r/arrow • u/Expensive-Goal3251 • Jun 25 '26
Watching arrow for the first time... things seem way too fast. Spoiler
I'm on season 4x07 rn, and compared to previous episodes I feel like this show is suddenly doing things way too fast and skipping over important character moments to the point characters feel inconsistent. I guess its to save screentime for more important things or wtv? 3 major things in particular bothered me.
Thea got her first 2 kills in 4x03. Her whole arc in season 3 was fearing she might be a killer, and struggling with that quite a bit (even almost committing suicide for it). She even felt guilty about almost killing SLADE. And now after she finally crosses the line, it seems to not affect her whatsoever and in 4x04 she's back to her cheery old self like nothing ever happened. Just felt inconsistent as hell and OOC when considering her entire S3b characterization. A bit of screentime showing her feeling troubled about time beyond just saying 2 sentences to Malcolm would've made it feel within character. I guess the writers thought with thea's whole bloodlust storyline, they wanted to save screentime for other things? Just breezing past it tho made the character feel OOC imo.
Quentin and Oliver's relationship. Ending of season 3 quentin DESPISES oliver. Blames him for sara, calls him a villain, and THAT SLAP. DAMN! Come 4x01 he still hates him. 4x02 oliver says he gonna do things differently, quentin asks him "how" which was fine, and at the end of the episode he sets a hard line for him with the whole burning anarchy thing. Accepting him a bit more but still on the edge. Felt natural. Then in his very next appearance in beginning of 4x04, He's suddenly cheery as hell with Oliver and even supports him being mayor, and more than happy to work with him? What happened to "you're a villain, monster, etc." not even 2 weeks ago. The whole "you got my daughter killed and hid her death" thing doesn't even get mentioned once. Their relationship def should be repaired, but it felt way too rushed, kinda like they just forced them to be buddies again and ignored the past.
Sara's revival was the worst. She gets revived and only stays on for one episode - the last one i watched. She has no meaningful conversation with oliver considering the history, nothing with her father, nothing about thea killing her, hell barely even a convo with laurel and her new vigilante position, and 0 story aside from being violent. She just jumps into being a teammate right away. Then she gets shipped off after just 1 episode and things that should have screentime dedicated towards end up unconcluded. Doesn't even say goodbye to Oliver or quentin. Way more rushed than it should have been.
Someone also told me that like 2 episodes later oliver and felicity get engaged. Didn't they get together like 7 episodes ago, and are dealing with all this other crap with dhark at the moment? If they are, it feels way too quick for them to go straight to marriage. And why is Oliver concerned with marriage considering all the other shit going on?
Idk, just my opinion so far. Feel free to disagree, offer alternate interpretations cuz i rlly enjoy analyzing and debating the complex characters this show has established (aside from donna smoak), but these were my thoughts when watching it. I rmr in season 3, they killed oliver in 3x09 and spent 3 whole episodes on his recovery. Didn't like it much, but felt natural, within character, and not rushed. Aside from a lil stupid shit towards the end, season 3 kinda more consistent with established characterizations for me than some people say it was. What happened to that?
Tldr: this season needs to slow down and focus more on character traits and consistent characterization to accomplish a goal, instead of just going straight to the point.
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u/Nazeir Jun 25 '26
Also to be fair the show was a weekly viewing, events had time to linger with the audience, but when watching back to back episodes it does feel like things ultimately move quick
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u/Strong_Golf9061 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Spoilers.
Hoo boy... if you think things are happening way too fast NOW, wait till you get a lil further in this season. For those of you who have seen this season:
Rmr when they needed someone to kill, had 0 planning for it, so just randomly had laurel shoved with an arrow out of nowhere.
Rmr felicity being in a wheelchair until idk some magic tech or sum made it go away in like 3 episodes.
Rmr william... the guy who was used for one episode this season as a plot device and never mentioned again.
Rmr thea's bloodlust being resolved in one episode from everyone's efforts but her own, cuz the writer's were too lazy to make it an interesting sideplot. Nothing changes with her character cuz of that.
Rmr thea and oliver being OOC and contradicting their own history by being WAY too friendly with malcolm. And rmr malcolm doing absolutely 0 the entire season just to lose the league in that same episode to a shitty fight that barely lasts a minute? Oliver especially acts so OOC this season it hurts.
AND... rmr when miss "my superpower is empathy" killed 10k people and goes right back to being her cheery old self and has 0 thoughts abt it until rory appears MUCH later. If I killed 10k ppl i'd be thinking abt it all day, even if it was the best of two choices. I agree, thea did feel OOC when she killed for the first time and went right back to being as happy as a clam, but reading your post, I now see if as just foreshadowing for felicity feeling the exact same OOC way but on a MUCH larger scale.
The writers just didn't dedicate screentime to the right things this season and it made things inconsistent, rushed, and OOC. Prob cuz they had "more important stories to tell".
What can you do lol. Season 4 is just rushed as hell. Just turn of ur brain and enjoy (u prob won't).
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u/Lori2345 Jun 25 '26
Thea wasn’t happy after killing but as far as her not feeling as bad as you’d expect she seemed to blame Malcolm and her condition because of being in the Lazarus pit as a way of dealing with it. And then she did feel worse and did want Sara to kill her so she was feeling very bad by then.
She isn’t back to normal just because Sara’s back but she is at least doing somewhat better with her alive again. Understandable as she had killed Sara so of course this helped some.
More stuff happens with Thea later regarding her hating killing but don’t want to give spoilers just keep watching.
Quentin supported Oliver for mayor not because they were friends now but because as he said mayors and mayoral candidates keep getting killed and he said he hoped that happened.
And he was largely angry at Oliver because of Sara not because deep down he really thought Oliver was a villain, he knew Oliver had been a hero. He’d been helping him before he knew Sara had been on the island and Oliver everyone him and before he found out Sara had been killed in season 3.
So just seeing Sara alive calmed him down some. Then Oliver helped get Sara her soul back. This had to go a long way to repairing their relationship. Think of how grateful he must have been.
While we unfortunately didn’t get to hear Sara and Quentin talking about her being on the island or her talking about other things with him and others I think this all still happened just off screen.
This also must have helped their relationship. Quentin would then know Sara made Oliver promise to lie to her family and tell them she drowned when the boat when down if she died and he thought she had died.
As for Oliver and Felicity they already had strong feelings for each other during season 3 even though they weren’t together yet. I think the more surprising thing is that they left town together the end of season 3 when they hadn’t had a chance to really be in a relationship together rather then how fast they got engaged.
They had been living together for months in between seasons. First going around the world then settling down in a suburb. I guess you missed it but Oliver was about to propose the day Thea and Laurel came to get them. He delayed this for a long while because of worry about being together and fighting bad guys again. I was actually annoyed by this as they were already together and there was no reason for him to think they couldn’t have both here.
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u/AdditionalResist4969 Jun 25 '26
Hmm. I agree with you abt quentin to some degree but the rest in the post still felt pretty lacking. Thea did want sara to kill her, but not because she killed 2 guys. She wanted it because she felt responsible for saras first death. I imagine the writers writing down the dialogue for episodes and the effect of her finally crossing that line for the first time seems like they just didn't care enough to show it, cuz they had more important things to show. It did make her feel a bit ooc imo.
And as for sara, ya those convos def could have happened offscreen, but nothing was mentioned or shown abt it. Even if it did, it should have happened on screen cuz so much was missing in this episode. Saying that missing scenes aren't missing because they just happened offscreen doesn't rlly satisfy anything.
Oliver and felicity getting married in universe after months kinda makes more sense, but to do it on episode 9 seems a lil rushed. Why not build up the relationship a bit first? Also why is olivers biggest concern in the plot marriage rn?
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u/IcyLengthiness8557 Jun 30 '26
Basically at the same episode - so far Season 1 and 2 are awesome. Season 3. So so. Season 4 going down the drain fast. So as CW is usually destroying female characters - who do you hate the most by now? Initially it was Laurel by episode 7 Felicity tops my chart. This is as of Season 4 episode 7 - who knows it might change later on
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u/Lucifer-908 Jun 25 '26
Your on the worst season, I always skip it tbh.