Arrow Season 3 Episode 1: The Calm -Review

Good one. Good start to the new season. I knew Sara was going to die again, the first time she wore the Black Canary outfit. The comic Canary is Laurel. I knew at some point she would also become the Arrow version, which meant her sister would probably die first. Also clears the way for the inevitable Canary/Arrow romance at some point in the future. i like they tried to do it a bit different, and attempted to throw us off on who would actually be Canary, but it doesn't really work when we know they're going to make major things like that status quo. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the Sara story, but knowing what would go down from her first appearance as Canary makes it seem a bit pointless. The actual death still hurt , though. Which says something good about that character's development. The mystery of who killed her is an interesting plot line for this season. I love the Routh Ray Palmer. They mixed a bit of Tony Stark into his screen version, and Routh plays it well. I love that Red Arrow is finally a full on vigilante/hero, with a costume and aIl. Great intro to the new reality of this season.

The flashbacks in the previous seasons were epic, and often more interesting than the current goings on. But the ones this season, while enjoyable, really just seem to take screen time away from the current time story. I'm sure it will all be tied together at some point, but as of now..I just don't care much about Ollie working for Amanda Waller in Hong Kong, at least not compared to the stuff going on in present day Starling City. And the whole Waller forcing people to be her assassins just doesn't jibe with reality. The government has it's own highly trained assassins,and the money to buy outside ones if they ever really need to. The idea that it needs to threaten and cajole random killers is ludicrous. And would actually bring more attention to their actions than simply using their own or hiring them. So is the concept that at least one of those killers at some point would not simply shoot Waller in the face and then take out as many of her agency's people as they can before they get killed. There also is no possible way for her to possibly know what Oliver was up to on that island, or that he had become a talented and lethal individual in his time there. Does she have hidden cameras on it? Did she have them there before he got there? Put them there after he got there? Makes no sense at all.
Overall: 7