‘Arrow’ season 4 spoilers: Show preparing more of a ‘lighter’ tone
While we did not particularly love everything about “Arrow” season 3, we already love one thing about the upcoming season ahead: It already appears as though the writers are well aware of critiques that are out there about this season, and what they want to see moving forward. We’ve claimed that the show at times became too depressing in season 3, and often even became melodramatic when it comes to relationships. We love couples as much as the next person, but the constant stakes made people so unilaterally focused that we lost some of what we loved about them in the first place.
While of course executive producer Marc Guggenheim has to be coy right now, he did explain to i09 specifically that they really do want to differentiate the upcoming season from what we saw during what was a much more hyper-serious run of episodes this spring:
“We’ve been working for about a month now in the writers’ room, talking about season 4, and I think that one thing we all collectively understood was season 3 beginning with Sara’s death, because it’s the death of a major character on the show, it set a tone for the remainder of the season. And I’m not the least bit apologetic for that tone. I happen to like dark and I like the fact that Arrow is a pretty dark show particularly for a network show. That said, every year you want to mix things up and there was sort of a collective desire on all of our parts to try to inject a little bit more lightness into the show, a little bit more humor. It’s not going to radically change. The show’s still going to be the show but in terms of tone we’re coming off a very very hard season for all of our characters. We wanted to try to mix it up a little bit.”
We should be clear that we do not want to see “Arrow” become some sort of silly show anytime soon with constant laughs; it does not even need to be as light as “The Flash.” The thing that the series just really needs to work on here is figuring out a way to combine some elements of what made the show work in the first season and a half, when you did see a little more of Oliver’s fun side and we saw more of our characters’ personal lives.
How much of a change of ton do you want to see? Share with a comment, and head over here to see some other news right now when it comes to “Arrow”! Also, be sure to sign up if you want to get some more TV news on all we cover, courtesy of our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: The CW.)