Arrow: City of Heroes

Is there any chance I'm going to finish season two of Arrow before season three finishes? No way. But I'll make a valiant effort to make a dent in it.

Having just watched the first episode of the fourth season of The Legend of Korra, the structural similarities of each premiere illustrated just what is required from a season opener. It needs to remind the audience of what happened in the last finale, update us on the characters, and lay down the groundwork for the forthcoming story-arcs.

As it happened, Arrow managed this juggling act pretty well. There was nothing particularly thrilling or jaw-dropping about it, but as a competent catch-up on the story's progress and a rearrangement of all the pieces, it did the job.  

After the destruction of the Glades thanks to Malcolm Merlyn's nefarious scheming, Oliver has returned to the island of Lian Yu in a wave of guilt and failure (and perhaps a dose of PTSD – not from the earthquake, but from its original island ordeal). Diggle and Felicity show up to coax him back to civilization, and the fan service begins immediately:

Because this show is going nowhere until Oliver is back in Starling City, it doesn't take long for Diggle and Felicity to convince him to return home.

Updates on the rest of the cast? Queen Consolidated is being bought by an all-grown-up River Tam, Laurel is working for Paul from Orphan Black (posing undercover as a district attorney), Moira is in jail, Detective Lance has been demoted, and Thea has stepped up in order to take over the management of Verdant. Check, check and check.

Hello Paul. Seriously, I'm going to be calling this character Paul.

I was pleasantly surprised by Thea in this episode. It would have been easy to make her slip into despair in the wake of her mother's betrayal and Oliver's disappearance, but the show – perhaps sensing the character's tenuous popularity – instead decided to give her a dose of maturity instead. And even her fury at her mother was not based so much on a sense of personal betrayal, but of moral anger at the innocent lives lost in the quake.

And I have to admit that I mildly ship Thea/Roy. "Mildly" in the sense that I won't be too disappointed when their inevitable breakup comes, but for now it feels like the one ship that isn't being shoved in my face by either the writers (Oliver/Laurel) or the fandom (Oliver/Felicity). It's just pottering along in a low-key little subplot, quietly satifying my enjoyment of uptown girl/backstreet boy pairings.

I hope those two crazy kids make it.

Laurel is also in a good place. It mercifully seems as though both she and the writers realize that a relationship with Oliver is bad for her (you'd have thought cheating on her with her sister was a dead giveaway) and if nothing else, Katie Cassidy looked great in that dress. Seriously, where can I track that down?

Okay, so there's a plot in here somewhere. In the wake of the vigilante's absence, a group of men styling themselves as "the Hoods" (not impersonators, but copycats) have been wreaking havoc on the one-percenters. Like many of their ilk, they are able to effortlessly waltz through security and gun down guards, but are inexplicitly stymied when facing characters from the opening credits.

They are given some perfunctory backstory to muddy the moral waters a little (they all had loved ones that died in the quake), but unlike Oliver, who tried to show at least some restrain, these guys are deliberating murdering people – including the mayor.

But hilariously, no one actually cares that the mayor was brutally gunned down, and media coverage instead opts to break the news that Oliver Queen is back in town. In a nice bit of irony, this spurs the Hoods to go after Oliver. In a bad bit of irony, they end up taking Thea hostage instead.

I actually don’t know how many times in total Thea has been captured, and there's a good chance that I'm being totally unfair to her, but she definitely seems to exist as the go-to victim for a quick-'n-easy way to get Oliver emotionally invested. Even though he didn't bother communicating with her during his second stint on the island.

Again.

It's at this point that the theme of the episode comes to the fore. In order to honour Tommy's memory (the only guy in any comic book adaptation to ever act like a real person on learning that their best friend was a vigilante) Oliver decides that maybe he's not going to kill so many people anymore. Which no doubt means that authorial fiat will ensure that he will never again be put into a position in which he has to kill anyone.

Look, I appreciate that this show actually takes life and death relatively seriously (except when it comes to random security guards). And I can clearly see the trajectory of where they're going in regards to Oliver evolving into Green Arrow. Heck, I even have newfound appreciation for the island flashbacks considering they're mapping out Oliver's kill-or-be-killed survivor/soldier mentality.

But the problem with any live-action superhero adaptation is that the easiest way for vigilantes to keep their hands blood-free while simultaneously helping the community is to stop taking the law into their own hands and go work in a soup kitchen. Their chosen recreational activity will inevitably – at some point, either accidentally or deliberately – require them to take a life. Which immediately puts a dent in our definition of a hero.

Oliver, having completed the task his father gave him, now decides to "try something different" in making a concentrated effort to spare the lives of criminals. To be honest, I thought he was already doing that throughout season one, and killing only when it was necessary. Now it appears that he's going to really, really make an effort not to kill anyone, which brings me back to my first point – that the writers will probably deal with this by never putting him in a position in which he has to. Which won't exactly fit into the gritty real-world atmosphere that they're trying to create.

Tone is a tricky thing. It needs to stay consistent if a show – however outlandish the premise – is going to remain grounded. Arrow has always tread a strange line between comic book craziness and real world consequences – we'll see how this plays out as the season goes on.

Just to wrap things up, Oliver gets one up on Isabel Rochev, the head of a rival company that's trying to buy out Queen Consolidated (or something). According to Felicity, Isabel "looks angry in every photo" (she really doesn't) but the tiny glimmer of a grin when Oliver shakes her hand suggests that he'll be adding another notch to his bedpost soon enough.

"I look forward to sleeping with you even though
I doubt it'll make any sense given my characterization."

I'm not looking forward to the inevitable hook-up between these two. Arrow is generally pretty good in its depiction of women, but Oliver has dated every significant female character on this show that isn't his sister or his mother. Laurel, Sara, Helena, McKenna, Shado...

Why is fandom so desperate for him to date Felicity? It's not that he actively mistreats these women in any way (except for Laurel), but he sure as hell goes through them like a kid through a revolving door.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Ah, the dramatic line-reading. You've seen it everywhere – a portentous line is delivered to no one in particular, leaving everyone to wonder just who exactly it was for. Here we have Stephen Amell say: "you shouldn't have come here," while gazing off into the middle-distance. Who is he talking to? Not quite himself, not quite Felicity, not quite the folks at hope – but all three.

"You shouldn't have come here, off-screen tree."

Apparent a man called "Blood" is in the running for mayor. Wow, there's no way he's going to end up a villain.

Did I hear a TV broadcaster mention a "Star Labs particle accelerator?" That sounds promising in a very Flash sort of way.

It's always fun to see familiar faces turn up – this episode includes a post-Firefly Summer Glau and a pre-Orphan Black Dylan Bruce.

It was great seeing Mr Steele again, especially in his capacity as a stepfather to Oliver. Not only did it parallel Thea's visit to Moira in prison, but it was a nice moment of rapport in a dynamic you don't see very often (stepfather/stepson – what's more, an ex-stepfather/stepson). I'm glad I forgot about seeing Colin Salmon's name in the opening credits.

And finally, the introduction of Black Canary. This ties in nicely with the episode's title: City of Heroes. That is, plural. It wasn't just Oliver who is a hero here, it's Walter who comes to his financial rescue, Roy who goes out fighting street crime, Laurel who's struggling on with her life, Thea who got her act together and took over the club...

And so it was exciting to me that Black Canary's introduction doesn't involve Oliver or the vigilante at all, but instead depicts her coming to Roy's rescue. Roy who has yet to cross paths, properly at least, with Green Arrow. It's almost as though she's slipped through the side-door instead of barging through the main entrance, and it hints at a widening of the show's focus, in which Oliver/Arrow is no longer the sole protectorate of Starling City, that events and ideas and relationships are beginning to expand.