Arrow Season 7: 5 Ups & 3 Downs From 'Star City Slayer'

Downs...

3. Bad Timing

While it was admittedly a great story move to build up to Stanley's return through a series of notes rather than just rush it, the execution of it ended up a little half-cocked - the reason being that one key element was missing from the episode: Laurel Lance. Dinah explained that Black Siren was away at a conference in D.C. and, as a result, safe from the Star City Slayer's reign of terror.

Laurel has never actually interacted with Stanley so her absence in 'Star City Slayer' wouldn't have been that big of a deal if the writers hadn't built the entire storyline around her. She was the one who received the first threatening note, thinking that it was from the Earth-2 doppelganger of her first ever victim. However, she would later receive another note in the same episode before Dinah put her mind at ease by revealing that her stalker was behind bars. Just like that, the notes conveniently stopped.

Suddenly, Stanley was no longer interested in sending her notes. Suddenly, he didn't care about stalking her anymore. Suddenly, there was only a single photo of her on his notice board as opposed to the countless he had of Dinah, John and Rene.

While it's possible that Katie Cassidy wasn't available to film (due to being on honeymoon), it would have made more sense if the creative team had waited until she returned because, while there's no denying that it was a strong outing, Laurel's exclusion from a storyline that was initially centred around her unfortunately cheapened the overall feel.