- Title: Arrow – Starling City
- wiki: link
Arrow opens its final season with a somewhat perplexing episode finding Oliver (Stephen Amell) repeating history on a parallel Earth as he’s rescued from Lian Yu and taken back to Starling City (eight years later than in his timeline). The episode allows for the show to replay scenes from the show’s First Season and return a few familiar faces. What we later learn is that Oliver is on Earth-2, the home of Laurel (Katie Cassidy) who has returned to her Earth as a hero, and his mission involves procuring an important power source necessary in the coming crisis. What isn’t ever really explained is why the the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) needed Oliver to procure the Dwarf Star in the first place. The episode ends with Oliver successful but also with the destruction of the Earth as the Arrow offers the first look at what is at stake in the coming crisis.
A fan-friendly premiere offering slight twists on the Dark Archer and the Undertaking, “Starling City” feels a bit too nostalgic for its own good as it covers stories already well mined in previous seasons. Unfortunately the show’s writers also decided to bring back the future storyline for another season as well as a third of the episode or more focuses on Mia (Katherine McNamara), William (Jack Moore), Connor Hawke (Joseph David-Jones), and Zoe (Andrea Sixtos) trying to save the future of Star City now that the wall has come down between the city proper and the Glades. There’s little of interest here as the heroes bitch at each other while screwing up a security gig and putting the fate of the city in yet another iteration of Deathstroke.
