• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Arrow - Season 5

I liked tonight's theme of teamwork and trust, which at the end, aligned with Ollie's attitude toward his Team Arrow and his job as mayor of Star City.

There was a brief reference at the beginning to last week's Flash episode regarding the consequences of Barry's time traveling. So it's official that Barry erased Baby Sara Diggle from existence when he attempted to restore the original timeline. Nice job, Barry. Only time will tell what else he effed up in the Arrow Universe.

I knew that Diggle was talking to Floyd Lawton's "ghost" in his cell. It would've been more interesting though if he did actually survive and become Team Arrow's potential ally in the future.
 
Another fine episode, Arrow's on a roll this year.

The new guys are growing on me, I liked their interactions, and I like how they brought a decent amount of humour and levity to the show. Ragman being the MVP there when he pointed out the overdramatic confrontations in the Arrow Cave that tend to happen somewhat too often. ;)

I'm also glad Felicity admitted to Ragman what she did right away and that they didn't drag it out for an unnecessarily large amount of episodes(see Oliver's son previous season). The pacing of bringing up and resolving things seems much better this season. Hope this trend continues.

Next week we apparently have Diggle Prison Break, should be fun :techman:
 
Where's Captain Cold when you need him? ;)
Let's not forget Heatwave, Clock King & Count Vertigo!!!



I am socked they went with the gender change on Sara/John Jr....I was under the impression that things would be restored by the mid season finale....I really don't see why Flash hijinks have to interfere with the story in Arrow
 
That's why they made this change.
The gender of John's child is incidental and has no impact on the (current) story.
It has an impact on his child becoming the future Green Arrow of course.
But right now, the kid literally is interchangable.
The story stays the same, but they can show that Flashpoint has wider consequences beyond Flash's own show.
 
I wonder if part of the reason they changed baby Sara to John Jr. is because Sara was named in honor of the late Sara Lance, and Sara Lance is now alive again and a lead character on Legends of Tomorrow. So having a baby named in honor of her memory no longer quite works. Or maybe they thought having two characters named Sara could get confusing (although that hasn't stopped them from including both Mick Rory and Rory Regan in their universe).
 
Wait, WHAT? They revealed Deadshot was a ghost/hallucination?! When was that?!

I'll always miss the S4 team, but it was great to see the new team in action and in costume this week. I especially geeked out at seeing Mister Terrific's T mask! I did feel sad to see them pursuing a fellow Derek, however. Us Dereks have to stick together. He was just trying to sell happiness to the good folks of Star City. Nobody was getting hurt!
 
Wait, WHAT? They revealed Deadshot was a ghost/hallucination?! When was that?!

Late in the episode, Lyla was outside John's cage talking to him. He brought up Lawton, and Lyla reminded him that Lawton had been dead for years. Diggle said "No he isn't, he's right--" and turned to look behind him, and there was nobody there.

And really, it doesn't make much sense otherwise. The huge coincidence of them just happening to end up in the same cell, Diggle being so open with Lawton about his inner anguish -- it would've been awfully contrived if it had been real.
 
I liked tonight's theme of teamwork and trust, which at the end, aligned with Ollie's attitude toward his Team Arrow and his job as mayor of Star City.

There was a brief reference at the beginning to last week's Flash episode regarding the consequences of Barry's time traveling. So it's official that Barry erased Baby Sara Diggle from existence when he attempted to restore the original timeline. Nice job, Barry. Only time will tell what else he effed up in the Arrow Universe.

I knew that Diggle was talking to Floyd Lawton's "ghost" in his cell. It would've been more interesting though if he did actually survive and become Team Arrow's potential ally in the future.

It annoyed me too, that it was just a hallucination. Supernatural pissed me off the same way a few years ago with a "construct" return of Gabriel that wasn't real. Its like a tease, a slap in the face, and a waste of time. I was really satisfied thinking that the embargo on Suicide Squad characters and such was over.

It didn't need to be in John's head for it to have the emotional impact of transference....putting that weight and hate onto himself. Although, I do agree that I was wondering how and why he was in a regular jail cell, if it was revealed that he was still alive. I would have suspended disbelief, because I enjoy the character.
 
I was really satisfied thinking that the embargo on Suicide Squad characters and such was over.

Didn't Guggenheim or somebody debunk the "embargo" idea a while back, saying that Warner Bros./DC actually asked them to include the Suicide Squad on Arrow as a test run for the movie? What I've read recently in interviews with the staff is that there is no blanket ban on any character, just that decisions about character use are made on a case-by-case basis, and it's more about whether the planned use of the character is interesting or novel enough to justify it.
 
Didn't Guggenheim or somebody debunk the "embargo" idea a while back, saying that Warner Bros./DC actually asked them to include the Suicide Squad on Arrow as a test run for the movie? What I've read recently in interviews with the staff is that there is no blanket ban on any character, just that decisions about character use are made on a case-by-case basis, and it's more about whether the planned use of the character is interesting or novel enough to justify it.
I'm not sure what the actual case is but Is it worse that the characters were banned from the show because the movie went into production or that the characters were only used as a test run favor for the movie guys and promptly thrown away after the test was done? Willa Holland expressed frustration at it and believes that WB told them to kill off the Suicide Squad characters.
 
I don't know why this needs to be pointed out, but what Willa Holland believes is overridden by what the producers actually tell us, and, as Christopher noted, Marc Guggenheim pretty thoroughly debunked the "embargo" nonsense, although I wish he'd done it sooner so that we didn't have to go months with people whining about Arrow having characters taken away from them because of the movies and trying to apply the same kind of thinking to every single DCTV series across the board, even in cases when we'd been told things that ran contrary to said thinking.
 
From what I've seen is all we know is that the SS characters were included by request as a test run for the movies. As far as I know it has not been definitively said why those characters were than yanked.
 
The fact that Arrow wouldn't have even had the Suicide Squad characters in the first place if Warner Bros. hadn't asked them to use them pretty much disproves the notion that there was any sort of restriction on using said characters imposed after-the-fact. Guggenheim has also said that character usage is decided on a case-by-case basis, which also disproves the notion of some all-encompassing "embargo" being in place.
 
So WB giveth but cannot taketh away?

Or is this semantics? Maybe there's no embargo per se but the TV side appears to take marching orders from the WB, it doesn't seem they have the freedom to use the characters they want as they want if it doesn't coincide with the movie side. Guggenheim has said before that "Unfortunately, Deadshot is off the table for the nonce." which sure sounds like there was a restriction on using the character.
 
Last edited:
What Guggenheim's statement reveals is that people's assumptions that Arrow was told that they couldn't use the Suicide Squad characters any longer and were 'forced' to kill them off or otherwise write them out of the show turn out to have been erroneous, as he also revealed that DC was more than willing to let Deadshot be used again for this most recent episode of Arrow once he'd reached out to them and asked about doing so, which in and of itself disproves the notion of an "embargo" being in place.
 
People keep arguing this in absolutes, either they're banned completely or they have free reign over anything. Also, people seem to be arguing that the same rules that applied 5 years ago also apply now when this is clearly not the case.

The truth seems to be somewhere in the middle.

From the snippets of interviews from various people, it's obvious DC supported and encouraged the inclusion of SS characters at first.
Once they definitely decided to go ahead with the movie they already started imposing restrictions, first being them denying the inclusion of Harley, then the SS themed episode(they spoke of plans of having one each season previously), soon after that Arrow writers started to kill the characters themselves off and both the cast and crew implied they were off the table.

What we do know, as Guggenheim said in a recent interview, is that they review use of characters on a case by case basis:

Said Guggenheim, "It's always a case by case thing, so I never like talking about like, ‘Oh, this is what we can do going into the future.’ I don't know what the future holds because I haven't approached that case by case situation."

However, when it came to "A Matter of Trust," Guggenheim remarked, "In this case, it was really simple. I went into the writer's room, this was a pitch on the table, I shot an email off to Geoff Johns. I got a response back, and Deadshot's in the episode!"

Deadshot being a ghost was deemed okay, as was Waller in a flashback last season, but who knows if they would have allowed use of them if an episode that was centered on them.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top