Arrowverse – Page 6 – That Geek Thing

Arrow S04E03 "Restoration" REVIEW

October 28, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E03 “Restoration” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm
Writer: Wendy Meigle, Speed Weed
Director: Wendey Stanzler

Essential plot points:

Thea and Laurel travel to Nanda Parbat with Sara’s corpse to use the Lazarus Pit, and bring her back to life. But Malcolm Merlyn and Nyssa refuse to help her.
Back in Star City, Diggle and Oliver manage to briefly capture one of Dahrk’s ghosts – although he escapes, leaving behind his cyanide tooth.
Oliver and Diggle’s issues continue to make working together difficult, until Felicity orders them to work out their differences… or else
Malcolm tells Thea the blood lust the Lazarus Pit has given her can only be sated by taking a life, which will ease the effects for a few weeks at a time; then he sacrifices a couple of his guards to help his daughter.
Diggle gets a lead in who killed his brother when the woman who ordered his hit, Mina Fayad, arrives in Star City with a meta human assassin, Jeremy “Double Down” Tell, who HIVE has sent to kill the Green Arrow.
Curtis Holt manages to identify what Double Down makes his lethal throwing cards from: the same material homing pigeons use to find their way. Except Tell’s tracked him and Felicity down to Palmer Tec,- and to the Arrow Lair underneath the building.
After being routed by Felicity with a machine gun (no, really) Tell tries to flee to Central City but is caught by Oliver and Diggle. Oliver takes a couple of playing cards in the chest to protect Diggle, convincing him he can trust Oliver again.
Malcolm agrees to bring Sara back to life, and she emerges from the Lazarus Pit alive but feral. Nyssa, horrified, spikes the pit to prevent it being used again…
In the flashbacks, Oliver continues to work undercover on Lian Yu, which is being used to produce a new drug, Slam, by Baron Reiter. He helps one of the captive workers escape being executed for stealing the drug to give to her colleagues.
And Felicity’s phone is being hacked whenever she enters the Palmer Tech labs. By someone sending messages in a distinctive blue and red coloured text…

Review:

“Restoration” is one of those episodes you get sometimes. You know the kind: it feels like it’s absolutely vital to the season’s progression, yet it also feels lightweight in itself because so much of it is about progressing the arc rather than having a story in its own right.

With so many plates spinning already in season four of Arrow, something had to give, and while none of them have come crashing off their poles just yet, there’s a lot of running to and fro to keep them from wobbling too much.

In terms of progressing the series, we now know why Oliver was sent back to Lian Yu in the flashbacks, who had Diggle’s brother killed, what Darhk’s connection to HIVE is, seen Sara Lance brought back to life, found out there’s no cure for Thea, had Oliver and Diggle’s relationship restored AND seen introduced Curtis into Team Arrow proper. With all that to get through in 45 minutes, it’s amazing the episode has any kind of depth at all.

Framing all this is a by-the-numbers “DC villain tries to kill Arrow” storyline of the type we’ve seen a dozen or so times already over the last three years. Thankfully this one just about gets away with it thanks to the charismatic presence of JR Bourne as Double Down who, initially at least, seems to be a sort of Aldi version of Gambit but actually turns out to be the best villain of the week the show’s had in a good season or so.

The schizophrenic and blisteringly paced nature of the episode means that all the character stuff, which you’d hope would be played out between Olly and Dig as they look to put their friendship back on track, is underbalanced against the whole “restoring Sara” stuff elsewhere. It boils down to, “You took a bullet for me, dude, so we’re bro’s again!” It’s a shame: I know they want to get the status quo back, but it felt like there was at least a proper episode’s milage still to be wrung out of getting the two of them on the same page again.

That’s especially disappointing as we know both Amell and Ramsey are actors who can pull off emotional confrontation scenes well, whereas Willa Holland and especially Katie Cassidy – who are given the on-paper emotion-charged storyline around the resurrection of Sara – feel flat in this episode. There’s no sense of the desperation Laurel’s supposed to be feeling over the death of her sister, especially in the early scene where, of all people, Barrowman ends up doing a lot of the heavy lifting. These should be wrought, emotionally potent scenes but Cassidy feels like she’s sleepwalking through them. It’s not that she’s a bad performer – we’ve seen she can be great on Arrow – but here it just doesn’t work.

Three episodes in and Arrow’s come out of the traps running, but that pace feels almost unsustainable, especially with so many big storylines running simultaneously. This isn’t A-Plot, B-Plot, C-Plot stuff any more, but two big A-Plots running simultaneously, with a mass of threads being piled on underneath. It’s starting to sit quite unevenly. Perhaps once Legends is up and running it can calm down and start focusing on just one or two things thing again, ideally around Damian, since Neal McDonough is reduced here to just a couple of scenes (albeit one key one) and his presence is largely missed.

The big redemption in this episode, and indeed for probably most of Arrow’s run, has been Emily Bett Rickard, who’s performance turns on a dime from silly to funny to angry in the space of a scene. She’s been a hell of a find for the show since her first appearance in series one, and after Arrow finishes is the sort of actor you could build a vehicle around; especially a sitcom. It seems the producers have finally figured out she deserves more to do, too. About bloody time.

It’s rare you get a really bad episode of Arrow, and “Restoration” is by no means a bad one. It’s just a bit uneven in terms of pacing.

The Good:

The Felicity/Curtis double act works so well already; it’s basically a replay of the Oliver/Felicity relationship from the first series, but flipped round.
Also, Felicity’s meltdown at Diggle and Oliver over their failure to resolve their differences is fantastic. Emily Bett Rickards is often Arrow’s MVP but in this episode they really let her loose.
Barrowman’s back. Hurrah! It’s also a welcome return to recent serial MCM Expo guest Katrina Law as Nyssa, and Caity Lotz returns to action as Sara Lance.

Thankfully they don’t kill Double Down, but shuffle him off to Iron Heights’s metahuman prison instead. He’s a fascinating villain and an obvious candidate for a return in either The Flash or Arrow.
The arc plot seems to be progressing at a rate of knots this season. Three episodes in and we’ve already got so much going on. After the at-times ponderous progression of season three, it’s refreshing to see them ramping up the storyline.

The Bad:

The Arrow stuntwork is usually spot on, which makes it all the more jarring when they fluff something. But the John Barrowman stand-in for the sword fight at the start is about as obvious as the Cage/Travolta ones in Face/Off. Yes, that bad.
“Restoration” sexpose the three action sequence formula that Arrow and, to an extent, The Flash stick to. Big stunt/fight sequence for the cold open, fight sequence half-way through the story where Oliver (or Barry) comes off second best, confrontation and victorious fight at the climax. I know Arrow’s an action series, and the formula works for them, but occasionally it really does feel like a formula.

Dig’s helmet. Yes, I know I’ve mentioned it before, but “Restoration” really shows off how awful it looks. In fact, in a couple of close-up shots, it looks like it doesn’t actually fit David Ramsey properly.
We don’t get to see how Nyssa spikes the Lazarus Pit to prevent it being used, but the aftermath effect is basically some dry ice and a pink spotlight. Even Blake’s 7 would have thought twice about that cheap and cheesy looking an effect.
There’s some horribly leaden dialogue in this week’s episode. The, “You took a bullet for me” bit at the end just about works thanks to Ramsey and Amell’s performance, but some of the other supposedly banter-ish lines really don’t land.

And the Random:

You may have noticed I’ve been asking over the last couple of weeks where the new Arrowcave is. Well, now we know the answer: it’s in the basement of the former Queen Consolidated, now Palmer Technologies HQ. Although now it’s been compromised, Oliver reveals he’s already planning Lair 3.0…
Appropriately enough, Double Down’s favoured card of choice appears to be a Queen – we almost see him take out Oliver with it.
Director Wendey Stanzler is a regular on both The Flash and Arrow – but is now also directing Gotham.

The new communications devices Curtis shows Felicity sound and look uncannily like Mister Terrific’s T-Spheres from the comics.
Whoever’s been writing the dialogue for the flashback scenes on Lian Yu has been watching Aliens, by the sounds of it. There’s at least two lines that appear to have been “borrowed” from it this week.
This week’s Arrow build towards Legends Of Tomorrow sees the restoration of original Black Canary Sara Lance, who we know’s going to be White Canary in the spin-off show. And the messages Felicity’s getting on her phone in Curtis’s lab could only be from someone else who’s joining the cast of that show.

Review by Iain Hepburn

• Read our review of this week’s The Flash

• Read our other Arrow season four reviews

• Arrow & The Flash Interview Double-Bill: Cynthia Addai-Robinson & Candice Patton

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The Flash S02E03 “Family Of Rogues” REVIEW

October 27, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

The Flash S02E03 “Family Of Rogues” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: Sky 1, Tuesdays, 8pm

Writers: Julian Meiojas & Katherine Walczak
Director: John F Showalter

Essential Plot Points:

Lisa and Leonard Snart’s abusive dad Lewis (it’s an “L” of a family) places a bomb in Lisa’s head to force his son to use his Captain Cold powers to help him with his criminal plans.
Lisa turns to Team Flash for help, so Barry goes undercover as a criminal geek to stay close to the male Snarts while Cisco tries to prise Caitlin away from Jay Garrick long enough so that they can find a way to get the bomb out of Lisa’s head.
Team Flash triumphs. Leonard kills his dad then goes to prison. Barry has a sneaking admiration for him. Joe thinks Barry is barmy (Joe clearly hasn’t heard about the upcoming spin-off).
Iris is now Lois Lane Mark II: action reporter with a superhero on speed dial.
Iris’s mum isn’t dead! She’s back in town and so Joe comes clean to his daughter – he lied about her mum’s death because he was ashamed to tell Iris that her druggie mum had run out on them. Iris seems remarkable okay with this. We like Iris. Not being okay would have been tediously predictable.
Jay Garrick creates the speed cannon allowing travel between different realities, and strangely a queue doesn’t form to test it out.
But (a) Harrison Wells does use the cannon to slip into our world when nobody’s looking.
Professor Stein goes all Firestormy… except with blue flame.

Review:

The frantic multi-world arc plot takes a little bit of a back seat this week as the show delivers parallel plots about parent/child relationships. This could have been a cue for an overdose of sentimentality, but actually while the episode is less earth-shattering in scope than the past couple of weeks, it’s still fast-paced, funny, action-packed and all kinds of entertaining.

It helps that Captain Cold and the Golden Glider are the villains of the week. Not that they’re the real villains; that dubious honour goes to their odious dad, played with such casual contempt by the legendary Michael Ironside (Scanners, Total Recall, Starship Troopers) he merely needs to flare his nostrils to make you loathe him. After two weeks of bland, tritely-written villains it’s refreshing to have a set of baddies who actually possess things like personalities, motivation and depth. Admittedly Wentworth Miller’s performance is becoming more and more mannered with each appearance. He’s at the point now where he’s not so much phoning in his performance as texting it in (with emoticons). But there are lovely little nuances every now and then that prove there’s more going on under his facade; especially in the final prison scene, but also even in simple little moments such as when he thanks Barry for his meal as he walks off without paying.

There’s little groundbreaking here. Lisa’s tales of abuse as a child are so much grist to the mill in US TV drama, less of a real-life issue to be explored, than a handy way to define characters. But as ever with this show, it manages expose a nerve of raw emotion without becoming mawkish, dealing in simple, broad strokes that make you sympathise for Lisa and Leonard without feeling you’re being emotionally manipulated. It’s hardly going to win anybody any Emmys for hard-hitting drama but in its own way, it’s very clever, intelligent scripting that lets The Flash deal with emotional storylines in a highly stylised, comic book setting.

Similarly, the plot about Iris’s mum looked worryingly like it was going to a schmaltz-fest, but the show avoids that too. Good grief, Iris actually understands why her dad did what he did and forgives him. Have the writers not read The Big Book Of America Drama Scripting? All the rules dictate that Iris should spend at least three episodes sulking and not talking to him. To be honest, Iris’s reaction is just a teensy bit too good to be true but honestly, if it avoids all the usual clichés , we can live with it. Happily.

Other than that, Jay continues to be oddly dull. His second full episode and he spends all the time in the basement tinkering? Boy, he knows how to have fun. Cisco, however, is having a lot of fun, willingly letting Lisa flirt with him (well, why not) and doing a great impression of Stein. He seems to have forgotten he’s supposed to be scared about his developing powers… that would have been useful at various points this week, but never mind.

It’s also great to see Barry smiling again after two weeks of self-flagellation. From the brilliant teaser with Iris throwing herself out a window to be rescued, to his prison chat with Snart, through his brief career as a high-tech crim, this is the old, optimistic, life-embracing Barry again. Welcome back.

The Good:

Cisco’s impersonation of Stein is as hilarious as it is accurate.
Iris doesn’t go into a strop about Joe lying about her mum, which is a very pleasant surprise.
Great dialogue from Joe and Francine: “You thought you could pay me to walk away from my ow daughter?” “Last time you walked away for free.”
Lisa’s tales of her abusive father (“that’s when I learnt a bottle hurts more than a fist”) are moving in their restraint.
At least we don’t get another week with a Zoom henchman trying to kill Barry. Zoom is clearly reconsidering his approach.
Barry is very amusing as a pretend criminal techy geek.
The action finale is brilliantly tense – even though you know Cisco will extract the bomb just in time it’s still edge-of-seat stuff.
Although it’s obviously just setting the pieces in place for the Legends Of Tomorrow spin-off, the final Barry/Snart scene in Iron Heights is a lot of fun.
The speed cannon is impressive, and the director loves his “through the blobby breach” shots.

The Bad:

What’s the point in writing in a concept – exploding heads – that you know the censors will never let you show? Was is just supposed to make those in know smirk because guest star Michael Ironside was in Scanners (1981)?
Leonard Snart doesn’t have any decent “cold” puns (though he does say to Barry, “Live fast, die young” so we may forgive him).
Mick Rory/Heatwave is a little too conspicuous by his absence.
Erm, how does Captain Cold freeze lasers, exactly?
We don’t get nearly enough of Barry going undercover as a criminal.

And The Random:

We’re thinking all this emphasis on “blue” energy may be misdirection. We’ve seen that Zoom trails blue lightning when he runs but it would be too obvious to have Wells as the villain yet again, surely? As for Stein, in the comics Ronnie Raymond retirned from the dead in 2010 “Blackest Night” crossover event as a character called Deathstorm… who had black/blue flames. Could this be a reference to that?

Hang on – Linda Park’s back? We weren’t expecting that, though we’re not complaining. She’s great. Linda’s also Wally West’s “love interest” in the comics, and guess who’s going to be making his debut on the show pretty soon? Has the show been playing the long game with Linda?

Danville, Ohio is the hometown of DC character Lisa Jennings, a kind of ersatz Superwoman (a small-town schoolteachers who inherits Kryptonian powers and becomes part of the Superman Squad) who was introduced in Superman #703 (2010).

Nice paint job on the bike there, Ms Golden Glider.
Stein uses Marvel mastermind Stan Lee’s catchphrase – “Excelsior” – for the second time on the show (the first use was in the first season finale, “Fast Enough”). Has the man no sense of loyalty?
Leonard gets uppity when his dad calls his superweapon a “freeze gun”, presumably becomes he’s been been getting cease and desist letter from Mr Freeze’s lawyers.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other reviews of The Flash season two

The Flash S02E02 "Flash Of Two Worlds" REVIEW

October 20, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

The Flash S02E02 “Flash Of Two Worlds” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: Sky 1, Tuesdays, 8pm

Writers: Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing
Director: Jesse Warn

Essential Plot Points:

Barry isn’t convinced about Jay’s story that he’s The Flash on an alternate Earth.
The Zoom-enlisted Barry assassin of the week is Sand Demon, who is clearly The Sandman in an alternate comic company.
Jay finally convinces Barry and they defeat Sand Demon together. Jay becomes Barry’s new mentor.
Jays tells everyone about how Zoom is his arch enemy back on his world.
Patty Spivot joins Joe’s Metahuman taskforce and flirts with Barry via the medium of Monty Python.
Cisco reveals to Stein that he’s been having “vibes” but asks him to keep it secret.
Stein collapses.
Harrison Wells is alive and well and like a rock’n’roll Steve Jobs on some alternate Earth.

Review:

Back in 1961, The Flash #123 boasted on its cover, “A spectacular story that is sure to become a classic.” At the time, that kind of hyperbole wasn’t exactly unusual. Editors would boast that a comic featuring Batman battling a nasty bout of flu was “sure to become a classic.” But 54 year later, that particular claim on The Flash #123’s cover – in its not-particularly-large font, not-particularly-hyperbolic language and not-particularly-lurid colours – actually feels like it’s underselling the issue. Because this is the comic that spawned DC’s multiverse, and which, over a quarter of a century later, has inspired an episode of a TV show that has got fanboys worldwide excited. That episode has the self-same title as the story inside that comic: “Flash Of Two Worlds”.

The Flash has a lot to pull off here, and mostly it manages to do so with its usual cheery charm. It’s not just introducing the multiverse, but also the season’s big bad and another version of the Flash too. If you want to be pernickety all three were actually introduced in episode one, but this is the first episode that has to really get to grips with them. It’s no surprise, then, some elements of the episode get short shrift. The result is a good episode, then, but not a “classic”. There’s plenty of “Ooohhh” but not much, “Wow!”

The main creative choice that prevents the potential “wow” factor in a Flash-meets-Flash episode is having Jay Flash* lose his powers on entering our universe. It’s also an understandable choice because it gives the episode some dramatic meat to chew on, with Barry mistrusting this new potential mentor after his Harrison Wells experience. Gustin turns in yet another brilliant performance in a role that could have made him come across as merely a sulky git. His perfectly sells Barry’s doubts about this “speedster” who can’t actually prove his powers.

(*Okay, we won’t call him that again – it makes him sound like a cleaning product.)

The writers may also be playing a game of delayed gratification, hoping we’ll appreciate the spectacle of Jay and Barry in superspeed action together even more when it does eventually happen. But the fact remains that it’s a little bit disappointing it doesn’t happen here: it’s more of a “A Flash-And-Half Of Two Worlds”.

It doesn’t help that Teddy Sears is a little stiff as Jay. Perhaps the intention is to make him feel more like a Golden Age superhero (which is what the Jay Garrick Flash was) by having him act like the square-jawed star of a 1930 cinema serial. Well, fair enough, but even on that level he’s not swashbuckling enough. He just a teensy bit dull. Hell, he doesn’t even flirt with Caitlin and she gives him every opportunity. Sears is doing a decent job, but on a show that has brought so many other Flash characters so vividly to life he’s not quite so full of va-va-voom. Maybe that’ll come back with his speed force.

There’s also the usual Flash problem of an underwhelming villain. The fact that the show rarely considers its villains-of-the-week more than cannon fodder is shown in the way they’re usually killed off or captured ten minutes before the end of the episode. Smallville used to do this too. Luckily, The Flash puts that extra time for good use; all we used to get on Smallville was Clark and Lana (or later Lois) either snogging or arguing, but The Flash usually delivers some of its best moments in those final scenes, whether it’s advancing the arc plot, giving us a massive surprise or having a character development no one expected.

That’s what we get here, with Stein collapsing, Cisco worrying about his news powers, Barry and Jay bonding and, of course, Harrison Wells popping up in an alternate universe, clearly with a stake in the new season, though at the moment we have no idea if he’s good or evil. Great stuff.

As usual, it’s a solidly entertaining, pacy, great-looking episode laced with wit and wonderful lines (“I’ve been poked, prodded, I even subjected myself to a full body scan,” grumbles Jay. “I was being thorough,” shrugs Caitlin.) There’s not an awful lot wrong with the episode, it just feels a little bit of a missed opportunity to create a real TV landmark. Season one was a massive success because it delivered more than just polished comic book action. It’d be a shame if season two doesn’t continue to push the boundaries.

The Good:

Caitlin’s unsubtle attempts to get to see as much of Jay’s body as possible.
The introduction of the multiverse is enticingly full of potential.
Lots of really pretty effects courtesy of three different lightning energy producers in one episode…

Great performance from Grant Gustin again.
The final scene with Harrison Wells is a pleasant surprise.
Barry and Patty bonding over Monty Python: “Or like the Bridge keeper protecting the Holy Grail!”
Cisco calling Stein “beautiful mind”.

The Bad:

He’s not bad, exactly, that’s a bit mean, but Teddy Sears is a little stiff as Jay.
Week two of the new season and already Zoom’s MO seems like a cliché: why try to kill off a rival yourself when you can get some schmuck to bungle the attempt for you?
While Cisco gives an explanation for why he’s scared of his powers and wants to keep them secret it still seems an unlikely character choice after he told everybody about his “dreams” last seasons. Cisco seems like the kind of guy who’d want all the help he could get understanding what’s happening to him, especially if he might get a cool code name out of it by the end.
Is Iris going to have a role other than chief motivator this season?
Patty is sweet and sparky but it’s a shame her main plot function in her debut is to get captured.
Barry’s spinny-arm thing still looks very silly.

And The Random:

52-Spotting: Aside from the team watching Oliver Queen’s TV announcement from last week’s Arrow on Channel 52 (lovely little crossover there) there’s also a more intriguing use of 52 this week. When Stein and Cisco discover multiple breaches, Cisco says, “Of course there’s not just one breach, there’s 52 of them scattered throughout the city.” Well, yeah, of course there’s 52. Stein may have suggested earlier in the episode that there could be infinite universes, but in the DC multiverse – after a mini series event called “52” in 2007 – there were only 52 universes. So is the fact that there are 52 breaches just another nod to DC’s favourite number? Or could each breach lead to one of those 52 alternate universes? Which is a great theory, except the mathematically-minded of you might be thinking, “But our universe is one of those 52, so there would only need to be 51 breaches.”
Patty Spivot was introduced to the DC comics universe in DC Special Series #1: “5-Star Super-Hero Spectacular” (1977) as a lab assistant for Barry. She has been romantically linked with Barry at various times, and in the current New 52 continuity she is Barry’s main girlfriend.
Thinking that the image at the top of this article looks a little familiar? That’s because it’s a clever homage to the cover of The Flash #123 (1961).
Sand Demon was a short-lived villain first introduced in Firestorm #51 (1986). He was killed off a mere two years later.
Patty says she went to Hudson University. This fictional institution has been mentioned on the show before in season one’s “Revenge Of The Rogues” and “All Star Team-Up”. In the DC comics universe it’s where Dick Grayson and Martin Stein studied, among others. There’s also a fictional Hudson University that’s been used in various TV shows including Law & Order and its spin-offs, Castle, Beauty And The Beast and Murder, She Wrote. It’s unclear if the comic and TV Hudson Universities are supposed to be the same place, but if they are, think of the crossover potential! Somebody get Angela Lansbury’s agent on the phone!
Jay mentions, “the war of Americas”. The Flash’s executive producer Greg Berlanti worked on a series called Jack And Bobby back in 2004-5, which was about two teenage brothers, one of whom was destined to become president of the United States in 2041. In the final episode a faux documentary features a conflict called “war of Americas”.
Blimey, a crim in The Flash who wasn’t sent to Iron Heights! Instead, Eddie Slick spent time in Blackgate Penitentiary, which is situated on an island in Gotham Harbour. It was introduced in Detective Comics #629 (1991) and has also been seen or referenced in Gotham, Batman The Animated Series and the Arkham games.

Central City has a Woodrue Greenhouse, which must be named after the comics villain Jason Woodrue, aka, the Fluronic Man or Plant Master, introduced in Atom #1 (1962).
Remember those international trailers that showed a speedster with blue lightning trail (see here)? Zoom in this episode has a blue lightning trail so that explains that. It’s also leading internet punters to suspect Zoom might be Edward Clariss, aka The Rival (see here). However, Jay also describes Zoom as, “an unstoppable demon with the face of death,” which does make us wonder if he could be Black Flash, a kind of Grim Reaper for Speedsters (see here).
INNUENDO OF THE WEEK: “Took me a lot longer to learn how to toss lightning, believe me.”

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other reviews of The Flash season two

Arrow S04E01 "Green Arrow" REVIEW

October 14, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment Reviews

Arrow S04E01 “Green Arrow” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Weds 8pm

Writer: Mark Guggenheim & Wendy Mericle
Director: Thor Freudenthal

Essential plot points:

Oliver and Felicity have settled into domestic suburban life – although one of them’s more comfortable with being out of trouble than the other.
Thea, Laurel and Dig have been taking on the criminals of the newly renamed Star City in their absence, but a new, very well armed gang of “ghosts” which has stolen powerful military-grade explosives have left the trio out of their depth.
The leader of the ghosts is the mystical Damien Darhk, formerly mentioned rival to Ra’s Al Ghul, who assassinates most of the city’s leadership and can kill people with just a simple touch.
The constant attacks and trouble on Star City have left the place run down and impoverished, and now in the shadow of Central City.
Oliver and Felicity are brought back into action to help stop Darhk’s men from destroying the city’s new rail terminal, although both Dig and Captain Lance are far from pleased to see Oliver back.
Oliver’s attempts to propose to Felicity keep getting stimied.
Captain Lance looks to have made some kind of deal with Darhk, although he’s reluctant to give up Team Arrow yet.
The flashback sees Oliver abducted by Amanda Waller and forced to parachute back onto Lian Yu to investigate a new threat.
And a flash (!) forward six months sees Oliver and Barry Allen standing beside a mysterious gravestone, as a grieving Oliver vows to kill “him”.
Oh, and Felicity is a dreadful cook.

Review:

With the DC TV universe expanding again this year to include animated companion Vixen, live action spin-off Legends Of Tomorrow and – superficially, at least, Supergirl – on top of sophomore year spin-off The Flash, the fear is that last year’s patchy third season for Team Arrow was the start of a slide for the parent programme, with the already stretched creative and production team having to take their eyes off the ball to handle all these new shows.

Thankfully any fears that Arrow’s the forgotten old hand among all the shiny new toys are dispelled by a quietly confident opener that sets out not only the new principles of the emerald archer, but also the big bad from the opening moments. Indeed, there’s so much talk about Oliver leaving behind the darkness of his character that it almost feels like the producers are making as much manifesto announcement on the show’s u-turn from last season’s storyline as they are about the character’s personal development.

Four years in and everyone knows their role well on Arrow. The cast are all uniformly good, the stunt work is impressive and the show, by and large, looks its money on screen. Director Thor Freudenthal, who directed two of last year’s key episodes – “The Climb” and “Al Sah-him” – gets the best out of the domestic bliss scenes, which are largely shot outdoors in beautiful summer light, heightening the contrast between the suburban good life and the increasingly desperate, grim urban decay of Star City.

In a ballsy move, the script throws away what previously would have felt like a tense season finale moment – a train full of high explosives headed into the heart of the city – as its opener, with the emphasis instead being on setting up übervillain Damien Darhk and his relationship with the show’s various characters – with hints of involvements in storylines right through the show’s history, not just the cough and spit mention of last year.

Interestingly, while the comic version of Damien Darhk is largely about misdirection and trickery that make it appear like he has mystical powers, the TV version’s going in with that supernatural ability right off the bat; a move, presumably, designed to set up the presence of Vandal Savage in the Legends spin-off, and indeed the impending appearance by everyone’s favourite walking advert for Regal King Size, John Constantine.

It represents another slight shift in the world of the Arrowverse, which has gone from its Nolan-esque grounded-in-reality-and -cience first season to the metahuman and magical immortality backdrop it now exists within. About the only thing missing now is aliens, although with Supergirl and all the Green Lantern injokes, you sense that can’t be far behind.

If there’s anything disappointing about the episode, it’s that it’s slightly too quick to get Oliver and Felicity away from their domestic happiness and back into the thick of trouble. It’s six months for the characters, but only a couple of scenes for us. I appreciate this is an action show and as such getting back into the action is key, but after making such a big deal about walking away from the lifestyle last season, it just feels a big rushed. Besides, the potential for an Olly and Flick do The Good Life-style sitcom was huge…

There’s nothing particularly mindblowing about “Green Arrow” as an episode in itself but nor is there much to criticise. It does its job well: setting up the rest of the season, advancing the five-year flashbacks, reconnecting the ties with the rest of the show’s increasingly widening universe, and all the while managing to chuck in a couple of impressive set piece fight sequences and explosions. It comes with the confidence of a show that knows how to assemble all its components with a minimum of fuss. Whether it can maintain that confidence with everything else going on in the Arrowverse now remains to be seen.

The Good:

The opening scene with Oliver, in a green hood, sprinting through undergrowth and forest, before pulling out to reveal he’s just taken a short cut for his morning jog, is an obvious but nicely done reveal.
There are lots of little nods to the Nolan Batman trilogy in the episode but especially the killing off of the city leadership, which draws heavily from the Joker pulling a similar stunt in The Dark Knight; the idea that the presence of the vigilantes protecting the city has only made things worse; the villains using the railway to wreak havoc on an impoverished, run-down city; and Amanda Waller nicking Ra’s Al Ghul’s, “The world’s too small for someone like Bruce Wayne to disappear” when she finds Oliver.
In the “five years ago” flashbacks, Olly’s been hanging out practicing (badly) his hooded vigilante antics in Coast City, home in the comics of the Green Lantern. There’s even an advertising poster with the slogan, “In brightest day, in blackest night, come to Coast City when money’s tight”.
Damien Darhk’s villainy is revealed from the off. No mucking about, no false trails. Within the first ten minutes we know he’s the bad guy. Neal McDonough’s confident portrayal is brilliant too – helped by the fact he’s got some of the creepiest serial-killer eyes in Hollywood. Seriously, even all the way back to Star Trek First Contact (he was Lt Hawk) his eyes have creeped me out.
The repercussions of last year are still being felt. Thea’s a bit unhinged and blood thirsty, Dig can’t forgive Oliver yet, and the Arrow is still dead, as far as the world’s concerned. It’s nice to see the reset button isn’t hit at the start of the season, as happens all too often elsewhere.
The domestic bliss stuff at the start is great. Really, genuinely great, to the extent that another episode of the two of them in suburbia, having dinner parties and generally behaving like a loved-up couple wouldn’t have gone amiss. It helps that Amell and Emily Bett Rickards have great chemistry together, and both have good enough comic timing to pull off the silly stuff.

The Bad:

Oliver’s supposedly rousing, bring-everyone-together-and-inspire-the-city speech is actually pretty rubbish. His big declaration that “I AM THE GREEN ARROW” falls very flat: a rare moment of shoddy line reading from Stephen Amell.
We don’t see much of just how much Dig, Speedy and Canary are struggling. They manage to half-stop a heist, but everything else is off screen and suddenly they’re dragging Oliver back from domestic bliss to help out.
Felicity ends up being the catalyst to drag Oliver back to Star City as it turns out she’s been secretly helping the team out behind his back. It’s a weird u-turn given she’s always been the one who seemed most ready to put the superhero world behind her. Although the couple’s domestic about it is admittedly very cute.
The “death” of Ray Palmer seems largely forgotten, apart from a sign at the city limits saying that Star City’s rebranding is in tribute to him. Given he and Felicity were so close, and she’s inherited his company, you’d think folk would be a bit more bothered.
Dig’s new faceplate, to help conceal his identity, is halfway between a welder’s mask and Boba Fett’s helmet. It really doesn’t work as a visual.
You’d think a train filled with cluster bombs so powerful they’re almost nuclear, as Felicity claims, that gets blown up by Team Arrow, might make a bigger explosion. Given the hype around the bombs, you’d expect basically a recreation of Threads rather than the standard pyro we get.
There is some truly, and in this day and age unforgivably, bad rear projection going on out the windows in the limo scenes. Seriously, there are ITC dramas from the ’60s that would look at that scene and tut.

And the Random:

No Barrowman, despite appearing in the opening list of credits.
Continuity ties with The Flash are as tight as ever: as well as Barry showing up at the end, we’ve got Sisco having designed the new Arrow costume, and a reference to the Flash Day celebrations from that show’s opening episode.
This year’s opening/closing credits arrowhead under the show’s logo is bright green, to reflect the character’s new identity (and lurid weaponry. Even Hawkeye didn’t go for dayglo purple arrowheads…)
Have we been told the location of the new Arrow-cave yet? Obviously they can’t use Palmer Technologies’ lab any more (not least because Ray blew it up), and the old base under the club was turned over by SCPD. The new HQ is a bit more sparse – no Salmon Leap bars, for starters.
While the show’s been off the air, Stephen Amell’s been a busy lad, filming the Ninja Turtles sequel, and scoring a win at WWE’s Summerslam show tagging with British wrestler Neville against Stardust and Wade Barrett. He didn’t look that bad in the ring either…

Review by Iain Hepburn

• Read our review of The Flash season two premiere

Guardians Of The Gallery: Harry Potter, Flash, Arrow, Spider-Gwen & More

October 4, 2015

by thatmediathing with No Comment News

Some of the best, funniest and weirdest pics & vids that’ve been doing the rounds on the ’net this week

••• We don’t know which multiverse these guys come from, but we love ’em. A cute spin on characters from The Flash and Arrow by Bosslogic.

A photo posted by Bosslogic (@bosslogix) on Oct 4, 2015 at 5:55am PDT

A photo posted by Bosslogic (@bosslogix) on Oct 3, 2015 at 11:29pm PDT

A photo posted by Bosslogic (@bosslogix) on Oct 3, 2015 at 11:09pm PDT

A photo posted by Bosslogic (@bosslogix) on Oct 3, 2015 at 12:53am PDT

••• Fed up with the lack of female-led superhero movies? Then this brilliant portmanteau video, made up from bits of Easy A, Birdman, The Amazing Spider-Man and specially shot footage, brings to life Marvel’s current Spider-Gwen title. Genius

••• The next Wolverine film is rumoured to be based on the Old Man Logan storyline from the comics – set in the future with an aged Wolverine. But what might Hugh Jackman look like in that role? ComicBook.com commissioned Bosslogic (hang on… that sounds familiar?) to envision it.

••• Artist Matt Rhodes has been busily designing characters for an animated Dune movie, if anybody at Disney is interested? The aesthetic is based on the films of Tarsem Singh (The Fall, The Cell, Immortals) and you can find more detailed descriptions on Blastr.

••• Just in case you’re the only genre fan on the internet who didn’t see Tyler Stout’s awesome Avengers: Age Of Ultron poster, commissioned by Marvel to mark the Blu-ray release of the film, here it your. Yours for… oh hang on, they all sold out quicker than Glastonbury tickets.

••• Even if you love the film this latest “Honest Trailer” for Avengers: Age Of Ultron will have you nodding in agreement on more than one occasion. “We broke Joss Whedon!” indeed.

••• Ready for Halloween? This US supermarket is with this amazing Jack Skellington display made from Cola multipacks. [via Geeks Are Sexy]

••• Entertainment Weekly has revealed four images from Harry Potter and the ~~Sorcerer’s~~ Philosopher’s Stone: The Illustrated Edition which is published on Tuesday with art by Jim Kay. You can buy it here.