than flash. Flashbacks are tricky, and flash had to do a lot.

They crushed this opener in my opinion. The olicty is way better than I expected. It's what I wanted but I was afraid it would play like shit. The evolution to green arrow is one of the most conic book things I've seen on tv.

Also, flashback Ollie gets ass whooped by meth dealer on roof and a half hour later Wauler uses twenty Argus agents and drug laced whiskey to kidnap him? Talk about overkill.

 

That broadcast was the most ridiculous thing ever, simply because of the sheer extent to which the majority of Oliver's face is clearly visible on television. It's ridiculous. Earlier on at least, he used to hide his face in the hood's shadow. Now, it's pretty clearly Oliver Queen in a domino mask. Seriously, look at the lighting there and tell me he didn't blow his secret identity straight to hell.

 

Show's losing its luster, but I'm still on board. The first fight scene was comically bad. The acting between Oliver and Felicity, on the other hand, was very good.

I love the guy they got to play the villain this year. As an actor, he's always played a good bad-guy. I think it's the eyes, they're so pale blue it's kind of freaky.

What's almost killed it for me, however, is Detective Lance:

Spoiler

In the series, Lance has always been a by-the-book type of guy. Even when he was semi-working with the hood, he was seldom the type to go too far outside the law. His ire with Oliver is very hollow if he is doing the same thing now, joining forces with Damien Darhk.

 

This. You can clearly see it's him, you don't even need any of those ridiculously accurate face detecting software that everyone has in these shows. Everyone who would have seen him on the TV as Oliver Queen would know it was him. But than again this show has been doing the same thing from the start, but it at least happened at night...

 

I agree about the first fight scene (that was the one in the truck, right?) It was pretty badly choreographed, because Thea's part was fairly stupid. I mean, she's swinging around taking all these guys down, and then somehow lets one go long enough to pull a gun on her and stand there for a good period of time. No worries, because he's not going to shoot her before she gets rescued by Diggle.

As far as Lance goes,

Spoiler

I actually think they showed that he's under coercion. Look at how he tries to stop the DA from going up against Darhk and how he tries to dissuade Laurel from getting involved. Darhk says in the ending that he doesn't have a choice - my guess is that he's threatened to kill Laurel to secure Lance's co-operation. It's interesting that Lance says he didn't sign up for this - maybe it's simply a reference to the fact that HIVE is only now starting to escalate to full blown violence, but it might be a sign that there's more going on there than simple blackmail.

 

Yeah, it was the fight in the trailer. Even her arrow shot was cringe-worthy.

As for Lance. I sure hope it's something like that. Maybe, he was approached and

Spoiler

Darhk offered him the chance to bring his daughter back to life through the resurrection pit. I'd hate to see her return like that, because it'd cause the show to Jump the Shark, IMO, but as far as coercion goes, I could see it.

 

Hell, even before the fight, these guys are spraying bullets at them and they dodge every single one by... weaving their bike from side to side?

It's sloppy, and very annoying.