Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Arrow: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 5, 2015

Can there be a poor man’s rich man who is also a rich man? That may seem like a somewhat convoluted proposition, but it may occur to some who watch Arrow and draw at least a few parallels with another, perhaps better known, DC Comics character, a certain caped crusader who goes by the name Batman. Like Batman’s Bruce Wayne, Arrow’s hero Oliver Queen is a gazillionaire (albeit one with occasional financial “issues”) and something of a womanizer, who adopts an alter ego as a vigilante with a cowl, one out to restore order to his crime infested city. While the Batman reference is probably subliminal at best, Arrow’s glistening high tech world with a coterie of acolytes aiding Oliver in his quest to vanquish crime may actually remind some other viewers of popular procedurals like NCIS and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, where computer equipped mavens are able to access all sorts of information and helpful techniques to assist Oliver in his endeavors. There’s even a table in the Queen Consolidated lair that Oliver uses in his guise as the (Green) Arrow, where a body or two (living and/or otherwise) is dumped, as if to be put through one of those post-mortem autopsies that tend to be featured so prominently on many police procedurals nowadays. Perhaps a bit weirdly, fans of Lost: The Complete Collection may also find an element or two in Arrow that recalls that iconic series, for Oliver spent quite a bit of time on a mysterious island, as detailed in a number of recurring flashbacks (another Lost-esque feature) that dole out information over the course of many episodes. Arrow has become one of the CW’s most popular series, and if it isn’t particularly innovative (as evidenced by all those referents), it’s often whimsically entertaining, aiming for a middlebrow ambience that eschews some of the more high faluting tendencies of other superhero reboots like The Dark Knight.

For those wanting to catch up on the story so far, my colleague Ken Brown's reviews of the previous seasons of Arrow can be found by clicking on the following links:

Arrow: The Complete First Season Blu- ray review

Arrow: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray review

Arrow’s third season begins with a number of ducks apparently finally in a row, with Oliver enjoying a bit of reflected glory with his alter ego being lauded (at least relatively speaking) by public officials, including newly minted Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne), who doesn’t condone the Arrow’s vigilantism, but who also recognizes the cowled hero’s antics have led to a precipitous decline in Starling City’s crime rate. That surface calm is of course something of an illusion, and soon enough Oliver is dealing with a kind of “new, improved” version of Count Vertigo, a nasty drug wielding villain named Werner Zytle (Peter Stormare).

Of course “the center cannot hold”, so to speak, and a devastating death (which will not be outright spoiled here, but which needs to be alluded to in a moment in this review, so spoiler-phobes take note) ensues, one which suddenly realigns certain relationships and which provides Laurel (Katie Cassidy) with a significant arc while also offering up a “new, improved” alter ego, Black Canary. While this particular aspect unfolds over several episodes, Oliver is also dealing with the business side of Queen Consolidated, especially once hard charging entrepreneur Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh, of course no stranger to the DC universe as a former Man of Steel in Superman Returns) takes over. Palmer provides Season Three with one of its strongest characters, especially once his alter ego, a potential Incredible Shrinking Man of sorts named Atom, enters the fray late in the season.

For a relative newcomer to the Arrow ranks, I was repeatedly struck by the series’ command of tone (just enough cheekiness to provide a bit of winking amusement, but never enough to lapse over into self-parody), and its steady supply of at least decent character development. But there are a lot of characters in Arrow, and the convoluted (and at times interlocking) back stories often tend to interrupt the story rather than to inform it. This is probably nowhere more evident than in the frequent flashbacks to Oliver’s life on (and none too surprisingly, off) that mysterious island, as his “lost” time is detailed. Also at least somewhat debilitating is a frayed narrative that never seems to be clearly pointing in one direction, as evidenced by the show’s curiously long trek to delivering focus on the League of Assassins and especially Ra's al Ghul (Matt Nable), one of the more interesting criminal masterminds to dot the DC Universe.

While a lot of the third season exhibits a certain degree of entropy, the good news is that by the time the season comes to an end, several pieces have been set into place that augur well for the series' fourth at bat (bow?). This particular season wasn't so much a roller coaster ride as a big opening swoop that then just sat there for a while before finally picking up some momentum. Maybe the Arrow ride will regain a bit of its force in its upcoming story arcs.

Arrow: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Arrow: The Complete Third Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Home Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. I was perhaps just slightly less taken with the overall look of this season of Arrow than Ken was in previous seasons, despite the fact that the show provides excellent sharpness and clarity a lot of the time—when lighting conditions allow. This is an intentionally dark series, in actual imagery if not always in tone (though of course it dabbles in darkness there, too), and many of the darkest scenes scattered throughout this third season suffer from general murkiness, as well as slight but recurrent crush and a dusting of noise. The series tends to understandably exploit tones of green, some of which tend to spill over onto things like flesh tones or even surrounding environments. This gives a slightly other worldly cast to the series as times, but doesn't ever materially affect levels of detail. The show rather artfully weaves CGI and practical effects together into a seamless whole, though some of the animated effects can look a bit soft at times.

Arrow: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Arrow: The Complete Third Season features a consistently immersive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which exploits nice effects that include elements like good panning when arrows zip through the air, or forceful LFE when explosions rip through Starling City. The series tends to offer at least one or two major action sequences per episode, and these regularly provide a wealth of surround activity that typically utilizes discrete channelization very smartly. Despite a somewhat noisy ambience at times, dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly and is well prioritized.

Arrow: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One:

• Commentary - The Calm features Executive Producers Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle.


• Deleted Scenes:

  The Calm (1080p; 00:20)

  Sara (1080p; 2:04)

  Corto Maltese (1080p; 00:33)

  The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak (1080p; 2:33)

Disc Two:

• Commentary - The Climb features Executive Producers Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle.


• Deleted Scenes:

  The Climb (1080p; 2:26)

  Midnight City (1080p; 00:29)

  Uprising (1080p; 1:01)

Disc Three:

• Deleted Scenes:

  Suicidal Tendencies (1080p; 1:29)

Disc Four:

• The Man Beneath the Suit: The Atom's First Flight (1080p; 7:18) focuses on the character of Ray and includes interviews with Routh.


• Nanda Parbat: Constructing the Villain's Lair (1080p; 22:49) is a nice in depth look at one of this season's most sterling examples of production design.


• Second Skins: Creating the Uniforms of Arrow (1080p; 17:13) looks at the contributions of costume designer Maya Mani.


• Gag Reel (1080p; 3:57)


• Arrow at Comic-Con 2014 (1080i; 28:55)


• Deleted Scenes:

  The Fallen (1080p; 3:04)

  My Name is Oliver Queen (1080p; 1:00)

Arrow: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Arrow: The Complete Third Season starts off with a bang, as well as a couple of really surprising events, but then kind of settles into a middling rut that it takes the show quite some time to finally come out of, once the clear new "main villain" is introduced, and the promise of Atom's involvement becomes more of a possibility. Perhaps too stuffed with supporting characters for its own good, as well as a tendency to focus on things like family dysfunctions rather than, well, you know, good versus evil, Arrow isn't quite at the bullseye territory it has been, though it's still largely on target. Technical merits are generally strong on this release, the supplementary package is enjoyable, and Arrow: The Complete Third Season comes Recommended.