Five Reasons to watch CW's Arrow

Felicity Smoak:

Originally intended to be a one episode guest appearance – little more than a nod to the comic book character for DC fans – cast and crew reacted so well to Emily Bett Rickard's adorkable performance as Felicity Smoak that she was promptly offered a recurring role. (Apparently, Stephen Amell's grin in his first scene with her is not scripted.He hadn't had much chance to reherse with Bett Rickards and her comic timing knocked him off guard so much that he momentarily broke character).

Serendipitous both for Emily Bett Rickards – this is her first major role – and for the show's audience, it's now extremely hard to imagine Arrow without her, to the point where it seems odd that she was never originally intended to sit at its emotional heart as firmly as she now does. The basic fact is that, like Doctor Who's companion characters, Felicity provides a much-needed audience surrogate for a world that can sometimes feel the wrong kind of cartoonish. She's the character who can wryly point out the weirdness of a life lead amongst masked vigilantes and psychotic supervillains (“It's getting really hard to keep track of who knows who's secret identity!”). But the warmth and sincerity about Rickards' delivery allows such winks to the audience to feel genuine rather than cynical, building confidence in the show's quirks rather than undermining them.

By season two Felicity had become such a fan favourite that she'd been deservedly upgraded to a regular, appearing in every episode. Her fangirls are now so numerous that they've been known to riot (or at least, start passive aggressive twitter trends) when Felicity's not in an episode long enough for their satisfaction. She remains an absolutely vital breath of air on a show that might well feel too dark for its subject matter without her, and is walking proof that happy accidents can be great – even vital – for scripted drama. 

 Laurel Lance:

At first introduced as the show's nominal romantic lead in the Arrow's obligatory love triangle (blech), Laurel Lance has, thank the TV gods, been given a chance to breathe in season two, and has had an exceptionally strong arc this year. The writers' bold choice to decimate the love triangle entirely by killing off Oliver Queen's best friend and rival for Laurel's affections, Tommy Merlyn, and break up Laurel and Oliver for the forseeable future, has given this character much needed development independent of her relationship with either man. From something of an unfortunate cliché in season one, to potentially one of my favourite fictional women in season two, is quite a progression.

Laurel's spiral into addiction and depression this year was both a surprising and brilliant choice for the writers' to make, granting the character a new level of complexity. And Katie Cassidy was able to bring subtly and genuine pain to an arc that could have felt over-dramatic in the wrong hands. As it is, I believed Laurel's grief and guilt in the wake of Tommy's death, believed her rage at the world and in particular her sister, and I reckon her reconciliation with her formally-dead sibling may be my favourite scene of the series so far (never has a character moment on an action/adventure series NOT marketed at women so thoroughly passed the Bechdel test – and made me cry, all at the same time).

Sober and beginning to claw her life back together, when not delivering grown up relationship advice over virgin martinis, Laurel is currently facing the revelation of Oliver's secret identity, and I'm left extremely excited to see her continued development in season three.

Sara Lance:

Sara Lance had me at 'leather-wearing bisexual vigilante who punishes rapists and thinks Felicity Smoak is cute'.

Not only may she be the biggest badass on a show that is something like 80% inhumanly badass people hanging out and being casually badass because it looks cool, but Sara Lance proves that you don't have to be a rich straight dude to be the proud possessor of great abs, a secret identity and a tragic origin story. Hell, Sara Lance has come back from the dead at least once more than Oliver Queen has.

Caity Lotz's other roles include a terminator style she-robot and it's kinda easy to spot why: this lady is built like a spectacularly adorable tank. And as someone with an ex girlfriend who can deadlift grown men (competitive weight lifting ladies ilu) I do not apply that imagery lightly. But I remain kind of childishly gleeful about seeing such a physically powerful woman on TV – a woman who is noticeably muscle-bound rather than, say, the ridiculousness of being asked to believe that tiny little Gwenyth Paltrow could actually have performed that stunt at the end of Iron Man 3. Sara's both powerful and powerfully built, without being overly sexualised or totally de-sexualised in an attempt to make her seem less threatening for male viewers. Sara just is what she is: incredibly fucking awesome, and the show is happy to let her be that way.

There's also the fact that she gets on with all the other female characters, despite there having been plenty of excuse to fall back into catty cliches in at least a couple of instances. She is ostensibly Felicity's rival for Oliver's affections, but the show (VERY WISELY) steers around another potential love triangle by making Felicity and Sara friends. She's not even threatened by the fact that she's dating her sister's ex – taking advice from Laurel about how to deal with Oliver's moods and bonding with her in the process. Sara even has a tiny equally leather-bound female sidekick – Sin – and a gloriously dangerous ex-girlfriend, Nyssa, who turns up to attempt to drag Sara back to the League of Assasins in an episode that also involves one of my favourite coming out scenes ever.

(It's my favourite because it takes approximately two lines: Sara tells her dad that she has an ex-girlfriend, her dad blinks, accepts it, and moves on to the entirely more pressing matter of that ex-girlfriend trying to kill them all. Minus the homocidal ex, this is petty much how my own 'coming out' went down and I love when dramas take the less obvious path and underplay those moments because sometimes, it really is that simple).

Sara Lance is basically just my FAVE in all areas and if she is killed off there will be letters, I tell you. Angry ones. 

The sheer number of LADIES:

You may note that numbers 1-3 of this list are all female characters. What may also interest you is that that isn't even half of the female characters on this show.

I have no idea how a show in a genre that, in most cases, adheres to a strictly limited quota for female characters, has ended up with more women than men on its central cast. But it has, and it's kind of glorious.

It's glorious because it makes a otherwise slightly absurd world feel much more natural – unlike in other adaptations that are weirdly devoid of 51% of the world's actual population, Arrow has a fairly representative proportion of women, none of whom fulfil any particular stereotype, all of whom have at least one definable character arc. Of particular note is the presence of mothers on the show: superheroes tend not to have mothers at all – and where both parents are dead it is most usually the father who is the heroes' greatest lost (see: batman, spiderman and iron man). But Oliver has a mother – the complex, sympathetic and occasionally terrifying Moira Queen, who is the driving force behind several of the show's major arcs – and Sara and Laurel have an equally realistic feeling mother who pops up every few episodes, played by stalwart cult figure Alex Kingston. 

And if most of these women only have a place on the show because they are connected to Oliver in some way, I say: baby steps. They are all increasingly well developed, and tend to have relationships with each other that are not centred on him. For a show in a genre that is as misogynistic as comic book adaptations can sadly sometimes be, this is huge. And the show is an Arrow adaptation, after all, not Birds of Prey – although rumour has it that a Birds of Prey spin-off may be somewhere in the pipeline, most likely depending on whether the current spin-off, Flash, does okay and whether fan interest in Sara Lance remains strong.

I think ultimately what's important to remember is what Hayley Atwell (Peggy ala Captain America) argued for re: female action heroes:

“...even though they’re strong you need to also see the messiness of everyday life, that complexity. Even with Peggy Carter… Can we see her have a really shit day, put her pyjamas on and eat loads of ice cream and weep into chick flick? Can we have her be neurotic, hysterical, funny, depressed and all those things that we all relate to that aren’t regularly depicted because they’re not seen as sexy or comfortable for men to watch and masturbate over?”

And we have absolutely seen most, if not all, of these female characters be messy and strong in ways that are not masturbation fodder. Sara Lance might be wearing a leather corset, but she's beating the shit out of rapists in it. Laurel Lance might have started as Oliver's main love interest, but she's since had an incredibly ugly breakdown and pulled herself back together with as much help from her sister as from Oliver. 

It's not perfect by any means: the show's most glaring slip-up into tired cliché this year has been the demise of Shado, a fridging so classic I may or may not have capslocked angrily about it for several days after. (was it really sodding necessary to kill off the only woman of colour on the regular cast just to give Oliver and Slade man!pain?!) But this is otherwise a better superhero drama for women than any other right now and that's important and praise-worthy. Arrow really, really benefits from the range of women on its cast in a way that Marvel adaptations (and, frankly, DC's big-screen counterparts) could stand to learn from.

I love a comeback kid:

What may also be notable from the above is that most of Arrow's really interesting developments, especially for the female characters, have come about in its second season. 

Arrow has done something incredibly unusual, and improved dramatically in its second season compared to its first. This almost never happens – see: Heroes, Lost and almost everything Ryan Murphy touches. Most shows can only hope to maintain their quality in season two, and many dip because it can be hard to find the rhythm to an arc showrunners may not have been sure was going to happen at all in the incredibly uncertain world of TV (re)comissioning.

Arrow's first season wasn't terrible – as evidenced by the fact that it got recommissioned at all – but it wasn't brilliant. I watched the odd episode but wasn't sucked in (it was kinda dull and riddled with issues I felt I'd seen dozens of times before), and was only persuaded to go back by the promise of Sara Lance in its second season, and an expanded role for Felicity. Arrow originally struggled to balance the grimness of its subject matter with the cartoonishness of its world – this is, after all, a show that disguises a blond character by having her wear a blond wig, I am not kidding – and the result was a show that was difficult to know how to take seriously. Add to that the previously mentioned love triangle situation so clichéd it kinda made me want to go pull out my own eyelashes, and the fact that I am more of a Marvel fan than a DC one anyway, and I wasn't at all convinced of Arrow's merits this time last year.

But the bold decisions made by writers clearly determined to push their show beyond the obvious have really paid off since then. More women, more things for those women to do, and better use of flashbacks to create a genuine two-teared non-linear narrative rather than simply flesh out Oliver Queen's man!pain, have all helped immensely. There's also been a slight easing of an attempt to make a vigilante who uses a bow and arrow as opposed to say, anything vaguely more efficient, to fight crime seem in anyway dark or gritty. Instead, we have more truthful feeling character development and moments of light and warmth brought by a wider ensemble feel to the show's cast, which invest the audience emotionally in said bow and arrow weilding vigilante – so even if we know it's all a bit silly, that matters much less because damn it, we care what happens to Team Arrow now.

As a result, we now have a show that Time magazine recently named 'The Best On-Screen Superhero Franchise', and I can't say I disagree.

Honourable mentions:

John Diggle: the show's first taste of political commentary; also basically the awesomest.

No more exposition via Oliver's gloomy internal monologues: hurrah for the rule of show don't tell! Also goddamn, supervillains monologue less than Oliver did during Arrow's first few eps. That shit hardly even works in films these days – no idea who thought it'd work on TV but I'm glad they cut it the hell out.