6 Things We Learned In The Arrow Season 4 Premiere 

Anytime you add mystical elements and otherworldly powers, you up the ante. How can you fight a foe when the playing field isn’t even? Especially when you have a man who will kill puppies.

Darhk: You’re all fretting about this city dying, I’m here on behalf of an organization that wants you to let it die. See death is a beautiful thing. We die, we go in to the ground, our remains grow in to flowers. It’s only in the interval after dying that new things can sprout. Cities are like puppies, you see them writing in agony on the side of the street, you put them down. You don’t let them suffer.

Not cool, dude, not cool. That being said, I don’t get the feeling that he wants to bulldoze the city in order to create a place full of daisies and roses either. No, his mission is clearly selfish and whatever it is that HIVE wants to achieve clearly is not with the greater good in mind. It seems like Team Arrow…excuse me, Team Green Arrow…will have to pull out all the stops to save Star City this time and even that may not be enough.

Detective Lance: Team HIVE — This one shocked me. Not just shocked me, but SHOCKED me. With a man on the inside of both law enforcement and team vigilante, I can see how Darhk may be near impossible to defeat. But why? Lance has alway professed himself to be the pillar of morality. Sure, he’s has his share of personal ups and downs, but he has always loved and wanted to protect this city, no matter how misguided his actions of achieving that may be. But going in to business with Darhk, that seems like an obvious leap in the opposite direction. Could he really be so mad at Oliver/Arrow that he’s willing to pair up with anyone who desires to take him down a la my-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend?

My guess is that there is something more to this than we know. While Lance was clearly at Darhk’s house of his own volition, there was also a hesitation to him that makes me refuse to give up on him quite yet….maybe this will bring him around and back to Team Green Arrow? Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. Either way,  after Darhk killed the whole counsel, you would think Lance would realize it’s time to buzz out, but it seems pretty clear that Darhk is holding something over him that is forcing his hand and I’m eager to find out what that is.

Darhk: I’m a little disappointed the train station isn’t a smoldering pile of ash.
Lance: I’m not. Mass murder. Killing innocent civilians, I didn’t sign up for this.
Darhk: You signed up to follow my instructions, to do my will. i want to know everything about this Green Arrow. Where he lives and who he loves. And I want him off the boards by the time my associates arrive.
Lance: And if I don’t help you.
Darhk: Then I would be surprised as I believe I made it abundantly clear you don’t have a choice.

Will he do it? Especially if taking down Green Arrow could mean taking down and endangering his own daughter? Only time will tell.

Diggle Still Holds A Grudge — Just because it’s a new season and a new Oliver, doesn’t mean Diggle is ready to turn over a new leaf. As the episode progressed, we saw him reluctantly come around to accept Oliver’s help in order to protect “his city” (which definitely gave me the chills), but that doesn’t mean he’s forgiven what Oliver has done. And honestly, at this point, I don’t know that he ever fully will.

He went from not trusting Oliver and believing he did a bad thing to believing he’s actually a bad person. That’s a big distinction. Obviously I didn’t want Diggle to forgive Oliver immediately, that wouldn’t be realistic, but his whole opinion of Oliver as a person has changed and I don’t know what it’ll take for him to come back around.

Diggle: Oliver, what are we doing, man? Pretending everything is normal? That we are normal?
Oliver: I’m looking for a way in.
Diggle: I was furious to think that you trusted Malcolm Merlyn more than you trusted me. But then I realized I’m not angry at you, I’m at angry at myself for thinking you’re someone that you clearly aren’t.
Oliver: I don’t know what that means.
Diggle: Oliver, after everything we’ve been through, I couldn’t fathom why you didn’t trust me. But then I realized, you couldn’t, it’s not who you are. You don’t trust. You don’t love. You were able to fool Ra’s and join the League because inside you are every bit as dark as they are.

Ouch. This one hurt. Especially coming from Diggle. I don’t know that Oliver is really dark or that he possess an inherent “badness” like with Ra’s and Merlyn. Oliver has been through a lot and that has obviously affected him, but if the past five months with Felicity have proven anything, it’s that he CAN love and be happy and that the darkness doesn’t have to define or guide him. Nevertheless, I love that Oliver continues to try to connect, while also respecting Diggle’s process. And hopefully in proving to the city that he’s a good person, he can prove that to his best friend as well.

The Lazarus Pit Does Have Side Effects –– Thank goodness. I made it pretty clear at the end of last season that I was frustrated by the fact that there was all this talk of the Lazarus Pit changing people and then aside from a little additional boldness and a penchant for red, we hardly saw any change in Thea. Suffice it to say, I’m thrilled that this storyline is being revisited and all that hype was not for naught. Her lack of restraint and her recklessness are clearly the opposite of what Merlyn taught her last season, but since we haven’t seen her as a true vigilante before, it’s hard to tell the real cause of this behavior. Either way,  Oliver is picking up on it and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before her behavior gets them in to trouble and everyone else is forced to take notice as well.

Someone Dies — If I’m being honest, as soon as I saw Oliver standing in front of the grave (and then Barry come up behind him), I had a gut feeling who was six feet under. For a second, I even thought they might show us. Of course, they didn’t. And of course, I’m not going to say who I think it was…not because I’m afraid of being wrong, but because the show’s writers/creators have gone on record saying even they don’t know exactly who it is yet. That being said, they have said the death will stick, so no Lazarus Pit for this person, and it’s clear that whatever they’ve set themselves up for is something big. Also, it seems safe to assume the “him” Oliver is going to kill is Damien Darhk, but again, with a whole season ahead of us and plenty of time for infinite twists and turns, you never know. Oh and if I am right about who’s in that grave, I can clearly see the future so you better believe I’ll be buying a lottery ticket.

Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.