Arrow “Restoration” Review: Yep! It’s Definitely Another Arrow Episode
Damien Dahrk is raising his strengths and showing his supernatural powers to try to take down Team Arrow, while Laurel and Thea decide now is the time to resurrect Sara Lance…for some reason.
All around, this is another average episode of Arrow, which makes the recent episodes somewhat problematic. It seems that Arrow is losing its edge and sticking to the familiarity, giving us repetitive plots and very rarely going beyond that. This season’s there’s another villain who wants to take down Star City and our heroes have to stop him, yadda, yadda, yadda…
Right now, the only character the show seems interested in furthering developing is Thea. She has the most to deal with and needs to understand what she is going through. It’s interesting to see how this basic Paris Hilton has become a Batgirl within 4 seasons. Her story arc is really killing this season and I’m curious to see what happens to her (maybe it’s her funeral…?).
Oliver and Diggle have some things to work on in their friendship thanks to last season, which is all well and good but again it feels like things we have seen before. We know Diggle is going to trust Oliver again, so why can’t we just get on with it? It gets stale because of this story’s predictability.
But of all the storylines for this episode, the most interesting and yet, simultaneously, the most problematic is Laurel’s sudden need to resurrect her sister. I don’t know why she waited until now to want to bring her back, other than to get her involved in Legends of Tomorrow, and it does render much of Season 3 worthless because the League of Shadows only cared about Sara’s death, forcing Oliver to join, but it is kinda neat to see it attempted. I just wish it was planned a lot better and placed in this show in a smarter way.
Arrow is still doing its job fine, but it’s getting to feel a bit tiresome and a little overstuffed. I hope this season is building up to something new and fresh that none of the other seasons have done before, but for now I can only guess that is a wild hope. It hasn’t quite jumped the shark, but I fear it might be dangerously close.
Grade: B-
FUN NOTES (SPOILERS):
- Curtis Holt remains to be a good character, but I don’t know how much of a purpose he’s going to have. Still, I like him, he adds humanity to the show.
- Felicity firing a machine gun. Bad. Ass.
- Anyone else getting Magneto vibes from Diggle’s helmet?
