Arrow Season 8 Review: 8 Ups & 2 Downs From 'Welcome To Hong Kong'

1. Been There, Done That

Look, you can fault Mia Smoak for being annoyingly broody, moody, angry and in-your-face all you want, but one thing you can't call her is "wrong".

The daughter of Oliver Queen lost it with her on-again/off-again love interest Connor Hawke for refusing to believe that his brother was all-bad in last week's premiere, telling him that she was taking control of the mission from here on out. So you would think that Connor would have learned his lesson.

Instead, we were treated to another episodic arc in which he refused to believe that, and while Joseph David-Jones and Charlie Barnett gave us one heck of a poignant scene, it ended up producing the exact same results as the premiere. Why? Because now Connor knows JJ is evil and another one of his loved ones has come dangerously close to paying the price.

The flash-forwards have limited screen-time as it is, so this retread of the pair's arc just felt like it stalled what was already a slow narrative in the first place. There are only 10 episodes this season, so this story really needs to get moving.

Now, for the positives...