Team GATV Roundtable: Looking Back At Arrow Season 6 & Forward To Season 7

What is something that is currently missing from Arrow that you might like to see more of in the future?

MATT: It’s hard to pinpoint what specifically it is, but the best words I can put to it is they need to shake up the formula. They don’t need to go the metahuman or magic routes again, but the overarching villain plots are starting to become too recognizable, too familiar. I also miss the way the show used to get to the point. Now, it feels like they deliberately draw things out to help fill the season. I’d love if they’d get back to walloping us as an audience with things when we least expect them.

STEPHANIE: Seeing Tommy again made me realize how much I miss Oliver being the friend/brother/son he spent so much of the early days being. I know the show has changed significantly since then, and Oliver has changed as well, but any show works best when you understand and appreciate the hero as a human above the hero as a hero. I’d like to see more of Oliver outside of Green Arrow, whether that’s more interactions with William that rejuvenate the family element of this series or picking up a new day job and fighting for his city on two fronts.

MELISSA: In general, the show needs more bonding time shown between the team members, times separate from trying to save the day. One of the reasons the split between the NTA and the OTA didn’t work was the NTA had never transitioned into something more than valued work associates. Of the NTA, only Felicity and Curtis were established as friends outside of the bunker.

If the show wants me to care about the NTA, it needs to prove to me that the OTA cares about them. I need to see them choosing to be around each other in mundane moments. Moments of downtime or play. Or even making plans to watch a movie or help someone paint. Stuff you do with your friends. Stuff that builds the world and the connections these characters share.

Along those lines, I would like for the show to remember Oliver and Felicity are married even when in scenes not written for them specifically as a couple. Several times this year, there were scenes that called for a little something extra between Oliver and Felicity in order to make moments of stress feel realistic. I don’t know if the writers were intentionally avoiding those beats since they didn’t also have an Olicity related plot that week or were just lazy about including them, but to make us care, draw us in, and keep us connected, we need people to act like real people all the time, not just when it the plot is addressing some kind of relationship thing.

CRAIG: If there has to be a team, I missed the teamwork in Season 6. I think I’ve always missed the “underground” feeling of the team, and maybe now that the “new” lair is pretty well destroyed the show will get back to that.