The Question, Wednesday 10/8/14: Will Arrow's Ratings Shoot Upward?

I have decided that The Flash's epic 1.8 premiere was big enough to give tonight's Arrow premiere a Question-worthy level of intrigue. (Also, it's less hand-wringing for me than taking a shot in the dark at American Horror Story.) In its two seasons to date, Arrow has never been the huge breakthrough that The Flash was on day one, but it also didn't drop off too worryingly in its sophomore season. And lead Stephen Amell made a cameo appearance in The Flash's pilot last night (with The Flash lead Grant Gustin returning the favor tonight). Will Arrow's ratings shoot upward? That's The Question for Wednesday, October 8, 2014.

Arrow Last Season

0.9/0.92/0.9 (premiere/average/finale)

The 0.9 premiere last season was a bit misleading, as the show ended up doing better than that for much of the rest of the fall. It was down in 0.7/0.8 territory for most of the spring before returning to 0.9 for the finale.

I'm a little gun-shy about how much heat a separate series can bring; after all, last night's Supernatural (1.2) was probably only a tenth or two above what it would've done with a more normal lead-in, and that was a direct Flash lead-out. NCIS and The Vampire Diaries didn't pick up any heat when they launched spin-offs recently. And the bigger Arrow bounce may come when it does an actual Flash cross-over. But Flash was so darn high-rated that I still think the DC Comics synergy might amount to a little something here.

Over/Under: 1.05.

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