Arrow Season 7: 7 Ways It Has Reinvigorated The Show

Arrow works best when it's stripped back to its very roots - and at those roots, you'll find grit and darkness. While recent seasons have attempted to adopt more of a colourful tone, Season 7's storyline presented the writers with the opportunity to take things in a grittier new direction - an opportunity that they made the most of.

From being stranded on an island to being assaulted by criminals on a daily basis, Oliver's mind, body and soul have been through just about everything you could possibly imagine. Yet somehow, he wasn't prepared for the hell that he endured at Slabside and, because of this, we weren't prepared to see him so vulnerable.

Surrounded by foes that he had put behind bars and tormented by corrupt prison officials, this former vigilante and inherent hard-man was surprisingly out of his element. As a result, the torture that he endured, both mentally and physically, allowed the show to take us to darker territory than ever before - chipping away at the protagonist's psyche until there was no trace left of the hero that we had fallen in love with.

While the violence made it hard to watch at times, it also made Arrow a much more thrilling show than it had been in recent years. There were no metahumans or mystics, just hardcore criminals who talked with their hands - making for a shockingly brutal watch that undoubtedly helped return that grittier and grounded feel that the show was once renowned for.