The Arrowverse rivals Star Trek as one of the most ambitious TV franchises to date, containing an impressive seven shows and is still going on today. I used to be a massive Arrowverse fan back in the days when it was just Arrow and The Flash, but eventually I fell out of interest once I started wanting to focus on catching up on shows I've never seen before. Still, the Arrowverse may be cheesy, soapy, and overwhelming to get into, I'll always have a soft spot for these shows and wanted to look back on the seasons I at least got to watch.
Arrow: Season 1
So I actually started watching the Arrowverse once the Flash came out and caught up with the first two seasons of Arrow afterwards, and I was surprised with just how different Season 1 is from the rest of the series at first. Oliver Queen has a pretty cheesy narration during the first few episodes, Felicity is a minor character for the first half of the season, and there isn't much of an overarching plot or villain until the Dark Archer (also known as Malcolm Merlyn) shows up. Arrow gets off to a bit of a shaky start, but once this season figures itself out, it gets so damn good. The storyline of Malcolm Merlyn trying to destroy the Glades is great, not just because Merlyn himself is a strong first villain, but because the involvement of Oliver's mom Moira leads to so much fantastic drama. Arrow is at its best when the characters get pushed to their limits and that's absolutely the case in the second half of Season 1. The tension really heightens up by the end of the season and it all ends in a shockingly devastating ending where Oliver fails to stop Merlyn's plan and his friend Tommy dies as a result. I think the finale would sell anyone on Arrow, it's that good, but the flashback episode The Odyssey and surprisingly intense Home Invasion are also high points this season. As a whole, Season 1 of Arrow got off to a pretty rough start but once Felicity joins the cast and Merlyn solidifies himself as the villain, the season proves what made it such a great superhero show.
3/5 Stars
Arrow: Season 2
Arrow's second season is one of the best seasons of any superhero show and probably one of the greatest seasons of any CW show. Not only are there rarely any bad episodes (just Birds Of Prey from what I remember), but the season just keeps getting better and better throughout. For starters, we get the introduction of Sara Lance who's not only a much cooler character than her sister but ends up becoming a very important Arrowverse member. Not to imply Laurel Lance is bad though, this might be her best season just because of how strained her relationship with Oliver gets in episodes like Blind Spot, Time Of Death, and especially Deathstroke. Speaking of which, the obvious highlight of Season 2 of Arrow is its antagonist, Slade Wilson. I love Slade as a villain so much. Not only does he have a great personal connection to Oliver, but he's cruel. The scene where he forces Oliver to have either Thea or Moira die is still one of the best scenes in the series, and it stuns me how much damage he did to Starling City by the season's end. We also have Barry Allen's first appearance in a great two-parter in the middle of the season, some great material for Roy who was kinda underused in Season 1, and even a bunch of fun one-offs like the creepy Broken Dolls. It's such a consistently strong season of television, easily the high point of the Arrowverse from what I've seen.
5/5 Stars
The Flash: Season 1
While Season 2 of Arrow is my favorite Arrowverse season, The Flash's first season is a very close second, and is still one of the best first seasons a show could have. As a matter of fact, Season 1 of The Flash is so well-done that nothing has been able to top it since. The Flash is much more lighthearted than the Arrow, focused on Barry Allen using his speedster powers stopping these other super-powered metahumans. Compared to the grounded crime drama of Arrow, The Flash feels more like your standard superhero show, but in a good way. Season 1 of The Flash does a great job of balancing a sense of fun with a genuinely compelling main storyline that feels perfectly paced. Not unlike Slade, Reverse Flash (aka Eobard Thawne) is a well-acted and intimidating villain with a compelling personal connection to Barry. As a whole, this show's cast is fantastic and probably even better than Arrow's. Everyone (except Thawne of course) is so likable and the actors have fantastic chemistry with each other, and Grant Gustin is just the perfect Flash bar none. The level of quality throughout this season is also really strong, from the stunning twists of Out Of Time and The Trap, to the lighthearted Rogue Air and Tricksters, to the fantastic midseason finale The Man In The Yellow Suit, all the way to the nearly perfect season finale Fast Enough, one of my absolute favorites. Fast Enough is so unique for an Arrowverse finale because there's hardly any action. It's just the characters talking about Barry making the toughest decision of his life, but the conflict is so personal and emotional that it feels far more impactful than any big superhero battle. Season 1 of The Flash as a whole just clicks. It's perfectly paced with a likable cast, strong villain, tons of great episodes, and a phenomenal ending to tie it all together.
5/5 Stars
Arrow: Season 3
I won't lie, this season didn't make the best first impressive by abruptly killing off Sara Lance during the premiere in a pretty rough instance of Bury Your Gays. However, as Arrowverse redeemed itself by bringing Sara back to life and making her the head of her own TV show, it's much easier to look at what this season did well, and that's the pacing. While Arrow's third season does have an overarching storyline about Ra's Al Ghul (a not too great one), it manages to juggle all these smaller story arcs that range from alright to genuinely fantastic. Sara's death was cheap but the mystery of who killed her was really interesting. The team dealing with Oliver's presumed death during the midseason finale was also engaging, as was the small arc about Roy claiming to be the Green Arrow and ending up in prison, as was the first appearance of The Atom, as were the pretty fantastic crossovers with The Flash. Arrow's third season is so briskly paced and full of entertaining ideas and strong standalones that it does manage to make up for the pretty basic overall storyline. So overall, Arrow's third season may be a big step down coming after Season 2, I refuse to call it one of the "bad ones". It definitely gets worse from here.
3/5 Stars
The Flash: Season 2
Season 2 of The Flash is a bit of a mess, but I still enjoyed it quite a lot. While not as memorable as Thawne, Zoom is a great villain and the reveal of his true identity was a fantastic gut punch. We got a fun two-parter where the cast goes to Earth-2, multiple episodes adding lore to the speed force, a unique storyline where Barry loses his powers, and plenty of truly devastating moments like the death of Barry's father. However, I think this season kind of suffers from not quite adding up to the sum of its parts. The first half of Season 2 focuses pretty heavily on setting up for the Legends Of Tomorrow series, Barry loses his powers in one of the show's most contrived sequences, and the season finale was a bit of a disappointment. Still, I think the heights this season reached is enough to make it one of the better Arrowverse seasons, and it contains some of my favorite episodes in the series. It also contains King Shark, and that alone makes it a masterpiece in my eyes.
4/5 Stars
Arrow: Season 4
This season almost made me quit Arrow, and that's such a shame because the first half was so good! The writers of Season 4 wanted a season that was more lighthearted than past seasons of Arrow, and while it made me skeptical at first, it actually worked for a bit! The first half of this season was fun, with exciting action, a fun Constantine episode that brought back Sara, a likable villain in Damien Dhark, and a great midseason finale with a shocking cliffhanger. However, this season dramatically dropped off in its second half mostly due to one big reason: Felicity. Now I don't hate Felicity nearly as much as the fanbase does, even at her worst she can still be lovably adorkable. However, that infamous scene in Taken where Felicity breaks up with Olivier, gets out of her wheelchair and can miraculously walk again was awfully contrived, and it just got worse from there. The big hook of "who's gonna die" failed horribly when the writers decided to just fridge Laurel since they didn't know who to kill, the fight choreography gets worse, Felicity gets even more frustrating, and it all ends on a finale that while I didn't think was as bad as everyone claims, it was a pretty awful ending. But worst of all, Damien Dhark just wasn't all that intimidating compared to the first three villains. Seasons 1-3 (and eventually 5) work because Oliver is pushed to his limit constantly, but it rarely feels like he's in any danger this season. Everything that worked in the first half of Season 4, the light tone, fun villain, and great sense of intrigue all backfired by the season's end, resulting in an easy pick for the worst Arrowverse season of the bunch (so far).
2/5 Stars
Legends Of Tomorrow: Season 1
While I know this season isn't all that well-liked, I actually kind of enjoyed Season 1 of Legends Of Tomorrow. It's pretty obvious that its biggest weak spot is the myth arc about Vandal Savage and the two hawks, who are easily the least interesting characters in the show. The season also does get to a bit of a slow start, but I actually think the second half of the first season of Legends Of Tomorrow is legitimately really great. Episodes like Left Behind and Destiny develop the main cast a bit more, Leviathan and The Magnificent Eight introduced some really cool time travel setpieces, and the season finale is easily the best out of the three that aired that year. It helps that I do genuinely like a large portion of the cast and the fact that they got set up in previous series means that I already had an attachment to them right from the start. While Legends definitely improves in later seasons and this is easily the weakest of the three first seasons, I don't think it's as bad as people say it is. The first season of Legends is a good time, and the fact that it's the only one where Captain Cold is a member gives it some value.
3/5 Stars
The Flash: Season 3
Similarly to Arrow's fourth season, I was dangerously close to quitting the Flash during this season, but unlike Arrow's fourth season, the red flags were there from the first episode. After Season 2's ending sets up what could have been a really cool Flashpoint storyline, the series pretty much resolves it after a single episode, wasted a ton of interesting potential. Even more, the series introduced its new villain Savitar in the sixth episode, almost exactly like the previous season. I'm not a fan of Savitar, it doesn't feel like he was developed very much because we didn't learn his identity until three episodes before the finale. It's a shame because two of the season's best episodes were post-reveal, and dragging that plot thread out only hurt the show. Even more, there was an irritating storyline about Barry trying to prevent Iris's death that was similarly dragged out to the end of the season. I wouldn't say Season 3 of The Flash is the worst Arrowverse season. Between Killer Frost, Tom Felton's great Julian Albert, Tom Cavanagh directing a legitimately great episode, and Infantino Street being one of my favorite episodes in the series, there is a lot to like here. However, the majority of this season was a pretty big disappointment, and it ended on a dud note with one of the Arrowverse's worst finales.
2/5 Stars
Arrow: Season 5
After the rough Season 4, Arrow's fifth season was a massive improvement and easily one of the Arrowverse's best seasons. It's a fantastic examination of Oliver Queen as a character, exploring the impact he has on people he cares about and his reasoning for becoming the vigilante that he is. It ended up getting us some fantastic episodes like Invasion!, What We Leave Behind, and Kapiushon. Prometheus is also a fantastic antagonist with a strong dynamic with Oliver, and the whole season built up to one of the best season finales ever made. Lian Yu brings the series full circle in a tense and exciting final episode that really should have been the point where Arrow ended. However, Season 5 wasn't perfect. The many new characters introduced as a part of Arrow's team weren't at all interesting, and the season dropped in quality whenever it focused on them. I get that Season 4 was bad, but one of the best things it did was pare down the cast to focus on Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle again. Still, when it was focused on Arrow and Prometheus, Season 5 had some of the best moments in the entire Arrowverse.
4/5 Stars
Legends Of Tomorrow: Season 2
Legends Of Tomorrow's second season made the genius decision of shifting the show's tone to something a lot more goofy. With the dull Hawks gone, Legends is able to go completely nuts with the time travel shenanigans, leading to fun episodes like The Raiders Of The Lost Art, Moonshot, and the Doomworld arc that ends the season. Even more, the decision to make the antagonists the Legion Of Doom was a pretty clever move as it really gave the mustache-twirly villains like Damien Darhk and Eobard Thawne a chance to shine. It's not just hollow fanservice though, I love how these antagonists know they're going to die soon, as it gives them this vibe of desperation. While the lack of Snart is a bit of a shame, Steel and Vixen are both great additions to the cast and feel like they fit in a lot more than the Hawks ever did. As a whole, Legends Of Tomorrow's second season is just plain fun, and it was great to see the series begin to find a voice for itself.
4/5 Stars
I stopped watching the Arrowverse around Arrow Season 6 for a variety of reasons. For starters, I was pretty disappointed with the fact that the Lian Yu explosion only ended up killing literally the least important character. It was such a massive cop-out that already left me a bit soured. I was excited for a lighter season of The Flash, but the first few episodes of Season 4 just didn't mesh with me at all. Legends Of Tomorrow was pretty good, but at this point I was exhausted of keeping up three shows at once knowing that I only enjoyed one of the three. So I decided to stop at Crisis On Earth-X, probably my favorite out of the Arrowverse crossovers I've seen for its scale and emotional impact. For me, that was the perfect place to stop the Arrowverse. Apparently Arrow's seventh and eighth seasons have some good stuff, Legends is still going strong, and The Flash is a bit of a mess, but I just don't have the energy to catch up at this point. Still, I'll always have fond memories of the Arrowverse for helping me fall in love with television.
My ranking of the Arrowverse seasons I've seen would be:
- Arrow: Season 2
- The Flash: Season 1
- Arrow: Season 5
- Legends: Season 2
- The Flash: Season 2
- Arrow: Season 1
- Legends: Season 1
- Arrow: Season 3
- The Flash: Season 3
- Arrow: Season 4
My ranking of the Arrowverse finales I've seen would be:
- Lian Yu
- Fast Enough
- Sacrifice
- Unthinkable
- Legendary
- Aruba
- The Race Of His Life
- My Name Is Oliver Queen
- Finish Line
- Schism
And my favorite episodes from each show that I've seen would be: Lian Yu from Arrow, Fast Enough from The Flash, and Legion Of Doom from Legends Of Tomorrow
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