Ed Ranks the Team Arrow Members on Arrow

Oh gritty rebootness, I can sense you just by the title screen.

This is a CW show. Surely you've heard of it, no?  I'm going to be pretty loose in my interpretation of Team Arrow here, and include some cast members that only temporarily or informally teamed up with the Arrow and his fun-time, city-saving pals. 

18. Rick Gonzalez as Rene Ramirez / Wild Dog - This guy is the worst and I literally hate every second his poorly-developed and unappealing character is on TV. He's a terrible father and I hope he never gets to raise his daughter. She would be better off in a foster home run by R. Kelly.

17. Juliana Harkavy as Dinah Drake / Black Canary - Oh, a THIRD DIFFERENT (really fourth, with Evelyn Sharp) Black Canary on this show? One who just coincidentally has the exact same first name and random sonic screaming super power as one of the previous ones? Lame. This show has honestly no idea what to do with the Black Canary character.

16. Bex Taylor-Klaus as Cindy / Sin - Was Sin ever formally or really a member of Team Arrow? Probably not. But she was friendly with both Sara Lance and Roy Harper, who were team members. This sort of makes her an associate member or something, no?  Eh, moving on...

15. Madison McLaughlin as Evelyn Sharp / Fake Black Canary / Artemis - I totally forgot about this character even existing until I started researching this. Really not memorable at all. Although being unmemorable is better than being memorably annoying like goddamn awful Rene.

14. Joe Dinicol as Rory Regan / Ragman - Also instantly forgettable after his season 5 appearance. Who? What did this guy do? He wore rags? Huh?

Rose Tyler saved his ass for this?

13. John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn / Dark Archer - Hey look, I love John Barrowman almost as much as John Barrowman loves eating pussy, but how messed up is it that at various times Team Arrow thought it was just okay to align themselves with the main villain of Season 1 (and various other seasons of the show) who is responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent people. Honestly, someone on Team Arrow should have just shot this guy in the head at some point after one of their missions was over.  If I were ranking Arrow villains, he would rank high. But this is ranking Team Arrow, and as a Team Arrow ally, Merlyn is just an awful choice.

12. Manu Bennett as Slade Wilson / Deathstroke the Terminator - Yeah, yet another villain who turned into a helper and informal/sort-of ally to Team Arrow. But at least with this one they have the excuse of Slade being played as an okay dude and ally of Oliver back in the days on the island. It was only the Mirakuru serum that turned him into a crazy villain. So the excuse for eventually allying with this guy is a lot more justifiable than with Malcolm Merlyn. Eh. Still though.

11. Brandon Routh as Ray Palmer / The Atom - Ray had one good season as a solid Team Arrow ally and rival love interest to compete with Oliver for Felicity's heart. After that he was just spun off to lead his own show, basically. There wasn't much to Ray Palmer that wasn't just "this is a fake Batman," which was concerning because everything this show does about Oliver Queen is also just "this is a fake Batman." I wonder if they're ever going to introduce Ted Kord because he'll be the fakest Batman of them all.

10. Echo Kellum as Curtis Holt / Mr. Terrific - I hate all of the new members of Team Arrow, but of them I hate Mr. Terrific the least. Mr. Terrific is a fairly tolerable DC comics character. Here, he's just a fake version of Q from James Bond. I think the show even points out several times itself that his character is largely just duplicitous of Felicity. Way to frequently point out that your own show's character is unnecessary, CW.

9. Colton Haynes as Roy Harper / Arsenal - Roy Harper was okay, and I guess he's coming back to the show so he'll still be okay. I remember thinking he was a little annoying back in the day, but compared to Black Canary 3 and Rene, Roy might as well be the most interesting and dynamic character in the world.

8. Caity Lotz (and sort of Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) as Sara Lance / the Canary / Black Canary / White Canary - This character just can't stop dying and coming back to life. They kill her. They bring her back. They kill her. They bring her back. The first time this happened, she even changed what actresses played her (that's fine though... nobody cares because she was originally just supposed to be a one shot character who died on a boat). Anyway, Sara's sister Laurel was the main female character on the show and everyone figured that the sister would become Black Canary. But then Sara returned from the dead and did instead. Nice twist, I guess? Then she died again until she came back again so that she could be on a different spin-off show, but occasionally return in cross-over episodes.

Okay, well, a little derivative.

7. Willa Holland as Thea Queen / Speedy - Sometimes it's good to reinterpret comic book characters in new directions. Arrow's Speedy is an example of a time that really worked. In the comic books, Green Arrow's Robin-like boy companion was Speedy. Until he got hooked on drugs in over-the-top late 60s/early 70s era comic books where everyone had leisure suits. Anyway, the show remixed this and made Speedy into Oliver's little (also drug addicted) sister. This was very satisfying in that it added a strong and interesting female character, provided a logical reason a superhero would be hanging out with a younger kid, and also was one of the few times that the show did something to make things seems less like Batman rather than more like Batman. Look, I'm not saying that for every season of Arrow, the writers just re-watch the Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy and steal some basic ideas from it to guide the whole season; I'm saying that... oh... no wait... I was saying that first thing.

6. David Ramsey as John Thomas "Dig" Diggle / Spartan / Freelancer / Green Arrow - I want to rank Diggle higher than this because I really like Diggle. Diggle is cool. But how many times can we have a "Diggle and Oliver are angry at each other and can't trust one another anymore" plot? We need to think of something else for these two besties to do other than hate each other and then make up. Oh yeah, AND PICK A CODE NAME, DUDE!

5. Katie Cassidy as Laurel Lance (Earth One) / Black Canary; and Laurel Lance (Earth Two) / Black Siren - So (Dinah) Laurel Lance was the first main female character of this show and major love interest of Oliver, pre-Felicity. She was an Assistant District Attorney for most of the beginning of the show, which added a little Law & Order dynamic to it. As noted above in the ranking of her sister, everyone thought Laurel would wind up being the Black Canary until they brought the sister character in. Then the sister died and Laurel did become the Black Canary. Until then she died too. She's still technically dead, but the actress came back to play herself from an alternate dimension. At first as an evil version... but now... yeah... they're doing that whole redemption thing again. Ugh. Sorry bitch, your murder count is too high for anyone to forgive you. I assume they'll eventually un-kill the original Laurel one of these days. They have a habit of casting Phoenix Down potions on these Lances.

4. Paul Blackthorne as Detective Quentin Lance - For as much as they hyped up the two Lance sisters, I think their dad is a much better character. His character initially hated The Hood / The Arrow with a passion, and also coincidentally hated Oliver Queen and blamed him for killing his daughter (who wound up not being dead until she did eventually die, but then came back, but then his other daughter died and was replaced with a parallel universe version of her... this dude has a confusing damn life).  And yet he hated these two people without knowing that they were the same person. Which is a good twist because usually in these stories the person hates one version but likes the other. He hated BOTH! Nifty. Anyway, initially an fierce opponent to The Arrow and his shenanigans, he eventually became one of the staunchest allies. Until he died too. Damn it. STOP KILLING LANCES!

Ugh. Glasses. GROSS! Who would date her?!

3. Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak - Felicity is your typical "pretty ugly girl" stock character for TV and movies. She's supposed to be the "nerd who can't get a date" but guess what... she's played by a smokin' hot blonde 10 out of 10 who is just wearing glasses and we're supposed to believe that she's a dork. Sigh. Eventually they just accept that she's hot and make her hook up with the main character, so good. They also use her as the "hacker" character that is way too over-used in TV and movies these days. Any plot hole or problem can be quickly fixed by her instantly hacking into something. And yet after all this shit talking I'm still going to rank Felicity this high because I freaking love Felicity.

2. Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen / The Hood / The Arrow / Green Arrow - I mean why would it be surprising that The Arrow ranks this high as a member of Team Arrow? It's his team! They always do these plotlines where the team fights with one another and you're supposed to be able to see that good people have different opinions and that Oliver isn't always a good leader who does the right thing. That doesn't work for me. I always take Oliver's side and think everyone else is being a dumb moron. 100% of the time I agree with him. I mean other than when he stopped killing people. He was the best when he went around killing people on a random list that his dad left him even though he wasn't quite sure why those people were all on the list. Whatever. You gotta do what you gotta do to save the city. Also, when Stephen Amell takes his shirt off and climbs the salmon latter... I start to question things.

1. Katrina Law as Nyssa al Ghul - Yeah, well, you're just going to have to deal with this one being #1. Was Nyssa ever formally part of Team Arrow? No. But, overall, she did help them out on missions probably more than she warred with them. Also there is no way that Katrina Law in tight black leather isn't going to come in as #1. She's even worth an animated gif rather than a still picture.