Team GATV Roundtable: Talking Arrow Season 6 So Far

What did you think of the Slade 2-parter?

CRAIG: I definitely like Slade, and I loved seeing him at the end of Season 5 and start of Season 6. But again, I kind of missed seeing Oliver Queen and the Green Arrow, and especially in the second part, it seemed to fall away from the continuing arcs a bit more than I expected.

The comic book nerd in me missed the typical Joe Wilson, too, as we know him from the comics.

STEPHANIE: I thought these episodes did well utilizing human Oliver on a vigilante-esque mission, and I liked the departure from the normal drama of Star City, but I would have enjoyed them better if Oliver were helping someone other than Slade Wilson. I’m far too weirded out by the notion of Oliver and Slade being back on friendly terms that I’m having a little bit of an issue buying into the believability of these episodes.

MATT: The Oliver-Slade relationship is still the best of the series. It’s always odd to see these two working on friendly terms, given all that’s gone on between them — the man killed his mother for cripes’ sake — but they feel most alive with each other. The history between the two really invests life and color into things. I’m a bit undecided on the Joe Wilson storyline, but it mostly works. And Slade going looking for his two sons gives them a reason to keep him off the show again — stupid movie division — but set him up with something to reappear in the future when they are able to use him.

MELISSA: Underwhelmed. I didn’t hate them, but I think they stalled the momentum of the season. Did we really need two back-to-back episodes devoted to Slade? I think limiting it to one would have delivered a more exciting narrative, but I assume they needed the extra time to free up Stephen Amell to film his large part in the crossovers.

In the episodes themselves, I was reminded why I don’t miss the flashbacks. The slow pace of them dragged down the episodes. Oliver and Slade’s interactions were good, but I wish we could have had more time with them than in seeing Slade’s life with his son.

I might have enjoyed the flashbacks more but devoting that much time delving into a character that isn’t a regular kind of felt like a waste of the show’s time. (And that was how I felt even before it was confirmed Slade was once again off the table for Arrow to use.)

The episodes were filler that at best might have set up a future big bad in Slade’s son, something that could have been done with a couple lines of exposition anytime in the future when or if it was actually relevant to the storyline.