(Proud of me for resisting a title like “Arrow Hits The Mark?” You should be. I also might have made the title: “Stephen Amell Gives This Wretched World The Olliver Queen It Deserves.”)
So, can you tell that I am kind of a slave to The CW? I may no longer watch Gossip Girl (though my love for Blair Waldorf is absolute and undying), but I am absolutely in love with The Vampire Diaries—which is much, much better than the title would suggest, is actually better than True Blood, and has something like fourteen million viewers. Though it was tragically not renewed, last season’s The Secret Circle was absolutely amazing. And I watch Supernatural every Wednesday night—that show is several episodes into its eighth season.
So, as a great big nerd, I was excited but nervous when I heard that The CW was making a show based upon the DC superhero, Green Arrow. Despite the appearance of the protagonist and a number of excellent casting decisions, Smallville, which reimagined Clark Kent’s adolescence as he comes to terms with his blossoming superpowers and struggles to save the day while keeping his secret, all before his days as Superman, Smallville was just not a good show. There were wonderful things about it. There were also some dreadful things about it that made it difficult to watch.
The Green Arrow himself looks like a Robin Hood figure. He is a masterful archer whose gadgety arrows (often self-indulgent gadgety arrows) assist him in a number of circumstances (you know Hawkeye from The Avengers? Similar basic idea. Radically different characters and backstories). In real life, his name is Olliver Queen, and he is a billionaire and owns a company, Queen Consolidated, which is based in Star City—one of many fictional metropolitan areas that exist within the DC Universe (like Metropolis, Gotham, Central City, Bludhaven). His villains are rarely big-shots, but assassin and archer Merlyn is arguably his archenemy, and Green Arrow has always had unpleasant run-ins with the Eastern European aristocratic supervillain, Count Vertigo. He has a sidekick, Speedy (best shown on Young Justice, where in addition to being incredibly handsome, he ceases to be a sidekick and adopts the name “Red Arrow”). Above all else, Green Arrow is an archer who learned how to shoot a bow while trapped on an island after his boat was sabotaged. Now he works in secret …
