Arrow: “The Thanatos Guild / Brothers In Arms”

“This is so out of character for John.” WE KNOW.

I finally realized why I’m enjoying this season of Arrow so little. The people involved are deliberately telling a story I don’t want and don’t care about.


Apparently, having spent last season rebuilding the support structures for Oliver Queen, the theme of this season is taking them all away. So that’s why the new team members quit and got fought with. That’s the other reason Thea left when she did. And that’s why, last week, Diggle ran off.

That’s not progression, that’s regression. We’ve seen Oliver struggle with I Must Do This Alone / I Can’t Do This Alone over and over again.And on top of that, it’s happening at the whim of a second-half villain so bland that his only superpower is apparently realizing that everyone in Star City is super corruptible. It’s tedious.

And to make it happen, they have to make people act so wildly out of character that, in the case of Diggle, they had to have everyone, including Diggle, talk about how out of character it was for him. That, writers, is what you call a hint that your idea is bad and you should feel bad.