“Arrow”: The Complete Seventh Season Blu-Ray Review

With the eighth and final season of Arrow looming on the horizon, it’s the perfect time to binge-watch the seventh season of the show and get all caught up on what’s been happening with our favorite emerald archer vigilante.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.

Now, I’ve been a huge fan of Arrow since it first started airing back in 2012. I’ve been around for all of the twists and turns, so I was naturally ready to take on the seventh season of the show. And without fail, Arrow manages to deliver another fun and action-packed season, tailing Oliver Queen’s on-going struggle to save his city. Whew! Seven seasons in and Star City is still a mess!

The entire seventh season explores the complications left behind by the sixth season’s cliffhanger finale, in which Oliver reveals to the public that he is, in fact, the Green Arrow, and then turns himself in to FBI custody to serve a hefty prison sentence. Season seven picks up with Oliver in prison, doomed to deal with some of the foes he had put behind bars in earlier seasons, while the rest of “Team Arrow” is forced to retire their vigilante identities on account of being threatened with prison time of their own.

The stakes for this season are some of the highest they’ve ever seen, thanks to the fact Oliver has outed himself and his team as vigilantes, as well as the fact this is the second-to-last season of the series. I found myself frequently questioning whether or not things were going to get better or worse for our heroes as the finale drew closer. Although, it wouldn’t technically be a season of Arrow without a roller-coaster journey of emotion.

Some bright spots from this season definitely include the decision to have a series of flash-forwards directly connected to the main storyline as it progressed through the season. The flash-forwards are set in the year of 2040, where vigilantes have been completely outlawed and must carefully operate in the shadows to avoid being hunted down. But the best part of the flash-forwards is that we got to see older versions of our favorite characters, like Felicity, Dinah, Rene, and Roy Harper, all working together to save the day.

Another thing I loved about this season was Felicity’s character. With Oliver in prison, this season saw Felicity taking on a much darker shade of the peppy computer genius we’ve seen since season one. It wouldn’t be fair to say that past seasons have depicted Felicity as being more of a damsel in distress because she’s not. In fact, Team Arrow flounders without her technological prowess. But by stepping out from behind the screens of her computers, Felicity took on more of a no-nonsense, Oliver-like approach, to take down the dangerous villains that threaten Star City this season.

The character of Black Siren, a.k.a Laurel Lance from Earth-2, also provides a fun addition. And while I personally didn’t like her character in season six, the latest season shows Earth-2 Laurel struggling to fit into the purely good district attorney shoes left behind by Earth-1’s Laurel Lance. Black Siren started off as an antagonist, but I’m such a sucker for storylines where villains try to reform themselves and try to be the hero everybody else wants them to be.

But for me, the best part of this season definitely has to be the Elseworlds crossover event, where the big bad Crisis of Infinite Earths story-arc was officially set into motion for the upcoming 2019 crossover event. Even though the crossover didn’t include my favorite CW superhero team, the Legends of Tomorrow, we still got to meet with Batwoman for the first time in Arrowverse history, saw Arkham Asylum, and encountered an evil version of Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman. Elseworlds was arguably one of the best and most cohesive crossover events delivered to the fans of The CW’s Arrowverse.

The standard DVD set and Blu-Ray edition of Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season comes with an Elseworlds crossover featurette, highlights from the DC TV 2018 San Diego Comic-Con panels, a DC Super-Villain featurette, blooper reel, and deleted scenes from the season.

However, EXCLUSIVE to the Blu-Ray set, you get the complete 2018 Arrowverse Elseworlds crossover, which consists of three full episodes spanning across three different CW shows (Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl).

Special features:

• The Blu-Ray set contains a total of 6 deleted scenes on the 4-discs, including one deleted scene from the second episode of the Elseworlds crossover special.
• “Inside The Crossover: Elseworlds” featurette consists of a sit-down discussion with the executive producers of Arrow (Beth Schwartz), The Flash (Todd Helbing), Supergirl (Robert Rovner), and Batwoman (Caroline Dries), wherein they explore the history behind the idea of “alternate realities” in DC comics and answer questions about the Elseworlds event. (45 minutes)
• “Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2018” consists of highlights from DC’s SDCC 2018 experience such as brief one-on-one interview snippets with cast members and panel footage from the individual Supergirl, Arrow, Black Lightning, Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow panels. (1 hour)
• “Villains: Modes of Persuasion” featurette further explores what makes different DC comics villains threatening and compelling, as well as explores the psychology behind different motives of famous DC villains, not exclusive to just the Arrowverse villains. (38 minutes)
• There is also a blooper reel included with the DVD/Blu-Ray sets, which runs just short of 5 minutes. It provides tons of funny instances of the Arrow cast goofing off between takes, flubbing up their lines, as well as crew members working on set pieces and fixing up some of the malfunctioning superhero costumes. It’s always nice to see what kind of fun goes on behind the scenes of a super gritty show. (4 minutes, 45 seconds)

I really enjoyed the “Modes of Persuasion” extra feature because it includes a deeper look into the villains from the established Arrowverse, such as Eobard Thawne, Ra’s Al Ghul, Deathstroke, and Cicada. Furthermore, it also takes a look at non-Arrowverse affiliated villains, such as The Penguin, Riddler, Bane, Brainiac, and Zod from FOX’s Gotham and Syfy’s Krypton.

The standard DVD version of the season comes with 5 discs and standard audio, priced at SRP $39.99 in the US and SRP $51.99 in Canada. The Blu-Ray version comes with 4 discs (and a digital download copy, ONLY for the US) and HD Master Audio, priced at SRP $44.98 in the US and SRP $52.99 in Canada.

Both the DVD and Blu-ray sets for the seventh season of Arrow will be available on August 20, 2019. The entire season is currently available to own digitally through digital retailers.

Are you planning on picking up the seventh season of Arrow home release when it drops?

Let us know in the comments below!

Author: Rodney

Rodney has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. Aspiring to one day write television shows and novels, he’s an avid slash-shipper and enthusiast for all things gay. Rodney’s especially a lover of magic, mystery, and superheroes—holding Harry Potter, the X-Men, and Scooby-Doo close as his own personal favorites. But when he’s not fantasizing about how cool it would be to have magic, he’s busy writing fanfiction and re-watching old TV shows.

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