Arrow: 9 Mistakes It Must Avoid In Season 4

3. The Villain

As the late critic Roger Ebert put it: €œEach film is only as good as its villain.€ The same could be said for TV shows, and certainly applies to Arrow. Much of the success of season 2 was down to Slade Wilson/Deathstroke, who was played to manic perfection by Manu Bennett. It wasn€™t just how powerful and dangerous he was, but his relationship with Oliver and ability to get inside his head that made him a great villain. Ra€™s al Ghul had a lot to live up to, but having been seeded throughout the show, and being one of the most recognisable villains Arrow could feasibly offer, it was expected he would prove to be just as good a big bad. It didn€™t quite work out that way. As mentioned, there were the mixed motives €“ going from avenging Sara€™s death, to forcing Oliver to take his place €“ which made really establishing the character a bit more difficult. When we did finally see him and Oliver fight, it gave us a pretty epic scene that resulted in Oliver€™s death. That came in the mid-season finale, and was as good as it got for Ra€™s. As we know, Oliver came back, and then pretended to join the League before revealing himself in the season finale. When the pair faced off again in that episode, it didn€™t quite work as well as it had previously, and ultimately the League €“ supposed to be full of assassins of unbeatable prowess €“ never carried as much of a threat as Slade€™s mirakuru-injected army. Damien Darhk and H.I.V.E have been set up as the villains for season 4, and hopefully they will serve as ones with a clearer motive, and also present a different kind of challenge. Thus far we€™ve seen Oliver go up against physical matches in the forms of Malcolm Merlyn, Slade and Ra€™s, so it€™d be good to see him deal with a villain who possesses great intellect €“ as Darhk supposedly does €“ and poses a different sort of threat.