Arrow Season 2 was such a mess. Like, there was such backpedaling, retconning and changes in character and shoehorned stupidity.
Like, we go through all of Season 1 with Oliver claiming guilt because ‘he killed Sara’ because she died on that boat. And all season we watch him trying to connect with Laurel and apologize to Quentin. Then they end it with Tommy’s death, opening the door for the GreenArrow/BlackCanary relationship they built up and people wanted. They wrote Laurel as a strong and smart justice-seeking woman with prior knowledge on fighting and criminals.
But then, Season 2 and now Laurel is so weak and inexperienced and impulsive. And they bring in Sara by way of the League of Assasins, a group that has never been involved with Green Arrow, Oliver especially. Something that is a large chunk of Batman/The Bat Clan’s lore. As if they weren’t already getting complaints about their Oliver’s personality. The only Arrow Family member with even a remote connection with the League is Black Canary, Dinah Lance is the rival/friend of Lady Shiva, who is only vaguely connected to the League. Mostly because she’s an Asian Morelly-Grey Martial Artist and no one has any creativity, and because she’s connected to the Bat Clan!
And why would they bring Sara from the dead? To fill up a year of Oliver’s absence? For shock? Drama? Character-Development? The only thing it did was make everyone despicable. Now Oliver is a cruel disloyal horndog that doesn’t understand how his actions could possibly hurt someone while backtracking on a big part of the already established backstory of the Island and his trauma. Oliver cared so much for Laurel, she was half of why he didn’t kill himself, what he said he wanted right after returning to Starling, what he wanted to fix, what he undermined his best friend for. Then he’s an unempathetic piece of shit who takes Laurel’s alcoholism and both makes it about himself and how terrible she is because of it. How Laurel can’t be hurt by Oliver’s and Sara’s decisions because they came back from the dead so she should be happy they’re- what? Gracing her with their presence?
Did Laurel need a wake-up call? Yes. Should it have been from Oliver? Probably not. Should it have been done the way it was? Definitely not.
It made Sara a trashy-er hoe who would rather jump on Oliver’s dick than connect with her family. Both her and Oliver had no respect for Laurel who had no respect for herself. Both Sara and Oliver were now self-motivated and pursued the idea that trauma and mental illnesses were an ‘inner darkness’ that they could never beat and it would define them, Sara and Laurel, their whole lives. Both Lance parents preferred Sara so much to the point that they would attack and undermine Laurel.
And the League? Oliver had no previous connection or training with them but for some reason,Ra’s fell in love with him so much that he wanted to give the whole organization and his daughter to Oliver. Why? Ra’s wasn’t sick or dying, the man has been alive for what, a hundred years? More? There was no history between him and Olver. Yeah, Oliver had been trained by Talia, except Talia left the League before that. And Ra’s obviously doesn’t care about his daughters’ connections. He hated Sara but not Oliver for having almost the same relationship with Talia, y’know the relationship that almost was a copy of Bruce and Talia’s, Bruce Wayne the Batman. Admittedly that happened a little later but still, canonly a year after meeting Oliver and now he’s the Heir?
And what was even the point? The next season they take all of their shoehorning and retconning they did for Sara and just murder her. It was a season of pain and messy writing that just got steamrolled and glanced over.