Arrow’s third season starts off decent enough. Rather than unfocused it instead comes across as… unhurried? It knows what it wants to do and does it without any particular fanfare or expository explanations.
While preferable to the ‘pick ideas out of a hat’ methodology the second season had going on, I can’t say the end result is particularly engaging since ‘what it wants to do’ is explicitly contradict its own core premise. Not only is Oliver now ‘poor’ (though functionally there’s no difference) but he was no longer trapped on a island for 5 years; the survivalism flashbacks get replaced by secret agent flashbacks. What’s even the point of this retcon? What does it add besides extreme incredulity? Then there’s the last quarter.
The League of Assassins plotline is dumb. Real dumb. So of course the show has to focus on it 100% for the climax while tossing in some fantasy elements (which appear to become more pronounced in later seasons) and bizarre character behavior. Just because a work is inspired by a comic doesn’t mean it’s required to feature the same sort of nonsense plot developments and schizophrenic characterizations endemic to the medium.