Arrow Season 6 Review

The first - and by a considerable margin, the best of Berlanti's DC based series - has always been Arrow. But as good as it has been for the last five years, I honestly spent most of last summer dreading its return. The fifth season climaxed with the villain Oliver Queen spent all of last season fighting managing to blow up the island where he had been stranded the early years of his disappearance, with basically everybody he ever loved or cared for on it. I was therefore torn between needing to know what happened and wondering who'd survive. I was therefore grateful to learn that when Season 6 premiered the explosion had been less of a 'Red Wedding' and more of a 'Moldavia Massacre'.  (Google it.) Despite that, it did seem something of a cheat that the island explosion wasn't as fatal as it had appeared.

Which doesn't mean that things haven't gotten any easier for Oliver (Stephen Amell). One of the people who passed away was the mother of a son, he didn't know he'd had until a couple of years ago. Now he's trying to be a father on top of his duties as Mayor of Star City, a job that has not gotten any easier with a photo mailed to the FBI about him as the Green Arrow. A determined Bureau agent is trying to pin him down, and Arrow puts us in an interesting position by realizing that she isn't entirely wrong. Indeed, that very pursuit has forced Oliver to go against a move by his city council to start hunting down vigilantes and putting it to a citywide vote - something that never went particularly well when it happened before. More to the point, it has forced Oliver to make the decision to stop being the Arrow and hand over to the costume to his trusted friend John Diggle (David Ramsay). What he doesn't know is that his friend injured himself severely in the attack, and is now relying on illegal pain drugs to make sure he can get out in the field. It is inevitable that this will come back to bite John in the ass; the only question is when?

Of course, involved all this are the same kind of threats from within. One of the survivors of the attack was Black Siren, aka an alternate universe version of Laurel Lance. (Katie Cassidy is brilliant in playing the darker version of the character she played so well for four years) Her very survival is a threat to the team, and one wonders how much pain it is causing to Quentin (the always fascinating Paul Blackthorne), who ended up shooting her in the final episode. Who is she working for, and will she pose a greater threat?

Arrow has always been a good series, but what makes me feel that it might be on the verge of a better season is that it actually seems on the verge of letting go of its baggage. For one thing, the flashbacks to Oliver's past, which became increasingly pointless throughout the last two seasons, are finally done, which is a real weight off the series shoulders. For another, even though we know that Oliver will inevitably be drawn back into the world he's creating, its actually refreshing to see our hero dealing with the mundane problems of running the city, trying to be a good parent, and best of all, restarting his relationship with the series breakout character Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards rules! Olicity forever! Sorry, couldn't help myself.)  One knows that eventually new villains will come to darken Star City's doorstep - that's how Berlanti works, after all. (I'm actually looking forward to the arrival of Michael Emerson and Kirk Acevedo, though I still have no idea what characters they'll be playing). But this is  a change that is refreshing and fun, especially for a series that was really dark the last two years. A lot of CW series end up running well past their expiration date. Arrow is the first series I hope in awhile that well really do that.

My score:4.25 stars.