Arrow: A Hooded Vigilante, a Team, and Eight Seasons of a City at Night

“Arrow” premiered on The CW on October 10, 2012, and ran for eight seasons before signing off on January 28, 2020. Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg developed it from the DC Comics character Green Arrow, created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp. It is also the first series of the Arrowverse, sharing continuity with other related television series. That is a heavy legacy for a show that started as a billionaire with a bow.

Trailer, via DC.

Oliver Queen Comes Home to Starling City

The premise is clean and a little cruel. Oliver Queen, the spoiled playboy son of Robert and Moira Queen, is missing and presumed dead when his father’s yacht sinks. He turns up five years later, changed, claiming he was shipwrecked on Lian Yu, a mysterious island in the North China Sea. He comes home to Starling City — later renamed Star City — to fight the crime and corruption that grew while he was gone, working as a hooded vigilante armed with a bow.

Stephen Amell plays him, and the show leans hard on the split in the character. Amell saw it as several roles in one: “There’s Queen the casual playboy; Queen the wounded hero; Queen the brooding Hamlet; Queen the lover; Queen the man of action, and so on.” That is the whole engine of “Arrow” in one sentence, and Amell carries it.

Stephen Amell Hit the Target From the Outset

Kreisberg said Amell “hit the target from the outset” and that “everyone else just paled in comparison.” The casting was not close. Amell was one of the first actors to audition for the role, and the show was built around him from the start.

He did the work, too. Amell was already in shape from Rent-a-Goalie, then trained at Tempest Freerunning Academy in Reseda, California. He took archery training as well, including a video on how archery has been shown inaccurately or poorly in television and film before learning the basics of shooting a bow. That kind of preparation does not guarantee a good performance. It does mean the bow looks like a weapon instead of a prop.

John Diggle, Felicity Smoak and the Team Around the Hood

Oliver does not work alone for long. David Ramsey plays John Diggle, a former soldier who becomes Spartan. Emily Bett Rickards plays Felicity Smoak, the I.T. expert and hacker. Caity Lotz plays Sara Lance, a former assassin. Colton Haynes plays Roy Harper, an aspiring vigilante. Willa Holland plays Thea, Oliver’s sister. Katie Cassidy plays Laurel Lance, an attorney turned vigilante and Oliver’s former girlfriend, who becomes Black Canary.

Cassidy said Berlanti, Nutter, Kreisberg and Guggenheim drew her to the show. The supporting cast is where “Arrow” earns its keep. A lone man with a bow gets thin fast. Diggle gives him a conscience with a rifle. Felicity gives the show a voice that is not grim. The best seasons let those two push back on Oliver instead of standing behind him.

The Flashbacks and the Island That Built Him

For the first five seasons, “Arrow” runs a second story underneath the first. Characters from Oliver’s past appear in a separate arc built on flashbacks. Starting with season seven, the show flips the device: a series of flash-forwards follows Oliver’s children, William (Ben Lewis) and Mia (Katherine McNamara), who plays Mia Smoak / Blackstar.

The flashback structure is the show’s best idea and its worst habit. When the island material connects to the present, “Arrow” is sharper than most network genre television. When it does not, it is a second show stapled to the first, and the audience waits it out. The flash-forwards are a bet that the next generation can carry the weight. That bet pays off only partly.

A Cast Built for Two Canaries

The series rotates through its roster in ways worth setting side by side, because the show’s identity shifts with whoever stands next to Oliver.

Two actors end up wearing the Black Canary name. Cassidy played Laurel Lance / Black Canary in seasons 1–4 and as a guest in seasons 5–8, and played Laurel Lance / Black Siren / Black Canary in seasons 6–8. The show also gives the mantle to Harkavy’s Dinah Drake. In this critic’s view, that is a sign of a series that kept rebuilding its core instead of letting one version settle. It is not the show’s worst instinct, but it is a recurring one.

Prison, Earth-X and the Cost of a Long Run

“Arrow” does not stay small. In the season six finale, Oliver confesses he is the Green Arrow and is sent to prison, where he is known as “Inmate 4587.” Amell also plays Dark Arrow, Oliver’s Earth-X doppelganger, in the sixth season crossover “Crisis on Earth-X.”

Those are the swings. Some land. The prison arc strips the show of its gadgets and lets Amell play the character without the hood, which is where he is strongest. The crossovers are events first and stories second, and “Arrow” mostly survives them by keeping its own cast in view. The show was primarily filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia. To this critic’s eye, it looks it — rain, warehouses, docks, the same alleys. That is not a complaint. A vigilante show should look like a city at night, not a backlot.

What “Arrow” Got Right, and What It Kept Repeating

The genres listed for “Arrow” are crime, drama, and action and adventure, and the show is honest about all three. It is a crime show with a bow, a family drama with a bow, and an action serial with a bow. The bow is doing a lot of work.

Here is what holds up:

• Amell as Oliver Queen, in all the versions he listed — playboy, wounded hero, brooding Hamlet, lover, man of action.
• David Ramsey as John Diggle, the show’s steadiest presence.
• Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak, who gives the dialogue somewhere to go besides gravel.
• The flashback arc in the first five seasons, when it connects to the present.
• The season six prison turn, which forces the show to drop its own crutches.

Here is what does not:

• The flash-forwards, which ask new characters to carry a show built around one man.
• The rotating Black Canary, which costs the team its center more than once.
• Eight seasons of a premise that was sharpest when it was smallest.

Metacritic’s aggregate score for “Arrow” is 7.3/10, drawn from a 73/100 rating. This critic thinks that number is about right. The first two seasons are better than it. The middle seasons are worse. The final stretch is a long goodbye that occasionally remembers what it was.

The part worth watching is not the crossovers or the costumes. It is the moment Oliver stops pretending the island made him a hero and admits it made him something else, and the people around him decide to stay anyway. “Arrow” was the first series of the Arrowverse, and that is the headline. But the reason it lasted eight seasons is smaller and better: a man who came back wrong, and a team that kept showing up.

Arrow · Arrowverse · Green Arrow · Stephen Amell · The CW · TV reviews