I still want the very first scene of the season to be the island blowing up from the island perspective. I don’t want to have a jump on time, which some shows tend to do.
It was pretty easy to guess that Samantha would die, since the previews and interviews have highlighted Oliver having to be William's father now. They did kind of fake us out with Thea for the whole episode, and she's still not out of the woods yet, though I assume she will be. So basically the way they survived was that the plane's body shielded them from the explosions, even though they couldn't take off in it? I'm not sure how plausible that is, given the magnitude of the explosions. But then, we saw Black Siren and the explosives guy setting off supposedly deadly explosions in the SCPD while they were still in the room and not being affected by them at all, which is really not how explosives work in the real world. Looks like Wild Dog gets a new costume as well as Black Canary. We didn't get much of a look at it, though, since he was hurt so soon. The problem with season premieres involving time jumps is that you often have to assume the characters have just let things linger for months and then suddenly confront them all at once. It worked better on the other three shows. On Supergirl, Kara had been grieving for months and the others had given her space, but things finally reached a breaking point. On The Flash, the team had actually adjusted pretty well to the new status quo until circumstances forced a change -- except it was implausible that they were still arguing over whether to call it Team Kid Flash or Team Vibe. And the Legends just went their own individual ways until an opportunity to reunite came along. (Though it's implausible that all three intervals happen to be six months.) Here, we have a five-month gap (finally, a break to the pattern), but Quentin is only now talking to Dinah about his guilt, and Diggle is only now showing PTSD symptoms or whatever, and Oliver is only now figuring out that William blames him for his mother's death. And meanwhile, Slade just happens to show up with news about his search for his son. It's a lot more arbitrary in this case. I recently read a bunch of New Teen Titans trade paperbacks (and rewatched the 2003 animated series), so I now realize what I don't think I did before -- Slade's son Joe is Jericho, who was one of the Titans for a while. I wonder if the Arrowverse version will be a metahuman. He'd have to have a different origin; Jericho was born a mutant (yes, they used the term at the time) because of the experiments that had given Slade his powers, but this Slade Wilson only got Mirakuru-enhanced about 9 years ago, and the Arrowverse Wiki says Joe Wilson was born in 2002 [citation needed].
Yeah, that scene was really weird. I know they're trying to portray Earth 2 Laurel as smart and badass with her ability to manipulate the explosions so masterfully...but it just made her seem like an idiot to me. Of course, this show is rarely accurate when it comes to physical dangers. The use of arrows is example number one. "It's just a flesh wound" should be this show's tagline.
Not that I'm reading anything into this, but does anyone else find it a little odd that almost every recurring male character is a father? Also, by contrast (this is just an observation, not a complaint) with the exception of Lyla, not one of the female characters is a mother. Don't know why this didn't occur to be before now. Seriously: Oliver, Quentin, Diggle, Rene and even Slade & Merlin! Unless I forgot someone, Curtis is the only one who isn't.
My understanding is that arrow wounds are pretty survivable if they aren't in vital spots -- although I also read recently that a bladed arrow can actually penetrate deeper than a typical bullet. I know the team generally uses some kind of tranquilizer bullets in their guns. It occurred to me last night that maybe Ollie's using some kind of "knockout arrow" that doesn't penetrate too deeply but just delivers a shock or a drug or something. At least, that's a way to rationalize it in my head unless they explicitly say otherwise.
By the way, does anyone else find it weird that the bomb guy's name was Alex Faust? Given that Constantine is retroactively set on Earth-1, I wonder if he's related to Felix Faust...
So Samantha's the only one dead, and currently unaccounted for are the Ghul sisters and Artemis. (And Merlyn ) Of all the times he was unmasked, isn't this the easiest one to deny though? What's with the panic, just say it's photoshopped... This one?
That was a great premiere episode. I liked how they worked in the various reveals from the Island storyline into current day making the flashbacks still matter. I also thought this was the best Quintin episode in a Long time, maybe in a year. He was underutilized last year. Also appreciated the fact that we probably saw more green arrow in this episode than most of last season, or at least it felt like it. Season 6 is off to a promising start.
What I found unexpected was that, in most cases, it was revealed who lived or died in the present-day scenes before the relevant flashbacks. Even Samantha's death was confirmed in dialogue, almost casually, before we saw it happen. I'm not sure that's really as effective or suspenseful as saving the reveals for the flashbacks would've been. It was also a bit off-putting how short many of the flashbacks were.
But did we really think main characters were going to die. I mean watch the season 5 finale and did you ask yourself if Felicity or Diggle were going to die. That’s the problem with doing a cliffhanger like that. It inevitably doesn’t matter in the long run because these actors are not being written off the show. I thought by doing the reveals intermixed, it brought tension to what was going on preasent day, especially with Quintin. Also this is still a short time since he found out that Black Siren wasn’t her daughter but that is a hard thing to get over, especially how he was when his Laurel did die. At this point I’m kind of hoping Thea does die. Holland is being slowly written off the series anyway and what does that do for Oliver being the only sourcing Queen left. It might also be the surprise death people were hoping for last year.
Not the point. There are ways to make even an expected revelation have a strong impact, and ways to make it fall flat. The way we engage with fiction is by empathizing with the characters, putting ourselves in their place. It's not about what we know or expect, it's about what they know and how they learn and experience it. If we see them feeling something strongly, it helps us feel it strongly, even if we saw it coming. So establishing these things after the fact, through the reactions of characters who've had 5 months to get used to them, isn't as emotionally potent as putting us in the moment and letting us discover them along with the characters. Storytelling is like magic. The audience knows the lady isn't really sawed in half, but if you sell the illusion well enough, they'll buy into it anyway and be suitably impressed. So it's not about what they know or expect, it's about what you can make them feel.
I don't think it's odd, just a theme of the show. The entire first season was Ollie trying to rectify the sins of his father by eliminating the Undertaking (is that what it was called?) which extended into the second season and him dealing with the Ravager character's grudge against his father. Since then, we've had Thea's issues with her bio-dad, the long-lasting drama of Ollie's baby-mama, and the Papa Lance character being mostly defined by his role as a father (with occasional detours into substance abuse). Add in all the examples you mentioned and the theme of fathers and fatherhood seems pretty ingrained into the show's DNA. My thought was that he's the Earth-2 version of Felix Faust (sans magic), but then I remembered that this is the show that named a ship Amazo, so all bets are off when it comes to the names of old JLA foes.
I hope she doesn't, and I doubt she will. If they really wanted to kill her off they would have done it in with a bang(not necessarily the literal bang of the season finale ), and the show already has a bad history of fridging women, I really really hope they wouldn't go there again.
Than who should they kill off. Not felicity because than all the olicitors (is that what they are called) would be up in arms. Diggle could be an interesting choice but really why? Rene is on a redemption arc. Maybe Curtis, even though he’s kind of serving as the new season 1 Felicity.
What makes that a "should"? If killing a character off is just some obligatory formula that has to be followed, it robs it of meaning. They shouldn't kill any character off unless it's necessary for the story. And really, they've gone to that well often enough by now.
Nobody? This is a comic book show, and comics don't really kill off their characters that often, Arrow's already averaging a death toll higher than usual, so I wouldn't mind if they lay off the kill switch for a while.