Arrow: Season 4 (Blu-ray) – Series Review
Follow Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime
Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Episodes: 23
Duration: 42 min (per episode)

Arrow: Season 4 (Blu-ray) – Series Review

Site Score
6.7
Good: Proper new villain
Bad: Less qualitative, Felicity and Oliver's relationship is getting in the way of the actual series
User Score
3.0
(3 votes)
Click to vote
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Rating: 3.0/10 (3 votes cast)

Arrow, the series that initially hit many bullseyes has been under fire for it becoming dull, less qualitative, and a drama series between Oliver and Felicity and after the already clear decline of quality of the third season, we feared the worst for this one. Nonetheless, even before plunging into our review, we can already state that Arrow is still very much ‘the’ Arrow, albeit slowly getting dragged out, and with clear budget cuts when it comes to choreography and story building. That aside, let’s go back to Star City, the former Starling City, once more.

Arrow Banner

Again for this season one thing remains the same, we get to follow Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) during his current day-to-day activities, but also during the years of his disappearance. This time Oliver is leading a more relaxed life, as he chose for Felicity’s (Emily Bett Rickards) love at the end of the previous season. They have left Star City, to live a simple family life, enjoying each other’s company. Nonetheless, it seems that Felicity is still in contact with The Queen (Willa Holland) and Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) who are the current vigilantes of Star City. When a new villain appears by the name of Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough), who has magical powers at his disposal, they will need Oliver’s help as well. After pretty much begging him to come back, Oliver is convinced, but he now dubs himself the ‘Green Arrow’, as many inhabitants of the city think the original Arrow has died a while ago. It becomes rapidly clear that Damien is no easy threat to get rid of.

Other than that, you’ll see flashbacks of Oliver spending time again on the island he was stranded on for many years. Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) dropped him there to take care of a mission, namely to stop an evil mercenary from enslaving people on the island, for his own dirty business. As expected, this small arc is also linked to the events with Damien Darhk, as both of them revolve around the use of a magical totem.

Arrow Season 4 1

The flow of these twenty-three episodes was slower than you’d like it to be, as this season will revolve solely around the villainous Damien Darhk, with many opportunities to actually dispose of him, and the necessary consequences of not doing so. Even though the evil character in itself is a very interesting appearance, they could have wrapped up most things within the course of half the episodes as they currently spent on it. It’s clear that the love relationship between Oliver and Felicity has become significantly more important, sometimes getting in the way of what the series was originally about.

Clearly that this season was rushed together, when it comes to the execution of many of the battle scenes. More than once it’s apparent that characters’ punches never connect with one another, and it also makes you wonder how a private army can become a threat to the world when thirty or more soldiers, can’t even hit a target in an open field, when handling machineguns. The latter becomes painfully annoying as the season progresses, especially when a character does get hit, it’s always in the shoulder, every – single – time.

Another issue, which we’ll probably bring up in the second season of ‘The Flash’ as well, is these different series are now aiming to do more crossovers, which is an interesting concept on paper, but the execution is again done in such an atrocious fashion that it demotivates you to actually watch them. For example, in this fourth season of Arrow there’s a crossover with The Flash, concerning ‘Hawkgirl’ and ‘Hawkman’. But the problem lies with the fact that only the second episode of this crossover can be found in this season of Arrow, and if you want to watch the first part, you’ll have to watch The Flash season 2. Thus the creators are trying to force you to watch the both series, simply to get to watch the full story. Also, it doesn’t really make sense that Arrow’s physical release hits the stores before The Flash in this scenario.

Arrow Season 4 2

One thing remains fairly consistent with the previous seasons, namely the acting performances. The cast still delivers a rather stellar job when it comes to how they play out their roles. Nonetheless, after a while the ‘relationship’ between Steven Amell’s and Emily Bett Rickards’ characters is getting very dull and annoying. The new villain Damien Darhk, portrayed by Neal McDonough is the character and actor that currently steals the show. He plays out his role perfectly, and he is both likeable as a character, but thoroughly wicked, which makes him the perfect villain for a series such as this.

The special features on this Blu-ray edition of the fourth season are quite fun, as they show you some extra facts on how certain comic book characters came to life. Other than that, this season has a lot less featurettes about the series itself, like making of sections and so on. All in all, the segments about Damien Darhk, Hawkgirl and Hawkman add around fifty minutes of amusing and interesting content. Those who want even more content can enjoy themselves with the deleted scenes and gag reel.

Conclusion

Arrow: Season 4 will probably still please true Arrow fans, as they will be treated to many trademark situations that are becoming rather common on the show. Nonetheless, the ‘Felicity and friends’ memes do hold a lot of truth, especially for this season. In many ways, it feels as if the series is slowly but surely forgetting its roots and is becoming more of a series that revolves solely around Oliver and Felicity’s complicated love plot, with Felicity becoming more of a central figure than the Green Arrow himself. Still worth the watch if you have been following the series since day one, but we hope season 5 goes back to basics, having proper fighting scenes and less on-off relationships.

Arrow Season 4 3

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Arrow: Season 4 (Blu-ray) – Series Review, 3.0 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

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