User blog comment:Mynameiskeithstone/5 Things that Need to Change in Season 4 of Arrow/@comment-70.31.80.146-20150527033326

I agree with you about the flashbacks. Hopefully they will get more interesting next  year in Russia with the Bratva. I also agree about needing better villains. Ra's was a massive fail for me from the start because they assumed viewers would have been familiar with him and scared of him from the comic books. IN reality, the viewers coming from the comic books is a small part of the TV viewers

I disagree about Oliver needing to make the crusade more personal. It worked well for two seasons but Oliver needs to grow up at some point and do things for himself, not for someone else's memory. And he's run out of people to do that for.

I immensely disagree about needing more Laurel. The writing and portrayal has struggled with the character from the start. Katie Cassidy's forte is being bitchy but the show wouldn't let Laurel be that, she had to become the Black Canary even though her skills were negligbile and personality-wise she would have been better as Manhunter. Or off the show and keeping Sara, who could fight and was a match for Oliver. In season 2, she was nicknamed Blackmail Canary on some sites because of how she blackmailed a cop not to give her a DUI, the DA for her job back and Kate Spencer to get her dad out of jail. Even in s3 when she fights bad guys, she does so because she likes beating them up, not because like Sara she thinks "no woman should suffer at the hands of a man". Whoever the character was in the comics, she's not that on the TV screen, and the attempt to put Laurel into a relationship with Oliver in season 1 failed massively.

It wasn't Laurel who convinced Oliver to fight Slade, it was the information she had that made Oliver realize that he had been wrong and handing himself over to Slade wasn't going to save the city because Slade was going to destroy it anyway.