'Arrow' midseason premiere starts slow, sets up future episodes

The CW's “Arrow” (2012 - present) has shot up in popularity over the past several seasons, and -- now midway through season three -- all signs indicate that the upward trend will continue. The cast is comprised of talented and attractive stars, and the show even sparked the creation of a spinoff series, “The Flash” (2014 - present). With audiences' continued interest in TV shows and movies based on comic books -- “Arrow” is a prime example of this -- the sub-genre's popularity is set to continue.

“Arrow” premiered the first half of its third season last fall, leaving fans with a dramatic cliffhanger during the mid-season finale. Billionaire, part-time vigilante and archer, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) has been fighting crime in his hometown of Starling City ever since his return from a five-year stay in China, during which he was believed to be dead. At the end of last season, fans discovered that Oliver’s younger half-sister, Thea (Willa Holland), was brainwashed by her father and Oliver’s known enemy, Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman). During the brainwashing, Thea was programmed to kill Oliver’s fellow vigilante and friend, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), known as The Black Canary. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. 

Meanwhile, the new episodes focus on the fragility of Oliver’s team in his absence. It becomes apparent that Oliver was the glue holding them together; without him, they have lost hope. What remains to be seen, however, is how fans will respond to the change.

Viewers may be disappointed with the lack of Amell’s screen time since he is a big part of the show’s allure. His scenes exist almost exclusively in the form of brief flashbacks to his time in China, where he was trained, held hostage and used for conducting missions for an American research group. Oliver's narrative during his time in China is kept almost entirely secret from his friends and the fans of the show. Throughout the seasons, fans have relied solely on sporadic flashbacks to piece together what really happened during those five years. Furthermore, the pace of the episode -- excluding the opening scene, in which John and Roy are chasing criminals through the city -- is quite slow, especially in comparison to the previous season's finale. The change of pace may seem boring, but it helps emphasize the emotional impact of Oliver’s disappearance on his friends' lives. While the show's content is usually dominated by action sequences, the new scenes monitor emotional developments for the characters as opposed to changes in the narrative.

And, along with other changes, Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) begins to step up as the Black Canary, while she continues to keep her father in the dark about Sara's murder by Thea. If the first two episodes of this season are any indication, the second half of the third season should be much more interesting than the first. Fans will be eager for more action in weeks to come, but since “Arrow” has continually improved through its seasons, there is no doubt that season three will continue to deliver.