It’s interesting to watch Green Arrow thrive on television in ways he could only envy in the comics. After being a second string character for much of his career, he seemed to work well first on Smallville, and now on his own series, Arrow. The problem, though, with being a B-lister for decades is that his rogues’ gallery is woefully weak and therefore the show’s producers have to dip into the rest of the DC mythos to fill out his world.

The show’s third season gets underway shortly and Warner Home Entertainment has recently released Arrow: The Complete Second Season in a nice box set. Here, we can review all 23 episodes to see how things have evolved as Oliver Queen goes from vigilante to hero while his allies grow in number.

One of the things that has been a struggle in comics for the last era or two is that a hero can’t realistically maintain a secret identity. Ollie (Stephen Amell) needs allies and with that comes trust. So, we went from Diggle (David Ramsey), in the first season to Diggle and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) by season’s end. This year, Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), Canary (Caity Lotz), and Laurel (Katie Cassidy) have come to know Ollie’s alter ego. Argus’ Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) somehow knows, too. Heck, even newcomer Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), visiting from Central City, knows the truth. So, it’s telling that as the season ended, the one who still doesn’t know, his sister Thea (Willa Holland), is the one to vanish, a thread left unknotted until this fall.

The show has also nicely plundered Batman’s resources as Huntress (Jessica De Gouw) returned and we met Nyssa al Ghul (Katrina Law), setting up this coming season’s arrival of Ra’s al Ghul himself.  But first, old business needed addressing and much of the season’s meta arc dealt with Slade Wilson, Deathstroke (Manu Bennett), exacting revenge against Ollie, blaming him for Shado’s (Celina Jade) death and worked with  Isabel Rochev (Summer Glau) to take down both Queen Consolidated and the Queen family, which climaxed with the death of Moira (Susanna Thompson), Ollie’s mom. As for Thea, her world was shattered when she learned her true father was Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman), who conveniently returned from the dead.

The episodes stir the pot with verve and alliances rise and fall with long-simmering threads spun out across the weeks and months. We’re even teased with the hint of an Ollie/Felicity romance even while he and Canary got nice and cozy. On the other hand, the cast has grown so large, supporting teams of players in the present and an almost separate collection in the flashbacks, that some shows feel overstuffed, losing focus. While I appreciate the need to spotlight Diggle now and then, bringing in his wife, her connection to Waller, and the formation of the Suicide Squad felt more of a distraction than a strong storyline on its own. Both Thea and Roy were underserved by the scripts this year.

That said, I do want to applaud the two-parter that acts as prelude to this month’s The Flash series, and the way they subtly continued those subplots through the final episode. Speaking of which, the finale was one of the best action episodes of prime time I’ve seen in a long time so kudos to the writers, cast, and stunt performers for making it exciting.

The transfer to high definition is fairly seamless and a joy to watch, accompanied by the strong DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track.

The four-disc set comes with some standard extras, most of which are diverting enough although none are Must See viewing either. We have From Vigilante to Hero (24:00), an examination of the season’s design; The Visual Effects of Arrow (11:00), exploring how the night scenes, explosions, and action is brought to life; and, Wirework: The Impossible Moves of Arrow (10:00), a companion feature focusing on the stunts. There are, of course, Deleted Scenes, culled from “City of Heroes,” “Identity,” “Crucible,” “Keep Your Enemies Closer,” “State v. Queen,” “Three Ghosts,” “Tremors,” “Heir to the Demon,” “Time of Death,” “The Promise,” “Suicide Squad,” “The Man Under the Hood” and “Unthinkable.” And we have the requisite Gag Reel (5:00). Finally, there is edited footage from Arrow: 2013 Comic-Con Panel (26:00).

Increasingly, studios want you to stream or buy your own digital copy of feature films and to entice you, that edition is being made weeks prior to the physical disc being available for purchase. In an effort to direct viewer buying and viewing habits, studios are also shifting review copies from disc to high definition download. My first encounter with this brave new world, ironically enough, comes with 20^th Century Home Entertainment’s current release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the sprawling, epic film from May. The biggest drawback is making certain you have enough hard disc storage for the mammoth file and a set-up that allows you to watch on a huge screen. Lacking that, I watched the film on my 24” external monitor and while the image was crisp and the audio clear enough (although maybe I need to upgrade my speakers); it needs a bigger screen to properly appreciate.

Bryan Singer returned to the franchise and pulled out all the stops, successfully adapting the Chris Claremont/John Byrne story while seamlessly integrating it with the four preceding feature films. He directed the first two while Brett Ratner mishandled X-Men: Last Stand and Matthew Vaughn wonderfully rebooted the franchise with X-Men: First Class.

As we toggle between past, present, and future, we understand that in the 1970s, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) convinces Congress to fund his Sentinels program to root out mutants, who threaten “our” way of life. Once his program goes live, it grows, morphing with the times, until the future is a dark land of devastation, with the last handful of mutants on the run and losing their battle with extinction. In a final desperate act, Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) uses her powers (in ways that never quite made sense) to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to derail the program. In order to do this, he needs to reconcile Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) with Erik Lenscherr (Michael Fassbender) but first, Magneto needs to be freed from confinement under the Pentagon and to accomplish this, they need help from young mutant Pietro (Evan Peters).

It becomes several races against time as ideologies are heated debated in one era while the Sentinels locate the planet’s last mutants and approach, forcing many a heroic sacrifice to buy Kitty the time she needs to keep Wolverine in the past, protected by Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan).

The casts are blended fairly well and even though the story may make a civilian’s head throb; it’s a fairly coherent story, well-told thanks to a strong script largely from Simon Kinberg, Singer’s direction, and a cast that is up to the task. It’s nice to see familiar faces such as Halle Berry’s Storm and cameos like Kelsey Grammer’s Beast. Page is under-utilized here, sweating and trembling but given little else to do. As befits his stature in the Marvel Universe, it’s really Wolverine’s story and Jackman is up to the challenge, once more better served in the ensemble than either of his solo films. The other spotlight is on young Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) who is trying to carve her own path which sharply diverges from that of her mentor, Xavier. She becomes the threat that needs stopping, not Trask and Lawrence is deadly and vulnerable at the same time.

The high def version and forthcoming Blu-ray features several nifty extras, starting with an extended Kitchen sequence (6:00) that got trimmed but explores many of the film’s issues and themes as debated between Xavier and mystique with Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Wolverine mere bystanders. There’s a fun Gag Reel (5:36) and a handful of deleted scenes that should be viewed with Singer’s commentary. (Be warned, just as this became available for sale, it was announced an extended version was to be released next summer, integrating these scenes including the Rogue [Anna Paquin] sub-plot that caused some controversy when dropped.) There are also some nice images from the Trask Industries archives.