Hoo boy...
- Helena's arc, while only four episodes long, was stretched out so one part took place in Season Two. Due to Helena being The Scrappy to some, this wasn't appreciated.
- The entire story in season 2 involving Laurel's guilt spiral and her ensuing drug and alcohol problems. It started out as a nice way to provide her with some much-needed Character Development considering she was criticized for being a little flat the previous season, but most of the story proceeded to simply show Laurel refusing to budge despite the urgings of her father and her friends. If this wasn't bad enough, this whole thing lasted from the beginning of the season to Episode 14; about when the show was halfway through the season. It was enough for many to deem Laurel The Scrappy after simply being a Base-Breaking Character previously.
- The fact that the show was nearly sixty episodes through with Thea still unaware that her own brother is the Arrow was really stretching suspension of disbelief. Especially since she knows that Roy is Arsenal and training under the Arrow, yet despite meeting the latter face-to-face she can't recognize him just because he's covered up his cheekbones. She finds out in Season 3.
- To emphasize, there was a long period in season 3 where Oliver and Thea shared an apartment, Thea owned and worked at the building where the arrow cave was located, everyone drinks away their sorrows in Thea's bar whenever anything bad came up, and she already knows the identity of Arsenal, and still she wasn't let in on the secret. What made this particularly aggravating is that Oliver outright says that he's gonna reveal his secrets to Thea as part of getting her to come back to Starling City, and then just never ends up doing it.
- The flashbacks suffer this during Season 3 and 4. In Season 3, not only do they progress very slowly compared to last season (making them feel like a chore the show doesn't require), their relevance to the present-day narrative doesn't become clear until the last quarter of the season, save for explaining how Oliver knows Maseo and Katana. There just isn't enough story to them, in contrast to previous seasons which have meatier flashback narratives. This problem has continued in Season 4 since, apart from setting up a meeting with Oliver and Constantine earlier in the season, they really just aren't that interesting and the relevance of the flashbacks to the present day (establishing Darhk's idol) isn't made clear until the last third of the season.
- A good chunk of the reasons that Season 3 suffered Seasonal Rot is the pacing, as elaborated in IGN's review of the season as a whole:
- Firstly, however you might feel about Sara Lance's death and how it was handled, it took place in Episode 1 and the mystery took eight episodes to resolve; this had the unfortunate domino effect of delaying Ra's al Ghul's emergence of the Big Bad beyond cameos. It also means that the Cliffhanger with Oliver's apparent death happened right before the show went on a six-week hiatus, which made the quick resolution to it (including the Ass Pull that he survived a massive fall due to "determination and will") a Writer Cop Out — something that would be averted if it occurred 2 or 3 episodes sooner.
- Secondly, the crossover with The Flash (2014) across the two shows, which could have happened 2-4 episodes earlier without damaging the pacing of the spin-off and also complying with the above pacing issues.
- Thirdly, this also led to wasted potential in terms of exploring Starling City and Team Arrow trying to move on from Oliver's "death", which only took 3 episodes and thus didn't have the time to be explored in greater depth.
- Fourth, the Brick arc offered fresh change of pace for the story, but ending on episode 12 means that over half the season is over with little progress on the main story arc — ending on Episode 10 or 11 would have given more breathing room, especially if Filler were cut down on. It also meant Laurel's "arc" becoming the Black Canary culminates at the half-season mark, meaning she took barely ten episodes to take up Sara's mantle.
- Fifth, the subsequent arcs of Malcolm training Oliver and Ra's al Ghul framing him for murder, as a collective, themselves take up too much time (7 episodes overall) - more than is necessary to start with, but also further dragging down the narrative. In particular, Quentin Lance turning on Oliver could have been cut down an episode or two, made worse by the character dropping off the radar until the season finale. Furthering that issue, a pair of episodes during this time force the main narrative to take a backseat (to Slade Wilson and the Suicide Squad, respectively), which only contributes to the sense of Arc Fatigue.
- Finally, all these factors combined give the last arc — which features Oliver as Al Sah-him — barely any time to be developed or breath in the final 4 episodes, the final product feeling like a rushed conclusion that doesn't even fully resolve or answer all necessary questions (complete with an Anti-Climax Boss in Ra's al Ghul, whose plan isn't fleshed out enough to make sense in context). Compound this with a tedious flashback arc — that suffers Arc Fatigue due to not having enough narrative on it — and it definitely feels like the show is suffering from its own set of growing pains.
- The H.I.V.E/Genesis arc for Season 4, a supposedly cataclysmic plot so devastating that Malcolm would willingly become Damien Darhk's Dragon just so Thea and he could survive. Despite this we only get minute references throughout the season about the plan moving forward without much elaboration, to the point that it takes until the twentieth episode before we finally find out anything significant regarding Genesis and H.I.V.E.'s endgame. To top it off the fact that, for some, Damien Darhk has long since worn out his welcome as a Big Bad makes the H.I.V.E storyline even more of a chore to slug through.
- In season 5, the identities of Prometheus and Vigilante could be considered this, although Prometheus' identity is revealed in the fifteenth episode... not too bad. Unfortunately, Word of God says that Vigilante's true identity won't be revealed until season six!
- In Season 6, the schism between original Team Arrow and the New Recruits, with the latter forming their own team after Oliver spied on them to root out a mole — they act like petulant teenagers and repeatedly refuse any olive branch or apology that Oliver offers them. The whole thing is pointless melodrama in a very tense arc when Cayden James ramps up his efforts to destroy Star City. How does it end? With the two teams fighting each other — Team Arrow to stop Dinah from killing Black Siren. Rene ends up in the hospital and Dinah and Curtis swear off any further alliance with Team Arrow. The arc simply won't end and it drags the whole season down. The characters don't properly reconcile until two episodes before the finale.
- Even after being dethroned as the Big Bad after a season and a half, Ricardo Diaz refuses to go away, and Kirk Acevedo is even promoted to a main cast member, with the show's crew apparently in complete denial about how tired everyone is of him. Even when he was finally killed off it didn’t end, as we’re somehow expected to care about the mystery of who killed him, when most fans just want to shake their hand.
