Arrow Season 3 Countdown: Ranking Episodes Pt. 1

Concluding the first part of our countdown of the episodes of Season 3…

Series Episode: 57
Original Airdate: January 28, 2015
Guests: Chase, Mayor Celia Castle, Sara Lance (voice)
Flashback Guests: Maseo Yamashiro, Tatsu Yamashiro, Chien Na Wei/China White
Special Guests: Danny Brickwell/Brick, Ray Palmer

“A shakier episode succeeds thanks to a well though-out thematic throughline and exciting new dynamics.”

This episode is a bit of an odd bird in that it feels very slapdash in its filming and editing. The strange thing is that it comes to effectively mirror this new Team Arrow, struggling to pick up Oliver’s campaign in the wake of his supposed death. The group feels outclassed and desperate, and yet they still make the effort to go out to protect the city. It’s, in essence, to rally around Laurel to try to keep her from getting herself killed, but it catalyzes the team in ways they’d never been before. That has far-reaching impact on the season and beyond.

Series Episode: 49
Original Airdate: October 22, 2014
Guests: Mark Shaw ( David Cubitt ), Ted Grant, Lyla Michaels/Harbinger
Flashback Guests: Akio Yamashiro
Special Guests: Ray Palmer

“A chesspiece episode that moves parts into place for the season’s big arcs, but takes some time to offer good character work for two who needed it.”

Thea and Laurel, the two most lacking characters on the series up till this point, get some much needed love and attention. We get filled in on Thea’s new relationship with her biological father. Again, here’s a case where a character’s abilities are unreasonably flash-forwarded, but so much of what they’d done with Thea was inconsequential that it felt like anything with some meat on the bone was a positive. With Laurel, we’re given some solid character work that better uses Katie Cassidy and also helps to humanize Laurel’s eventual superheroic pursuits. On top of all of that, we also get some peeks into Diggle’s home life, a welcome treat.

Series Episode: 61
Original Airdate: February 25, 2015
Guests: Ra’s al Ghul, Nyssa al Ghul, Maseo Yamashiro/Sarab, Lyla Michaels
Flashback Guests: Maseo Yamashiro, Tatsu Yamashiro, Akio Yamashiro, General Matthew Shrieve
Special Guests: Ray Palmer

“Stuttering pacing doesn’t detract from a solid series of resolutions that spin out new questions, including a perplexing offer of a cliffhanger.”

The subsequent episode following this one is called “The Offer,” which oddly seems like a fitting title for this outing. It really wasn’t that clear where they were going with Ra’s al Ghul, and with the vague identity crisis pushing Oliver along, this lead to a qualified unease and lots of questions. Then, suddenly, Oliver was even more of an ersatz Batman than some of the criticism of the series kept insisting. The offer to become the next Ra’s really did come out of left field, and while it didn’t solve all of the season’s problems, it certainly made for a more interesting run of episodes. Before that cliffhanger, though, we get Thea flat out telling Laurel that she killed Sara instead of dragging that out, as well as turning Malcolm over to the League and asking Nyssa to kill her. With Ray also finally suiting up as the Atom, this is the start of the best stride of the season.

Join us tomorrow as we countdown the top 10 episodes of Arrow Season 3. As always, let us know what you think of the countdown so far in the comment section below or over on the GATV forum at KSiteTV.