From Year Five back to Year One – In anticipation of Arrow Season 5

There’s a lot to unpack in a show that has gone on for nearly a hundred episodes, especially when that show is Arrow. If you follow the show off the air with even half intensity, there are particular themes and motifs that the audience will constantly harp on. In some ways, Arrow is a show that pioneered and succeed in its particular subgenre but now seems to have become a shadow of its former self. In other respects, Arrow, and other shows that it shares a universe with (chiefly among those, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl, along with Gotham in a different but similar orbit) are still part of a similar TV tradition that still continues today in the network TV space.