Why are the Arrow season 6 ratings falling so much?

Arrow December 8, 2017

The Arrow season 6 ratings on Thursday night continued to spell more bad news for the original CW superhero show. The latest episode “Irreconcilable Differences” drew just a 0.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic, and this marks the second time in the past three episodes that the show’s been lower than a 0.5. There was a series-low rating of 0.3 back for the “Thanksgiving” episode, but it was easier to excuse that given that the show was airing at … well, Thanksgiving. (The one episode that performed better was the Crisis On Earth-X crossover and there were clearly quite a few reasons why that happened.)

So why are the ratings still struggling, especially in the wake of the crossover and not having much competition on Thursday night? There are a few possible reasons for it.

The direction of the story – At the moment, there is no clear singular villain of the show — you’ve got an assortment of characters from Black Siren to Ricardo Diaz to Cayden James. While sometimes having more baddies can be interesting, it doesn’t quite work when any of them are fully developed. That’s the case here. We don’t know enough about any of these people to really care about why any of them are acting the way that they are.

Familiar twists – Take, for example, the new Team Arrow members debating their future within the group. We’ve already seen different iterations of this already.

Relationship drama – If you’re an Olicity ‘shipper, odds are you loved the wedding and the celebration that followed. Unfortunately, this is probably one of the most polarizing parts of the show. It seems as though viewers either love or hate the relationship and there isn’t a whole lot of middle ground.

Prometheus letdown – The biggest issue with season 6 may just be that it’s coming off of season 5, which featured the show’s best villain to date and a great performance from Josh Segarra. It’s really hard to follow up something like that. It feels like the writers were cognizant of the fact that devising a Prometheus follow-up would be hard and they decided to combat that by trying to do something really different. Yet, they’re trying to do way too many things all at once and as a result of that, none of them are really working as well as they should.

We don’t foresee the show in any immediate danger of getting a season 7; yet, if the numbers don’t improve after that what will happen to the series’ future? We’re starting to get to the point where these sorts of questions need to be pondered.

What do you think about the state of the Arrow season 6 ratings?

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5 Comments

deevo.
January 7, 2018 @ 3:43 pm

I am so surprised at how the show has gone down the toilet. After the BS Olicity wedding, I was like, “nope”. This is the basic math that the writers don’t get. Shippers will not stop watching a show if their ship doesn’t happen. The rest of us, though JUST MIGHT drop a show if the writers bend the show into a goddamned pretzel just to make a ship happen and ignore what made the show good originally. I mean is it any wonder that S5 worked so well when they focused on Oliver and put Felicity in the back ( and gave her her own life)?
deevo.
January 7, 2018 @ 3:32 pm

Arrow is dead. Olicity helped to kill it. I LOVED the show back in the days. Oliver was a livewire of intensity and darkness and FOCUS. Even Felicity was bearable when she was a supporting character. Then they put her front and centre for the sole purpose of pleasing shippers. Breathtakingly stupid. Shipping, by nature is a delusion. These nuts do not care about character or plot or the show- they want to see two characters sucking face, hell or high water. Why would you actually change the show to appease these fools? By season 3/4, Felicity was taking way too much screentime, with repeated cameos from her mom, dad, ex BF, hell they even gave her a sidekick with Curtis…a F’ing sidekick. She has absolutely NOTHING in common with Oliver unlike any of his prior GFs, but for the fact they have blond hair and work together. NOTHING . They even went so far as to sacrifice Laurel and William’s mom on the altar of Olicity so that a) there was no competition ( hell, Laurel’s LAST WORDS were about FELICITY!!!) and b) now Oliver can play house with this 14 year old son and Felicity. The villains are duds too. I could write a novel on how they messed this show up.
Kevin Ford
December 9, 2017 @ 8:22 am

There is nothing left to discuss. Felicity, one of the worst, most annoying,self-righteous, dramatic, manipulative and toxic characters in the history of primetime, killed this show to the point there is no turning back, just cancellation.
- deevo.
  January 7, 2018 @ 3:18 pm
  
  Hit the nail on the head. I am astounded that professional showrunners just tossed out all sense and literally changed the entire course of the show for the sole purpose of pleasing these pimply, nerdy olicity fans who likely projected themselves onto Felicity and wanted to walk off with Oliver, regardless of how little sense it makes.
Kalu
December 8, 2017 @ 10:48 pm

And the drama relationship part is more related with those who don’t want Olicity, want for it to be lauriver. It hasn’t worked on TV neither during Smallville nor with arrow.