In 1938, DC Comics kicked off the superhero genre with Superman. In 1956, they started the superhero resurgence with an updated version of the Flash. In 2012, they kicked off the superhero TV boom with Arrow, based on the classic character Green Arrow. The series, intended to be a darker look at the Emerald Archer than readers usually saw in the comics, wasn't meant to birth a great number of spin-offs and create an interconnected universe of superhero shows, but after eight years on TV, that was exactly what it had done.
Without Arrow, there would be no Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning or any of the Arrowverse shows so many fans love. The yearly crossovers like Invasion and Crisis on Infinite Earths would never have happened. Characters that have become fan favorites would have been left in obscurity or possibly never existed. But Arrow didn't get everything right.
10 Right: Showed The Path Of A Vigilante Becoming A Hero
Over the eight years and 170 episodes that make up Arrow, the show's crew, most notably star Stephen Amell, grew the character of Green Arrow from a murdering vigilante to a true hero. The series used Ollie's costumes and names to illustrate this to viewers. First, he was "The Hood", and then he was just "Arrow". All of that fit because Ollie hadn't really become a hero yet, but when he did, he became the Green Arrow.
Ollie's search for justice started with a list from his father, but as time went on and he learned more about himself and the world he lived in, Green Arrow came to see that his original methods would not work if he wanted to make the world a better place. He gave up many of his past ways and became something greater.
9 Wrong: Turned Green Arrow Into Batman
First introduced in 1941, Green Arrow is almost as old as Batman, and while he doesn't have the number of stories and villains that the Dark Knight has, the Emerald Archer has more than his fair share. Sadly, the show chose to ignore much of what makes Green Arrow special and instead just write him like Batman.
The series was heavily inspired by Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy, and it really shows, especially in the first half of the series. Many of the villains Green Arrow fought on the show, most notably Ra's al Ghul and Prometheus, are from Batman's rogue gallery.
8 Right: Ra's al Ghul
Speaking of the Demon's Head, Batman Begins may have given is the first live-action Ra's al Ghul, but Arrow gave fans a much more comic accurate version of the leader of the League of Assassins. In the series, Ra's is shown to be nearly immortal, having used the Lazarus Pits to live for over two hundred years.
In the comics, Ra's had hoped that Batman would become his heir by marrying his daughter Talia, but in the show, it was Olliver Ra's was after. Getting to see a version of Ra's al Ghul who not only used a Lazarus Pit but was also a magician gave fans exactly what Batman Begins hadn't.
7 Wrong: Kept On Killing
In DC Comics, Green Arrow is one of the few major heroes who will kill. He prefers to take down his foes without restoring to killing them, but Olliver is willing to step over that line if the moment calls for it. But on the show, Green Arrow would kill with reckless abandon.
The series even confronted this numerous times. At the end of the first season, Ollie swears he won't kill again, but he's back at it in season two. Later, when Ollie was captured by Prometheus, the hero admitted that he enjoyed killing. It seemed like the show was hitting a turning point with that admission and we would see Green Arrow start to rely on trick arrows more, but no, he just kept killing thugs without really caring.
6 Right: White Canary And The Atom
Fans of Arrow who weren't into comics were introduced to Ray Palmer, aka the Atom, played by Brandon Routh, and he was an instant hit. Brought onto the show as a romantic rival for Olliver to deal with, Ray quickly became a part of Team Arrow and brought some much-needed levity to the show with his positive outlook on life.
The show also created a new character, White Canary. As the sister of Laurel Lance, Sarah Lance started off as a character who was killed off in the first episode of the series, only to come back later. Over the years, White Canary, played by Caity Lotz has become one of the most loved characters in the Arrowverse, and along with Routh's Ray Palmer, helped launch Legends of Tomorrow.
5 Wrong: The Not So Liberal Arrow
In the comics, Green Arrow is more than happy to talk about his political stances, and his stances lean very far left. This makes the character a mass of interesting contradictions. He's a billionaire who rails against the elite. He has a deep distrust of government and law enforcement, but hangs out with the Justice League and considers Green Lantern, a literal space cop, to be his best friend. These pieces of his personality help make Green Arrow stand out from his fellow heroes.
Sadly, much of that is missing from Arrow. This version of Olliver Queen never seemed all that interested in politics, even when he was mayor of Star City. On the show, his political views basically started and ended with "save the city". Losing Olliver's political personality takes away a lot of what makes him special.
4 Right: Created A Connected Live-Action DC Universe
If you showed someone who knew nothing about the Arrowverse the first episode of Arrow and asked them how the series would end, they would never come up with "Olliver becomes a cosmic entity and sacrifices himself to create a new universe". When Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti, and Marc Guggenheim created Arrow, they had no plans to use the show as a way to create an entire universe of superheroes.
Arrow was taking its cues from Nolan's Batman movies and was supposed to be a "realistic" version of Green Arrow. Thankfully, it ended up being so much more. Where DC has struggled to make its interconnected movie universe work, the Arrowverse has given fans a place to see some of their favorite characters come together in live-action.
3 Wrong: No Goatee!
One of the first questions fans had when Arrow started was "when will Ollie grow the goatee"? For comic fans, Green Arrow's goatee is as iconic as Superman's spit curl or Professor X's bald head. Without it, the character just never looks right. Ollie didn't always have the goatee in the comics, but once he did grow it, everyone knew it was destined to become a permanent part of the character.
Arrow's writers and producers, and even Stephen Amell, seemed to tease the goatee from time to time, and it did show up on an alternate future version of Ollie, but the chin hair never became a real part of the show's look for the character.
2 Right: Stayed Grounded In A Crazy World
When Arrow started, there were no speedsters or Kryptonians running around. By the third season, that all started to change, and by the time the series ended, the Arrowverse was overflowing with superpowered heroes and villains.
And somehow, Arrow managed to work these concepts and characters into the show's mythology while still keeping its own stories relatively grounded. Yes, there were Lazarus Pits and Damien Darhk, but overall, Arrow was always able to keep itself set in a more realistic world than Flash or Supergirl, even while all these characters shared the screen together.
1 Wrong: Where Are The Vehicles?
Even in the comics Green Arrow was clearly influenced by Batman, and Arrow itself was taking a lot of inspiration from Nolan's Batman movies, but somehow all of this never quite led to Arrow showing off the character's toys.
While we did get to see a few of the trick arrows over the years, that is just the start of what Green Arrow has in the comics. Batman has his Batmobile, and Green Arrow had his car, confusingly called the Arrowplane. He also had an actual Arrow Plane. All his vehicles are yellow for some reason, and none of them made it onto the show.