Arrow Season 7: 4 Ups & 2 Downs From ‘The Longbow Hunters’

Downs...

2. Plots Of The Week Exist In Prison Too

While Oliver Queen's imprisonment is still very much the main narrative this season, it took a backseat this week, playing second-fiddle to the other characters' separate attempts to track down Diaz. Unfortunately, this left little time to explore much and, as a result, the writers came up with filler just to keep Oliver and Slabside Penitentiary onscreen.

The former vigilante wanted answers about Diaz's attack on Felicity, but he was told that the prisoner who knew things had been sent to solitary confinement. However, all was not lost because his old enemy Brick knew more than he was letting on. But Brick wouldn't talk unless Oliver did him a favour and got Officer Yorke removed from the prison. As we all knew that killing was never an option, Oliver eventually framed Yorke for stabbing him, bringing a smile to Brick's face.

Due to all this rigmarole, the prison arc literally went nowhere this week. All Oliver did was jump through some extreme hoops for a bit of vital information that wasn't even revealed to us before the end of the episode. It all felt like a rather forced way of dragging the storyline out for another week to keep us in suspense and this drawn-out story didn't exactly merge well with the quick pacing of the rest of the episode.