The thing about the finale is that you can tell it wants to tie off everything off that happened thematically this season in a neat bow, but it kinda fell flat because we all kinda knew the season was kinda really slapdash, from the island flashbacks being such a nonfactor to them not really planning on who was in the grave at the start.
There was a lot a talk basically implying that Laurel was the best of all of them, and maybe that's not hard to argue but I don't know if the show did a good enough job of it though arguably they could've done it by piggybacking on the Legends setup and having Laurel getting Sara back the catalyst to making her the glue that is her hope and optimisim that kept the team together despite all the cracks between them (Oliver and Diggle's distrust, Thea's self doubt about her own self-control post-Lazarus), and her death (maybe should've been earlier, midseason maybe) would be the thing that sort of catalyzes these cracks that leads to the team breaking apart until they are forced to have put themselves back together to finish off Darhk. Then maybe the temporary exit of everyone in the aftermath would've been more effective; they don't have this fabled Laurel like glue holding the team anymore.
There was also a lot of talk about the darkness and lightness/goodness/hope this season but it never really materialized that well either. I actually liked that maybe it would be manifest in the magic of the season and maybe how it would be the one factor that would give Oliver and friends a way to defeat Darhk. I see where they were going but it also missed the mark. Again with above, Oliver returning to be a better person and hero was never really contrasted at all either with his past (either giving into the darkness, as Waller states) or with his final decision in the finale to kill Damien Darhk "in cold blood." The dichotomy that the show wants to argue that exists is a bit hamfisted and doesn't really work that well even when said aloud.
I feel like in some ways it's a retread of S3 where they have a bunch of thematic/emotional/character moments and arcs they wanted to hit but stumbled into getting there and trying to force it in by the end to make it seem like it was their thing all along. But nothing really memorable sticks out that helps reinforce whatever thesis the season had going for it. It's just that at the very least this season the craft of the show was at least mostly competent most of the way through so even if you don't care for that you at least have some fairly entertaining stuff to watch or have on in the background, I guess.
Also I wonder exactly how escalation is going to work next season when in S4 you had a man who could use magic almost nearly successfully destroy the world in a nuclear holocaust. Or if the show is actually going to try to dial back because I feel like it needs to at this point, at least to round out Oliver's past/present thematic arcs. S5 should be his full transformation from deranged loner on the island/Russia vs. optimistic hero of Star City and then you can just do nonsense comic book threat escalation from then on.
