Often shows in their "final season" either don't know it's their last year, or they've gotten so long in the tooth they don't know how to focus anymore. Once past a fifth season, most series start to fumble around with their characters and the situations that they put them in start to become ever more ridiculous. They've done so much with them already, what more is there to do.
One of the best-ever final seasons was Parks and Recreation which jumped a few years into the future and gave each major character a focus episode to send them off. It was a show that provided real closure, while still leaving us wanting more because we love the characters so much.
The writing staff over at Arrow took notice and adapted this formula to their heavyweight, universe-building superhero show. Season 8, like Arrow's other best season (Season 5) has Ollie facing his past, and the decisions he's made, but also moving forward and growing as a character as a result. With Season 8 though, it's not just growing, but showing how much he's grown over the years as a result of his relationships.
Crisis on Infinite Earths was teased at the end of the 2018 crossover ("Elseworlds"), and we knew from the events of that crossover that Ollie had made a deal which would lead him to make the ultimate sacrifice. This season spent seven episodes leading into the Crisis with Ollie honoring that deal. Each episode took Ollie to a place and/or time where he encountered someone from his past, or an alternate version of them, which allowed him to finally reconcile who he was and who he has become. The spoiled rich boy, the traumatized assassin, the extreme vigilante, the heroic champion...but even more important a father and a husband and a son and a brother and a friend.
The moments with cast and crew, both long-time and long-ago are all handled brilliantly. We may not get to see Oliver reconcile with everyone from over the years, but the show covers so many bases the gaps are easily excusable. Oliver meeting his time-displaced, grown-up kids, knowing that he's not going to be there for them in the future, but getting to meet them and know them now is one of the show's greatest feats, utilizing the powers that the Crisis brings to the table. The show never forgets either how much David Ramsay as Diggle propped Oliver up. Their brotherhood, way, way more than Olicity, was the show's best pairing.
The Crisis itself sort of fumbles Oliver's sacrifice, undermining it with a not-quite fake-out, and then a strange return as the Spectre, and then another sacrifice, and then the show follows up Oliver's death with a backdoor pilot for Green Arrow and the Canaries which takes place 20 years in the future with Mia being the new Green Arrow under the guidance of both Laurel and Dinah. It felt like rush job, and undoes a lot of what should have been interesting fodder as a result of the effects of the Crisis (all the shows in the Arrowverse do this in different ways, by giving all the main characters full knowledge of the pre-Crisis timeline in the most comic-booky-science kind of way).
The series finale, however, is absolute gold, bringing together the majority of the Arrow cast to mourn Oliver's passing while celebrating what an actual accomplishment this show was. It was a wildly uneven 8 years of television with some absolution highs, and more than a few lows. But the characters always made it worth returning to, and Stephen Amell went from being a sub-par soap-opera-esque actor to an actual dynamic and exceptionally emotive performer, the absolute glue it needed to hold it all together.
If anything, Season 8 just proved how much these Arrowverse shows need more limited episode seasons. How much better would each Arrow season have been at a concentrated 10-13 episodes?
I'm not sure if I'll ever return to a complete series watch of Arrow, but it definitely will live with me fondly. At the same time, with Oliver's passing and the show's finale behind me, I feel like a door has closed not just on Arrow, but the Arrowverse altogether. Black Lightning is now part of the Arrowverse, officially, but it still always feels like it's its own cordoned off thing, and it's really great. The only other show I'm still even somewhat enthused by is Supergirl, and I'm still slowly working through last season on Netflix. So we'll see what next year has to bring. I'm curious to see if any shake-ups happen to Batwoman in order to make it more engaging, and if that Superman and Lois show materializes (where they're parents) I'm very curious to see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment