Having at last found the perfect intersection of male comic book fans and the network's primarily female audience—located somewhere in the vicinity of Stephen Amell’s abs—The CW has picked up Arrow for a full season after only two episodes. The show has already become a breakout hit, in CW terms, nabbing the network’s most popular premiere since The Vampire Diaries and its most-watched telecast period in three years. “Even more than that episode of Hart Of Dixie where Dixie has her still-beating heart ripped out?” asks someone who’s obviously never seen Hart Of Dixie, but assumes it’s about hearts being ripped out.
To which the answer is yes—and what’s more, Arrow even maintained its audience in the second week, meaning it managed the impressive feat of either surprising and keeping all the comics fans who tuned in just to mock how the show had updated the Green Arrow mythology, or it replaced them with viewers who don’t care about that stuff and just want to watch the guy on the billboards do some more pull-ups.