The Downfall of Arrow (Felicity and Friends)
My reaction to the season 4 finale
*sigh* Let’s do this. The Arrow season 4 finale premiered and it left me and most of the Arrow fanbase very disappointed. Well, most of it. In this article I will not only go over what season 4 has left us with (see above image), but I will also discuss how a fanbase can hurt the very thing it loves so much.
“Schism” (spoilers)
After suffering through a sub-par season, I had higher hopes for the season finale. My hopes were effectively crushed. The season 4 finale of Arrow left with an empty feeling in my soul. Yeah, it was that bad. The episode starts off with Damien Darhk attacking the Smoaks and almost killing Donna. Of course Felicity dominates the episode. Soon, Starling City is in chaos. Fifteen thousand nuclear warheads have been launched worldwide (one aimed at Starling City) and it’s up to Team Arrow to stop it. How do they do this? Oliver takes to the streets in the middle of a riot (unmasked) and gives speech about hope and how they cannot lose it now in their darkest hour. As they wait for their almost certain death by nuclear destruction, the show’s protagonist comes to save the day.
This is it. Felicity stops a nuke from hitting Starling City by pointing half a video camera and using a Microsoft Surface in a scene that takes less than 5 minutes. Then, The Green Arrow decides to go after Damien Darhk alone (because that worked all season). Naturally, he gets the crap kicked out of him and thrown onto the street, in front of the rioting crowd. Arrow rallies the crowd behind him and Darhk loses his power. After the worst choreographed fight scene you could possibly imagine, Arrow kills Darhk. With the Darhkness gone, the impacts on the team are felt. Diggle and Thea both decide to leave the team and the episode ends with Felicity saying there’s no chance she would leave the team. Oh, and Oliver becomes Mayor of Star City. The end. Barf.
RANT INCOMING
The source of all of my woes with this show stems from one word; Olicity. Basically, some people on the internet decided they would like to see Oliver and Felicity in a relationship. Now this in itself is not bad, sort of a preference thing really. The bad thing is that the writers of Arrow seemed to think this was the voice of the Internet and what we wanted to see. This directly lead to way too much Felicity screen time and the death of Laurel Lance, who in the comics, is the main love interest of Green Arrow. On this show called “Arrow” Felicity Smoak and her mother Donna Smoak have taken up as much as 23 minutes of a 41 minute television show. Oliver went off to a sorceress to find out how to beat Darhk and who just had to come along and interject at every point along the way? Felicity. Who nuked a town and felt remorse for exactly 35 seconds before moving on? Felicity. Who has ruined my favorite television show? Felicity gee dang Smoak. Season 1, 2, and the first half of 3 were some of the best programs DC has put out of television. The latter half of season 3 and season 4 were terrible thanks to Oliciters screaming for their way and Marc Guggenheim (lead writer) listening to them. A quick list of other things that were bad/ did not make any sense will follow:
- If Felicity moved the nuked to the right into a city, why couldn’t she have moved it somewhere that was not populated?
- If Damien Darhk gains power from death, and tens of thousands of people died when Felicity dropped the nuke, how did 50 rioters in Starling City stop him?
- Why did I watch all of season 4?
- Why did they kill off Laurel when Green Arrow and the Black Canary are always depicted together?
- Why did the fight scenes become terrible? Arrow and Darhk literally just punch each other standing up for 15 seconds that’s not action!
- How will Felicity and Friends go on without the friends part?
Let’s just hope that Barry Allen’s actions will reverse all of this and bring Laurel back because #NoLaurelNoArrow.
YOU CAN’T LOCK UP THE DARHKNESS
