Arrow Season 8 Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs From 'Purgatory'

1. The Little Things

When you're dealing with events as world-changing as the end of the multiverse, it's important to remember how effective and poignant the little things, or more importantly the little moments, can be. While these are elements that all of The CW's Arrowverse shows tend to overlook from time to time, Arrow's final season has mostly done a great job of avoiding that mistake. However, given the emotional gravity of 'Purgatory', it overlooked one too many of them.

While the plane crash reaction had moments of greatness, such as the panic in Dinah's voice, the visual of the missile, and Laurel's urgent "Oh my God", the moment that it crashed, the show adopted a very business as usual approach. Oh yes, the plutonium conveniently happened to land away from the rest of the plane which, of course, had to spawn two separate missions instead of, um, oh well, finding out if your friends are still alive!

Juliana Harkavy, Rick Gonzalez and Colton Haynes all did a great job conveying the damage of the crash in their performances, but the episode's insistence on rushing over it to the overall goal undercut the emotional gravity of it all.

The same could be said for the fact that following the activation of 'The Weapon' the ghosts just disappeared - something that robbed Oliver of a final moment with Yao Fei. And that just didn't feel right.

There were no moments to stop and take in what was happening, and very few of them which allowed the characters to react like real people. In situations like this, that really could have added some deeper emotional layers.

Now, for the positives...