Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season [Blu-Ray]

Cast: Stephen Amell, David Ramsey, Emily Bett Rickards

Release Date: August 20, 2019

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 8.5/10

 

Synopsis:

Following Oliver Queen’s shocking decision to turn himself over the FBI and reveal his identity as the Green Arrow to the public, Oliver has spent the past five months in prison while his team was left behind to protect Star City. In the wake of Ricardo Diaz’s escape, Oliver has yet again turned into someone else inside Slabside Maximum Security Prison. Determined to keep a low profile to shorten his sentence for the sake of his family, Oliver’s limits will be tested when he and Team Arrow are pitted against the most ruthless villains they have yet to face.

Please Note: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

The seventh season of ‘Arrow’ picks up following the shocking season six conclusion, with Oliver Queen now serving time after revealing his true identity to the world in order to protect his family and team. Now known as inmate 4587, he must navigate the dangerous world of lockup while trying to avoid confrontations with other inmates, many of which he put away, while at the same time worrying for the safety of his family with the deadly Ricardo ‘The Dragon’ Diaz still on the loose and intent to ruin his life. While the team continues to do their best to protect the city without Oliver, things soon reach a boiling point after terrorist groups make dangerous plays and a new unknown Green Arrow appears in Star City with an uncertain agenda. Now, Oliver must find a way out of his sentence if he hopes to assist his friends with the increasing threats plaguing his city, but doing so is easier said than done.

The latest season of ‘Arrow’ brings fans another tense, heartfelt and action-packed batch of episodes filled with some fresh new mysteries and dilemmas for our heroes to tackle. As fate would have it, the seventh season of ‘Arrow’ is also now confirmed to be the penultimate season of the show with the announcement that a shortened season 8 will serve as the final season of the series, and season seven certainly has a sense of endgame approaching, even switching the flashback moments often seen throughout the show for sequences set in the future that allows for a look at where things may end up, while also bringing some emotional moments to the table that are sure to affect the larger scope of things to one degree or another. Altogether it provides fans a pretty solid new season (and the final full, 20 plus episode run) with plenty of big events occurring and some notable new secrets coming to light.

Hardcore fans of the series that have been collecting each season on Blu-ray over the years should be quite pleased with this 4-disc ‘Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season’ Blu-ray release which brings the entire season home with wonderful high definition video and audio presentations on every episode, along with some fun extras including All three episodes of the ‘Elseworlds’ Crossover Event, Deleted Scene(s) for a few episodes and more (please see the special features section in the technical specification coverage of the review below for more detailed information). As a whole it should largely satisfy the fans, even if the new disc menu and mastering (similar to Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray releases and other recent season releases including ‘Gotham: The Fifth and Final Season’) make for a few changes in navigation and play all options.

Overall, the seventh (and penultimate) season of ‘Arrow’ sees our heroes facing some difficult new challenges and choices, all the while bringing enough action, mystery and drama to the table to keep things as engulfing as ever, and additionally laying down some hints at an approaching endgame throughout. The 4-disc Blu-ray release for ‘Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season’ delivers impressive high definition video and audio presentations on all 24 included episodes, along with some enjoyable bonus content. It does switch over to the new disc mastering style and therefore no longer provides disc to disc play all continuation and the ability to look over the contents of all four discs on each, but at the same time seems to almost up the bitrate and overall quality of the included episodes which is certainly nothing to be upset about. As a whole the positive far outweighs the negative and fans should still find themselves quite satisfied with the set.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation utilizing the show’s original 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio on all of the seventh season’s episodes (and the included two additional parts of the Elseworlds Crossover event). The video presentations look great as a whole and offer sharp, clean and detailed presentations on every episode, with no noticeable faults or troubles to be uncovered throughout. They hold up admirably even during the numerous fast moving, darkly lit and heavily populated sequences, never resulting in anything occurring onscreen to become negatively affected or rendered indiscernible. Overall, these are quite solid high definition video presentations that should easily please the fans.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on all 22 Season Seven episodes (and the additional 2 bonus episodes included for the crossover event). These multichannel soundtracks deliver crisp, clean and hard hitting audio presentations on each episode. They constantly take advantage of all five available channels in order to send arrows, gunshots and characters whipping throughout the various speakers quite regularly, along with nature activity, music, crowd chatter and plenty more, while also making certain that any dialogue or other audio elements that may be occurring simultaneously remain clean and fully audible at all times. Overall, these are great 5.1 DTS-HD MA soundtracks that repeatedly contribute their share of additional fun to the viewing experience.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season’ includes some noteworthy extras that fans of the series and the overall Arrow-verse should appreciate. Included on the release are ‘All 3 Parts of the DC Superhero Crossover Event Elseworlds’, along with ‘Deleted Scene(s)’ on a number of episodes (running approximately 9 minutes in length combined) and a ‘Gag Reel’ for the season (running approximately 5 minutes). We are also treated to a few Behind the Scenes Featurettes (although most of them are also included on other DC TV Blu-ray releases for the recent seasons) including ‘Inside the Crossover: Elseworlds’ (running approximately 45 minutes), ‘Villains: Modes of Persuasion’ (approximately 38 minutes) and ‘Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2018’ (61 minutes).

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

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Disc Rating: 8.5/10

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‘Arrow: The Complete Seventh Season’ is Now Available to Own on Blu-ray & DVD from DC Entertainment & Warner Bros Home Entertainment

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You can purchase your copy of ‘Arrow: Season 7’ by clicking on the Amazon Cart icon below!