Arrow Season 4: 5 Reasons Why The Comics Shouldn't Matter

5. No Homework Required

Television is a self-contained medium. Even cliffhangers and crossovers such as those that have frequented Arrow throughout Season 3 were designed to entice viewers to return for the next installment rather than to send them to their browsers to hit up Wikipedia for information about the characters that appeared in any given episode. Whether a show is written as a serial in the vein of a Law and Order or toward a single climax a la True Detective, it is designed to be complete within itself. Even series based upon real life events such as the reimagining of the Charles Manson ordeal of the 1960s with Aquarius can be watched without a background in the true crime genre or the American civil rights movement.

If Arrow were to rely heavily on comic lore already known to a subset of viewers with the expectation that general viewers would follow up could backfire rather spectacularly. The show veered a bit to closely to over-reliance on comic lore with the introduction of the Lazarus Pits and Laurel’s receipt of the Canary Cry. As proven by the consistent usage of flashbacks, Arrow is fully capable of incorporating and expositing its own lore on its own terms; there’s no reason why the show should be hamstrung by past goings-on of the comics.