Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Heroes fighting heroes has become an unfortunately common trope in modern superhero comics. At Marvel especially, it seems like barely a month goes by without some new crossover predicated on the idea of one superhero team waging war on another while the actual villains run free. It’s not that these conflicts are inherently a bad thing, but you really need a strong sense of emotional investment and a believable reason for the two sides to come to blows. With “Collision Course,” Arrow doesn’t have either.
The show has clearly been building to this point for a while. Tensions have been running high between Ollie and Dinah’s teams since the midseason finale, and things have finally reached a boiling point with the murder of Cayden James and the disappearance of Laurel. But despite all that build-up, never did it feel like this was a war that really needed to happen. There’s always been a somewhat forced quality to this team Arrow rift, with the characters behaving in a more extreme fashion that really seems justified. When the show finally did reach the inevitable Civil War: Team Arrow moment, it arrived more because the plot demanded it than because an all-out brawl seemed like the most logical action for our heroes.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...
Heroes fighting heroes has become an unfortunately common trope in modern superhero comics. At Marvel especially, it seems like barely a month goes by without some new crossover predicated on the idea of one superhero team waging war on another while the actual villains run free. It’s not that these conflicts are inherently a bad thing, but you really need a strong sense of emotional investment and a believable reason for the two sides to come to blows. With “Collision Course,” Arrow doesn’t have either.
The show has clearly been building to this point for a while. Tensions have been running high between Ollie and Dinah’s teams since the midseason finale, and things have finally reached a boiling point with the murder of Cayden James and the disappearance of Laurel. But despite all that build-up, never did it feel like this was a war that really needed to happen. There’s always been a somewhat forced quality to this team Arrow rift, with the characters behaving in a more extreme fashion that really seems justified. When the show finally did reach the inevitable Civil War: Team Arrow moment, it arrived more because the plot demanded it than because an all-out brawl seemed like the most logical action for our heroes.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...