29. Arrow season 3
There was a lot of promise in Arrow‘s third season that had fans excited about the future of the Arrowverse. For starters, it was the first Arrow season to be accompanied by another show, as The Flash joined it on The CW’s schedule. How would it hold up now that it was building a universe? Well, that answer has many layers, but on a story level at least, this is where the cracks started to show.
The introduction of Batman villain Ra’s Al Guhl was met with a divisive response, because Arrow was already known for borrowing heavily from the Batman lore and fans felt that the show should have distanced itself from the Dark Knight comparisons. It didn’t, because its central plot (which saw Ra’s choose Oliver to be his heir) is ripped straight from the pages of a Batman story.
Adding to that, the romance between Oliver and Felicity threatened to take over the show in all the wrong kinds of ways, making the latter character intolerable at times, and the melodrama began to overwhelm the show. As a result, there wasn’t enough time to tell actual compelling stories like Laurel’s underdeveloped journey to becoming Black Canary, and Roy’s struggles with his life in Starling City.
While heavily flawed, Arrow season 3 isn’t quite as bad in hindsight. There was a lot of good in there, including the jaw-dropping midseason finale, the three episodes headlined by Vinnie Jones’ Daniel Brickwell, and the thrilling “Public Enemy”. It still felt like Arrow for the most part, it just didn’t hit the target the way that fans had hoped.