Hey Everyone,

With Episode 2 of Arrow Season 8 airing tonight at 9pm on The CW, I wanted to post my review of last week’s season premiere….

Arrow deserves a lot of credit for being the show that changed the landscape of superhero television. Arrow’s the show that started it all, they don’t call it The Arrowverse for nothing. Besides being the birth place of The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow, I’d even go so far as to say that shows like Titans, Doom Patrol, and a lot of other series, would not have existed without Arrow. Other high profile TV projects have taken the spotlight from Arrow a bit over the years, but going into it’s final season, the series deserves a lot of recognition for making superhero television main stream. The series certainly has it’s critics, but I’ve always been a big Arrow fan. 

  Crisis On Infinite Earths loomed large in the Season Premiere. I think it was pretty clear after last year’s Elseworlds Crossover, that Arrow was setting things up for the series to end with Oliver Queen’s death. I think it’s a good way to end the heroic journey Oliver has been on. Plus, he still has a debt to pay to Mar Novu (The Monitor), as we saw in last season’s finale. 

      In the finale episode of Elseworlds, Oliver faced down The Monitor and made a deal with the cosmic being to save the lives of Supergirl and The Flash, in exchange for his own. As Oliver puts it his confrontation with The Monitor “ They are the best of us! And if you can’t see that… well, as gods go, you’re not a very smart one.“. So it was only a matter of time before The Monitor came around to collect. However, in classic Arrow fashion, Oliver has achieved a hard-fought peace and happiness. No more running around the city and putting himself in mortal danger, instead he’s living happily in his new cabin in the woods with Felicity and their newborn daughter Mia. But surprise, surprise! That’s when The Monitor decides to crash the party. A lot of the set up for the Season 8 was accomplished in last season’s finale, so the show hits the ground running in an awesome way.

   When it comes to Arrow, they are not fucking around for their final season. Thins show clearly wants to go out on a high note and that’s very apparent from the thrilling season premiere. This episode of Arrow just kicked all kinds of ass. The whole thing was a blast from start to finish. If the rest of the season lives up to (or surpasses) the excellent standard set by this premiere episode, then we are in for one hell of a final season of Arrow.

   Leading up to Arrow‘s final season, interviews with the cast, as well as the show’s writers and producers, have indicated that the structure of the final 10 episodes would look like each episode would serve to both be in homage to past seasons while also tying up certain loose ends from the series. Along with Oliver helping The Monitor prepare from the coming Crisis. This episode did a damn near perfect job of marrying those ideas. If each episode is going to be an homage to past seasons, this episode was a excellent call back to Season One, it’s the mission that Oliver is sent on by The Monitor that precipitates this celebration of the show’s past. It was very impressive how they weave together saying goodbye to the show in it’s final season, without forgetting that a lot of prep work needs to be done to lead into Crisis On Infinite Earths.

  Of course this wouldn’t be Arrow without some spectacular action sequences and the episode delivers in a big way. There are a few fights scenes in particular that are very well executed. There’s a brutality and viciousness to the fights that adds an emotional edge. Especially because a few of the people Oliver finds himself fighting are surprising to see on the show again. One or two of the fights have a few small moments of confusion just because two characters in one of the fight scenes happen to be dressed very similarly, but that’s just a nitpick. Like I alluded to before, this episode has the added benefit of having some of the show’s best actors and characters from the show’s long run, return in this episode. Many of whom are in vastly different places in their lives than they were when Oliver last encountered them. There are also one or two killer Easter eggs that will put a big smile on this face of any DC fan. And this episode has on hell of an ending!

  Overall this wasn’t just a great season premiere, it was a great episode and the beginning of a great send off to one of the most beloved shows in recent memory. If you haven’t been watching Arrow for a while, tune back in. It’s pretty easy to follow what’s going on and it’s definitely worth going out of your way to check it out again if you’re a lapsed fan. This was probably my pick of the week for best episode on TV (really my pick for LAST week because I didn’t get the damn article up in time). Make sure you check it out! Thanks for reading!

Episode Score

Arrow Season 8 Premiere: 9/10

Episode 2 of Arrow Season 8 airs tonight at 9pm on The CW!

-Paul