TV - Arrow Season 3, Episode 1

Steve Taylor-Bryant continues his love affair with Arrow as it starts with The Calm...

After all the fallout from Season 2, we find a team in synch with each other. Roy/Arsenal/Red Arrow (Colton Hayes) is now a fully fledged member of the Arrow Cave, and crime in Starling City is at an all time low. Oliver (Stephen Amell) decides the time is right for a life and after being cajoled into it by expectant father Diggle (David Ramsey), Oliver finally asks Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) out on a date. Felicity meanwhile, in her new position of shop assistant, has inadvertently started a chain of events that starts to play out immediately. Oliver and Felicity decide to speak to the board of Queen's Consolidated to regain power of his family’s company and make a pitch based on memory and romantic nostalgia then, from nowhere, Ray Palmer, Brandon Routh returning to the DC Universe minus the weight of Superman, makes his own pitch. Full of charisma and inside information on Queen's finances due to Felicity teaching Palmer how to hack in her shop, Palmer gets control of the company.

Meanwhile the desk bound but promoted Captain Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne) announces that there is no longer a man hunt for the vigilante, but a new crime boss is in town and has taken the mantle of Vertigo (Peter Stormare). This mysterious criminal has decided to take out the three remaining crime bosses in Starling, soon to be named Star if Ray Palmer gets his way, City with a bomb at the stadium during a boxing match. On Oliver’s date with Felicity, the restaurant is blown up by Vertigo, and Oliver realises that he can’t date Felicity and be the Arrow. During a fight with the new Count Oliver is injected with a new version of Vertigo that makes you face your fears, and ends up fighting himself.

Roy manages to stop the bomb going off, Felicity takes the news that she and Oliver won’t be an item not at all well but stays friends with her colleague, and Diggle becomes a father after Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson) gives birth. All's well that ends well, until Sara/Canary (Caity Lotz) arrives back on the scene and is killed by an unknown assailant in front of her sister Laurel (Katie Cassidy).

What?! You can’t end it like that! Sara can’t be dead, tell me I made that bit up? Sorry folks, the writing team on Arrow have gone up a gear over the summer break and decided episode one is the best place for a cliff-hanger. The episode itself was brilliant, Oliver struggling to come to terms with himself and his dual role, Diggle's situation changing, Roy becoming more than just the kid that finds information, Felicity's emotions being torn between pillar and post, the Lance's finally happy, villain of the week thwarted, an appearance from The Flash/Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and then the death of Sara to contend with. Add in some Hong Kong flashbacks and this was almost perfect, a televisual feast, but they killed off Caity Lotz so I dont like them.

Image - IMDb.