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briangroth27 · 7 years

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Arrow Season 5 Review

Full Spoilers…

This year was—despite the uncomfortable and ill-defined reveal that Oliver (Stephen Amell) liked killing—the show's return to the heights of Season 2, building on the progress Season 4 made coming back from the low point of Season 3 (which I still liked, but was definitely lacking).

Oliver Queen/Green Arrow I was a little disappointed Ollie didn’t initially use his position as mayor to affect more change in the city (particularly with the Series Sell stating he’s trying to fix the city as a mayor and a vigilante), but it made sense given his insistence on being Green Arrow first. That said, I loved the baby steps we saw Oliver taking towards his more socially conscious and liberal side from the comics! Of all superheroes, Ollie’s probably the proudest Social Justice Warrior (to the point that it’s a defining characteristic) and I’m hoping to see Arrow’s Oliver evolve in that direction too. Oliver sponsoring things like a free doctor day, holding an art fair, and fighting for low-income housing were sparks of the iconic Green Arrow that I can’t wait to see ignite in the coming season. Ollie’s flashback murder of Justin Claybourne (Garwin Sanford) was because the businessman greedily raised the price of medicine too; even if what Chase’s (Josh Segarra) father was doing wasn’t necessarily illegal, Ollie taking issue with it felt like classic Green Arrow. Season 5 also had Oliver questioning the system and its effectiveness, and I liked that he was clearly affected by a gang leader’s story of being made into a criminal because of his prison time. I hope he continues to question how things work from the top down (particularly as his Green Arrow patrols allow him to experience the city from the ground up as well) and whether or not they should continue working that way. While a mayor doesn’t have the power to change laws that, say, a governor would, I think there’s great potential for drama in Ollie’s mayoral duties in the coming year, as we saw in a few subplots this season. They can pile on roadblocks by frustrating him with companies and billionaires who don’t want to shell out money for “nothing,” who think the poor just aren’t doing enough for themselves—so why should they get handouts?—or who simply don’t want to change, forcing Ollie to fight enemies he can’t shoot. To me, Oliver’s issues with getting things done in the political realm are just as interesting as his time as Green Arrow, so I hope the writers keep mining that area of his life for all its worth.

A major turning point for Ollie’s pivot towards his comic self was in “Spectre of the Gun,” wherein the show took on the gun issue. At first, I was a little annoyed that everyone but Ollie had an opinion on the matter, but then I realized watching him forced into forming one for the first time was much better. Even if Amell's Ollie landed more moderate than comics Ollie on the gun issue (which makes sense given both his lethal vigilante past and his position as a mayor who needs to build bipartisan bridges), I love that he's finally taken a large stride in that direction. His visible discomfort with having to come to a decision in front of the press—immediately after giving a statement that was sincere yet extremely full of cliché politician talking points—was great acting on Amell's part and an excellent character turning point (as were his conversations with Quentin and Thea). I also liked that he didn’t have all the answers and argued for honest discussion, hopefully sparking one among the audience as well as the citizens of Star City. I look forward to seeing more of this type of growth next season!

There were several times over this season I worried Oliver’s tenure as mayor would be cut short, because it seems like there’s such dramatic potential with that role that would be missed if he were removed from office for being Green Arrow or his Bratva ties. He had Walter Steele (Colin Salmon) helping him run Queen Consolidated for much of the first two seasons, but this is Oliver’s first subplot that’s really given him problems that only he can solve as Oliver. While I thought Star City would be OK with Ollie if he admitted he was Green Arrow to explain his actions (that increasingly seemed like the only way out of Prometheus’ game), I was surprised and liked that it was Green Arrow who was vilified by Ollie rather than Ollie’s administration being taken down. That created some great pressure on Team Arrow as Ollie was continually forced to put a larger and larger target on his own back. It was a clever way to play his dual roles against each other, physicalizing his emotional schism from the end of Season 4 and his belief that the Hood was the outlet for the “monster” he’d become during his five years away. With the destruction of Lian Yu, I feel like these two halves of his persona will begin to converge in a healthier whole. I still think a public reveal of Oliver’s identity is looming in the near future and I’d be interested to see how that goes if the writers pull the trigger. I think it’d be kinda funny if this gruff version of Green Arrow ended up becoming something like the nearly maskless, far friendlier Silver Age version (though they probably wouldn’t go as far as this hahaha).

I loved that Ollie was so rough on his new recruits because he didn’t want them to get hurt; there are many times I’ve seen the gruff leader being ridiculously mean to trainees and being vindicated because it “made them tougher,” but this was one of the few times I really believed the leader had the team’s best interests at heart. This was certainly helped by Oliver learning how to trust his new team as well; the development wasn’t one-sided. At the same time, it was amusing that Ollie’s odd tradition of shooting his partners continued, though. Haha! One area I think the show could’ve improved Ollie’s training lessons was during the Invasion Crossover when he was handling the Justice League’s preparation to fight the Dominators. Ollie had the heroes attacking Kara (Melissa Benoist) over and over again without teaching them to adapt to her powers or look for weaknesses. It seemed like we could’ve gotten a little more training from him than just “go again.” Unfortunately, Oliver’s trust in his friends led him to make some substantial mistakes this year, like believing Anatoly (David Nykl) was still working for the greater good, but a mistake I can’t back up was his awful plan to break Diggle (David Ramsey) out of prison. It seemed like they didn’t even try to exonerate Dig legally, so it felt like an unnecessary risk. I liked Oliver’s conversation with Dig in his cell and his commitment to his friends, but Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) was totally right about the life of a fugitive being a nearly equally bad path for Dig. That episode also featured one of the few flashbacks this year I disagreed with; it seemed imply Dig should accept this and trust Ollie just because “his brother” said so. That said, Ollie was getting enough pushback from the rest of Team Arrow—and Dig himself—to cast doubt on his opinion, so it didn’t feel like the show as a whole was saying “Ollie’s right just because he’s the lead.” Ollie did end up being right about needing Diggle back (and Felicity was eventually able to exonerate him with Helix’s help) and I get that he was going with his heart rather than his head, but the way the episode played out it seemed like he didn’t think anything through.

Another major mistake Ollie made this year, killing Billy Malone (Tyler Ritter), could’ve created a lot of friction between Team Arrow but I’m glad it actually brought them together. Everyone rallying around Ollie instead of blaming him for what was obviously an accident made sense and spoke to the bond they’d built. Amell was great in those scenes (as was Rickards) and it was good to see Ollie so completely shaken. His need to find redemption through Laurel’s (Katie Cassidy) “return” in the form of Black Siren and later, talking Dinah (Juliana Harkavy) down from her vendetta, were great story beats. The destiny stuff surrounding Dinah was a little weird at first, particularly as Ollie was so literal in replacing Laurel as Canary, but the reveal of “Tina’s” real name tied it together for me. Destiny isn’t a common topic for Oliver to talk about and I’d be interested to see more of what he thinks of it versus his ability to make his own fate, because it certainly seems like he believes people can choose to change for the better. After all, he did and continues to do so; that drive for self-improvement is one of my favorite heroic qualities of Green Arrow—who can’t relate to trying to fix your mistakes and become a better person?—and I love that it’s been an ongoing struggle on this show. I’m always a fan of optimistic Ollie and I love that he's become that person more and more over the past two seasons. I also really like Ollie trying to save people’s souls and being the beacon of hope on the team, even if he thinks it’s too late for himself. Anatoly calling him a sin-eater—a member of a community in some cultures who takes the sins of others onto himself—was a neat take on that idea, as was Ollie making Green Arrow a criminal and doing insane, illegal things like breaking Diggle out of prison (and, in hindsight, his willingness to kill criminals, taking that sin on himself so others will be spared). That said, once the core trio was reunited, I loved how well they supported each other. It's a little sad that the baseline of "hope in other people and the strength found in friendship" on the CW super shows feels like a throwback to the Silver Age instead of something that's a given in modern superhero stories. I’m glad these shows remember that, no matter how dark they get.

At the beginning of the year, I didn’t have a problem with Ollie killing when absolutely necessary and not having a schism about it. My opinion was, let Barry (Grant Gustin) be the guy who won't let anyone die while Ollie tries not to, but sometimes must. I thought Ollie re-embracing killing when it was the only option would make future team-ups interesting given the heroes’ differing moral stances. It’d be an intriguing line to walk: when does he absolutely have to kill, how does he make that distinction, and what gives him the right? That seemed to be where Ollie was going at first: his talk with Diggle about growing early on was great and it seemed like his killing had settled into a last resort that wasn’t ruining Ollie, even if he thought he was stuck in that mindset. I agreed with Anatoly about Talia (Lexa Doig) being wrong about the “monster” within Ollie. Then I saw how deep Ollie’s killing problem really was. I liked that Prometheus forced Ollie to see the truth about himself—that was a great way to resolve his schism from the end of Season 4—but I didn’t like the answer we got about Oliver. My biggest difficulty with the season was the revelation that Oliver liked killing, so I was glad the writers started walking it back almost immediately with doubts and denials raised by Ollie’s friends. Stephen Amell’s performance was stellar as Chase tortured Ollie and then completely broke him, but I couldn’t get behind rooting for a superhero who enjoyed murder, at least not with that being the only information we were given. I would’ve hated it if they went with him being a vigilante as a way to scratch some psychotic itch to kill (which was my first impression), because that wasn’t the person we’d been following (not to mention, a serial killer is not a hero). Ollie was clearly shaken by the idea he’d become a monster when Talia gave him a way to sequester it, so even though Ollie thought he’d tainted his heroic crusade because of this impulse, I don’t think they came close to implying he was a serial killer or something; he certainly cared and was troubled that he liked it. Amell phrased it as "the Oliver we met in Season 1" that took a little pleasure in snapping that guy's neck, so he’s been growing away from that mindset since day one, somewhat resolving the “this is not the man we’ve been following” problem. It’s also apparent he's struggled with the ease and efficiency of killing criminals rather than letting them live over seasons 2-5 (no recovery on this show is ever easy or wrapped up in 1-3 episodes). Oliver’s comment years ago about the island “scraping away everything except who he really was” was an early hint he’d become this monster: Lian Yu did scrape away the spoiled rich brat he was to reveal a better, more selfless man, but it also revealed the monster within him.

My major problem with this reveal comes down to how undefined it is. I really wish they had explicitly told us what the “pleasure” he took in killing was. Did he just like killing, or did he like knowing that he’s permanently made the world a little safer by eliminating a criminal? If the latter, I’m willing to go with it (especially since his arc has taken him away from that sort of thinking). If it was meant to be the former, I don’t think that gels with what we’ve seen over the last five years. I believe his “monster” is the acceptance that he’d do whatever it took to stop criminals and the fact that he didn’t feel bad about getting rid of them, and it’s his horror that killing wasn’t ever off the table—since that is “not the man his father raised” and possibly because that makes him as bad as the people he kills—that made him fear it so much he needed to bury it in the Hood.

But how does this work with his growing position as the light on Team Arrow; the guy who believes people can be better? I think that belief was reignited by meeting people like Diggle and Felicity and losing people like Tommy (Colin Donnell). As he got back into the world and became more hopeful, he was able to push that killer instinct further and further into the vigilante he’d become (eventually exacerbating his schism when he killed again), while Oliver Queen started to hope that redemption really was possible. In a way, the Hood/Arrow/Green Arrow was Ollie's way of saving and bettering himself by separating from his darkness. That guilt (and if we’re being honest, denial) of what he’d allowed the Green Arrow to be fueled by is part and parcel of his being a sin-eater: he takes the blame for what he’s done and everything his loved ones do, so they don’t have to shoulder it (even though no one asked him to). He’ll gladly damn his soul by killing, so others are protected and don’t have to. Right down to the core origin of a rich spoiled brat learning to fend for himself on an island before coming home and fighting for those who can’t fend for themselves, Green Arrow has always been a character built on personal redemption, betterment, and opening one’s eyes to the needs of the people around them. On Arrow, Ollie took on that arc, but the problem is he repaired and rebuilt himself by denying the pleasure he took in killing criminals and deluding himself into thinking he could contain it instead of facing it head-on. Of course burying ten years’ worth of guilt was going to eventually make him snap, so when Chase forced the confession out of him, Oliver’s emotional destruction was inevitable.

Oliver seemed truly broken by this revelation in the episodes that followed, leading to some awful mistakes. Not only did the drug thefts he allowed Anatoly to pull endanger jobs (and once Ollie knew what was happening, they allowed the creation of a new street drug), but several cops could’ve been killed by Anatoly and the Bratva going after Chase’s protective detail in the process of trying to take him out. That was a major lapse in judgment caused by desperation and I had no idea how they were going to bring Ollie around and redeem him for that. So, thank goodness for Diggle! I was pleasantly surprised his largely standalone prison arc emotionally connected to the rest of the season and that experience with guilt allowed him to get through to Oliver. Later, Felicity was able to pick up where Diggle left off and finally get Ollie to back off of his “I liked killing” stance, and those moments showcased some excellent acting from Amell, Ramsay, and Rickards. As much as I like Oliver being the beacon of hope on Team Arrow, I’m glad that the team is there to back him up as well; Ollie leaning on his team to bring him back from the edge was great. That Anatoly said he went evil because Ollie left felt manipulative in a “don’t blame me, this is all somehow your fault” kind of way, but perhaps it was a first step to Oliver believing he’s a good influence on people instead of a curse. Ollie’s continued conflict over the correct course of action when fighting crime and how far is too far when fighting crime was great stuff (and exactly what I’d hoped for from an “Ollie still kills” arc). I absolutely don’t believe Oliver’s crusade to save his city was just an excuse to murder people or that he went out of his way to kill, so I was glad they never implied Ollie was a serial killer and—while it wasn’t clearly defined—they landed the “likes killing” idea on something close to the “Ollie’s glad to make the world safer/will do whatever it takes for the greater good” outlook I posited earlier. Amell's acting has always been great, but the scenes where he nearly killed Chase on Lian Yu and their final showdown on the boat with William (Jack Moore) were outstanding! Oliver’s agony in fighting through his killer instinct to do things a better way was intense! All of the talk about who Ollie is, what he believes in, the moral schism, his darkness, etc. made this season the final stretch of his 10-year origin story and a true close to this chapter of the show. I think (and hope) this struggle is over now that he’s put his past behind him (and it’s literally been destroyed), but I left this arc thinking it was a great inner fight for Oliver that will leave him stronger as he rebuilds himself. I'm guessing next season is going to show us a completely different Oliver Queen.

In terms of Oliver’s love life, I really liked that Ollie and Felicity found a way to be friends and to support each other in their relationships. Back when Felicity was dating Ray (Brandon Routh), I never believed Ollie was supportive of it. I did believe he supported her relationship with Billy. While I didn’t need Oliver and Susan Williams (Carly Pope) to date, their relationship left me ambivalent rather than hating it. Digging into Oliver’s past didn’t feel malicious—just like she was doing her job—so I didn’t dislike her, but I do prefer Ollie and Felicity together and agreed with a comment I saw on Twitter that he should’ve been opening up to his friend Felicity rather than Susan in an attempt to strengthen their relationship. When Ollie and Felicity were trapped in the Arrow Cave, their romantic issues being forced to the surface felt organic and cathartic. I like Ollie and Laurel together in the comics, but I’ve never needed to see them together on the show: to me it’s always felt more like something that’s expected because of comic canon than something I was really rooting for. Besides Olicity, the only relationship Ollie’s been in that I was invested in was with Sara (Caity Lotz), one of many reasons why she’s THE iconic Black Canary for me even if she never held the full title. So, I’m glad it looks like Ollie and Felicity could be getting back together (assuming she survived Lian Yu). Regardless of who he ends up with, happy Ollie is great to see and I hope we get much more of it now that his past has been settled!

Speaking of his past, I was excited to learn how Ollie became a Bratva Captain in the flashbacks and I wasn’t disappointed! Anatoly’s return was more than welcome and Dolph Lundgren was great as the intimidating final obstacle for young Ollie. Ollie’s Bratva induction and training paralleled his present-day handling of the new Team Arrow recruits well. I didn’t think they needed to reveal that the other Bratva candidates who were executed for failing to ring the bell were criminals, but I can see how young Ollie would’ve needed that reassurance. That also continued Waller’s (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) teachings about killing criminals, so it was a nice connection to his methods in Season 1, his training in Season 3, and as it turned out, the rest of Season 5. Talia pushing Ollie not only towards his vigilantism but to forming his Arrow persona was a cool subplot I didn’t see coming at all. I would’ve liked to see them on a few more adventures before the flashbacks ended, because it felt like Ollie’s Bratva adventure could end satisfactorily before the season did, but what we got was solid. Talia giving Ollie what would become his Series Sell “something else” talk was a cool moment, which made me realize we’d actually been watching three Olivers in Season 1: the “monster” he’d become after the island scraped everything else away (relegated to the Hood), the Oliver he wanted to be (when he was at home), and the fake playboy Ollie he’d been before the island. It was also cool that even in Ollie's head, the love of his friends and family brought him back to "life" five years ago, beating out the part of him that said he was awful. It was awesome to see just how narrowly Ollie got the fire lit for his rescue from Lian Yu, and his “stranded for five years” disguise—provided by Anatoly—was a nice resolution to the discrepancy between how he looked in the flashbacks and how we met him in the pilot. It was quite cool that even his exit from Lian Yu was part of his plan to save his city. The reason behind the Hood suit being character-based was a neat way for Ollie to sequester his monster so he could have a life while doing what he had to. I do wish more of the details of the Arrow persona were his idea, but since he needed the Hood, Talia’s advice didn’t feel like arbitrary instructions on how to be a hero just for the sake of getting him to his destiny. Furthermore, his struggle with the right way to do things is entirely his own. The one area I think the flashbacks could’ve correlated to the present a bit better was that Ollie’s time in the Bratva could’ve given him first-hand experience of the criminal perspective, which could’ve informed how he dealt with crime and understood criminals as mayor (and as Green Arrow).

John Diggle/Spartan For a large part of the beginning of the season, I thought Diggle’s plot was the weak link. I wanted a bigger connection from Diggle’s court martial to the rest of the show and hoped it would amount to more than just a reason for John to return to Star City. That said, General Walker’s (Gary Chalk) motive for stealing a nuke, that the world is a crazy place now—which resulted in John being framed for murder—worked for me. Walker’s reasoning was simple and understandable in its fear and opportunistic greed. I totally believed Deadshot (Michael Rowe) was alive when they revealed Diggle’s “new cellmate.” That was truly surprising and exciting, so even though he was still dead, linking Dig’s turmoil over killing his brother (Eugene Byrd) to his hatred of Deadshot was genius. It made Diggle’s subplot so much more interesting than I initially thought it would be. Diggle being the Green Arrow in the Dominator’s perfect world instead of being happy with Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson) and John, Jr. (Keon Boateng) was an unexpected yet telling choice. I think it spoke to what he told Barry (Grant Gustin) in the Legends portion of the crossover: “the harder part is forgiving yourself.” As I saw pointed out elsewhere, it’s sad that even in a perfect world he lived this life of pain and loneliness, and I think it’s because he still believed he needed to atone for killing Andy. Since we later found out Ollie used the Arrow persona to lock away his monster, I wonder if the Dominators scanned that in Oliver’s mind and that’s why they gave Diggle the vigilante role: it took his guilt and allowed him to have a happy life outside the hood; as close to perfect as Dig’s guilt would let him get (even if he didn’t initially believe he’d killed Andy in the real world; part of the Dominator’s delusion, I assume). Though that line wasn’t drawn explicitly on the show, I think there’s a connection there. Diggle also got to fight and defeat his demon to escape the Dominator’s fantasy world in the form of one of Darhk’s (Neil McDonough) Ghost soldiers (Andy’s role in Season 4).

Despite the shortsightedness of Ollie breaking Dig out of prison, it was good to have John back in Star City and on Team Arrow. I liked that they didn’t ignore the reality of Dig being a fugitive in hiding (like they ignored Diggle and Thea (Willa Holland) admitting to a drug deal in court last year). Dig counseling Rene (Rick Gonzalez) worked well, but John’s trial was a little tedious. It felt like we’d already been through it earlier in the season and didn’t seem like it connected to anything else happening concurrently. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. When his army plot tied back to Russia and the Bratva, his subplot was redeemed for me. Additionally, the theme of forgiving yourself for your past vs. torturing yourself—putting yourself in a literal or figurative prison to punish yourself—made a lot of sense with what everyone else, particularly Ollie, was going through this year. I liked those parallels and it was great to have Diggle back on the team fighting to help Ollie see the good in himself and in his actions; I just wish his prison plot had moved a little more quickly. His brotherly relationship with Oliver has always been a high point of the show for me, so it was great to see them reunited and leaning on each other to stay in the light.

John and Lyla fighting over the legality of her actions as head of ARGUS and his as a member of Team Arrow was a great note to hit and a believable source of drama. It felt like a worthy conversation to have on a superhero show: what are the legal limits for a vigilante, and how is taking the law into your own hands any different from the government taking extreme measures to protect people? I also liked that this rock-solid couple’s issues came from a source like this rather than a love triangle (which Arrow has almost always made less important than the business of saving people) or something similar. The other major challenge for their family (outside of John’s fugitive status, of course)—the Flashpoint retcon of Baby Sara becoming Baby John, Jr.—certainly got a reaction from John in the Invasion Crossover, but I would’ve liked to see more of what Lyla thought of it beyond her not trusting Barry when she appeared on Flash. Regardless, I hope Diggle and Lyla get to meet Connor Hawke (Joseph David-Jones) at some point, particularly as his potential future is much more likely now that baby Sara was written out of the timeline. I don’t want “Star City 2046” to come true completely, but I would like to see Connor/John Jr. again (and with Season 6’s theme being “family,” now would be a great time!).

Felicity Smoak/Overwatch I was shocked that the official reason for Felicity redirecting the missile from Monument Point to Havenrock really did boil down to population numbers, and that Felicity did choose to kill an entire city because it was less populated. I thought she just redirected it away from Monument Point and it happened to hit Havenrock due to the time left in the flight path…but if she had population information and consciously made that decision, then that was a major character moment that needed to be addressed more than it was. That's more interesting than Havenrock getting hit by accident from a character perspective, but it feels like it was so underplayed by everyone. While her confession to Rory (Joe Dinicol) about it seemed like it would spur more exploration of what she was going through, his understanding and forgiveness undermined the development of that plot a bit. At this point, I don’t think we’ll see much more of the effects that decision had on her, which is a shame and a massive missed opportunity. I liked that Rory and Felicity were going to watch each other’s backs to fend off their darker sides, but I wish we’d gotten to see more of that dynamic than a few meaningful conversations.

That said…I kinda like dark Felicity. While inner darkness twists Thea and blocks Ollie from becoming the hero he wants to be, Felicity seems more capable of pointing hers at a target and using it for the greater good. Gleefully hacking the NSA and blackmailing criminals were fun moments with her. Getting in deep with Helix was an interesting plot and I was definitely down to see how morally grey she’d get. Felicity walked that line between light and dark fairly consistently this season, which explains why she was able to fall to darkness right in front of everyone without anyone but Curtis (Echo Kellum) seeming to notice for so long. Helping Thea discredit Susan with lies was very wrong, so I was glad Felicity undid it and I liked Dig and Curtis’ attempts to bring her back to the light. Even still, I knew Helix would be bad news eventually and wasn’t convinced Felicity would side against them this year. In fact, I was surprised they burned her in the end.

Felicity got a lot of funny and insightful lines throughout the season and I enjoyed her sparring with Ollie over the right way to lead Team Arrow and how best to fight crime. Felicity’s increasingly ridiculous lies to Billy were a fun callback to Oliver’s ludicrous excuses to her in Season 1 (even if at least once, she could’ve just said she found evidence at the scene of one of Oliver’s events), but they began to strain his credibility as a detective. I also wish we’d gotten a stronger sense of why Felicity and Billy worked as a couple. Doing so would’ve made his loss matter more to me instead of just relying on Amell and Rickards’ truly excellent reactions to his death. Still, I’m glad she and Oliver eventually found their way back to each other, both as friends and potentially as a couple. Their conflict and bonding while trapped in the Arrow Cave made for a great episode! I’m glad the writers made use of Felicity’s paralysis when Chase trapped her and Oliver in the Arrow Cave; I had just been thinking it was like she’d never been paralyzed and then Chase came along to prove they remembered! On a side note, I’d still like more of her daily life; does she ever turn the chip off willingly? Does she ever stop for a moment to think about how that little chip is allowing her to walk? Does she fear its failure? Back to Ollie and Felicity, they seemed to get a lot out into the open in the Arrow Cave and if they hadn’t been trapped, I wouldn’t have been surprised if their argument had driven them apart for a very long time. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. The one thing I didn’t agree with was Felicity understanding why Ollie didn’t tell her about William when they were together. Yes, he made a promise to Samantha (Anna Hopkins), but he could’ve told Felicity the truth before he was forced into that position like he did Barry. Felicity didn’t have to understand every choice he made for them to patch things up; that lie was a concession he could’ve and should’ve made.

Thea Queen/Speedy Thea’s aversion to vigilante life was a smart path for her to walk after everything she’d been through with Malcolm (John Barrowman), but I did enjoy that she suited up again in the Invasion Crossover just because aliens were involved. I liked the maturity we saw from her as she became Oliver’s Chief of Staff, while she and Quentin (Paul Blackthorne) made for a surprisingly good pairing. Her dark background and his alcoholism—and their efforts to recover from both—made for strong bonding material for the two of them. After four years, their scenes were a refreshing dose of new chemistry as well! I love that Arrow deals with its characters’ trauma in realistic ways—it takes a long time for these people to really work through them and sometimes every day is a new fight—so I understood Thea’s initial decision to stay in the Dominator’s perfect world and be happy. It didn’t feel like a weak choice to me, it felt like a real chance at peace from her perspective and I liked that Ollie understood (perhaps due to a subconscious realization that staying there paralleled his Green Arrow persona’s protective nature?). With that in mind, I wish we’d seen her see the enemies surround Ollie, Dig, Sara, and Ray so we could watch her realize she was about to lose her real family. Oh well; that was a minor missed opportunity. And Thea getting to kill the fantasy Malcolm was cathartic and ironic, given he later died to save her in real life. I can imagine a lot of confusion for her over his death and her feelings about him next season!

Thea’s darkness reared its head mainly (and alarmingly) in her character assassination of Susan Williams, but I think there’s been a more subtle acknowledgement of it for at least a year now. Both Thea and Felicity made some pretty shockingly cold off the cuff jokes in Season 4 and this year that felt like far more than just deadpan gallows humor. After returning from one of her mini-hiatuses, her reactions to all the changes at City Hall felt like they were channeling audience frustrations I saw online, such as Oliver’s relationship with Susan. While her reactions were mostly funny, when looked at through her struggle with darkness they may’ve been warning signs. I like Thea a lot and I think giving Ollie a little sister was a brilliant move, so I’m genuinely worried about her embracing her inner Moira (Susanna Thompson). I didn’t like what she and Felicity did to Susan and I knew it would result in Susan suspecting Ollie of being Green Arrow even more strongly, given the timing. Sure Susan was investigating him while dating him, but Thea’s move felt more wrong. Knowing this, it was right and mature for Thea to step down from the Mayor’s office; I'm glad she's self-aware enough to see she's going down a dark path and needs to stop. Willa Holland’s short contract was definitely detrimental to Thea’s arc this year, since her struggle with her inner darkness was something we needed to see. Her fight with darkness could’ve played well against Felicity’s pull towards Helix and especially Ollie’s struggle with the idea that he liked killing, so I wish she’d been in those kinds of episodes. I liked what we got with Thea, particularly her material with Quentin and Ollie, but I feel like they missed a major opportunity to have her return and help Oliver navigate his inner darkness by sharing her battle with him. I really hope we get to see more of this struggle from Thea next year, as well as processing what Malcolm’s death means to her. I loved her confused and sad reaction to his sacrifice, so I can’t wait to dig deeper into that.

Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific Curtis was my favorite addition to Team Arrow last year, so seeing him get to be on the team full-time was a blast! I do think they spent a little too long trying to make him a martial arts expert instead of letting him lean into his technological strengths (his extreme lack of athletic skills almost came off as a joke, particularly given he’s an Olympian), but I appreciate that he’s been trained to protect himself. It also makes sense that he couldn’t immediately be on Ollie or even Roy’s (Colton Haynes) level as a fighter in such a short time. Still, he has skills the others don’t and he should’ve been using them from the get-go; for instance, he could’ve been more useful against Cyberwoman (Erica Luttrell) than he was…though his response to Felicity’s "Nothing we can't handle," "That's everything we can't handle!" was a laugh out loud moment! Once Curtis did start leaning into his tech side, I loved it! He can contribute in ways no one else on Team Arrow can through that role. Curtis’ T-spheres are very cool and iconic, but I’d also like to see them differentiate his tech style from Ray’s and the other super-science we see on Flash and Supergirl. Since Ollie’s team is less funded than Barry’s and doesn’t have access to future technology like the Legends do or alien tech like the DEO, it’d make sense if Mr. Terrific came up with equally fantastic inventions that looked less polished and more homemade. That’s probably just me, though. Learning the backstory of the Mr. Terrific codename was cool and I loved that they are becoming so comics-accurate with his costume. I never thought they’d go with the T-mask and I’m so happy they did!

The weakest part of Curtis’ arc this year was his troubled marriage, because I don’t feel like we know Paul (Chenier Hundal) that well at all. I felt sad for him when Paul left because Curtis’ frustration over losing everything was knocked out of the park by Kellum, but otherwise I didn’t feel there was any great tragedy to Paul leaving him. Much like Billy and Felicity’s brief relationship before his death, we didn’t get to see enough of Curtis and Paul being happy together to show us what he’d lost. Despite the blow to his personal life, I really like that Curtis has taken up a role as one of the more optimistic lights on Team Arrow, free of the baggage Ollie, Dig, Thea, and even Felicity carry in their effort to maintain their goodness. Playing Holt as, essentially, Season 1 Felicity is a delight! I enjoyed his friendship with Rene a lot and I wouldn’t mind if Dinah was right and they started dating; of course that’d make things even more complicated when Paul is outted as Vigilante! Whatever happens, I’m glad they’ve got Curtis in the right role again and—if he survived Lian Yu—I can’t wait to see where he goes next year!

Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog I wasn’t sold on Wild Dog at the beginning of the season, but I did appreciate that he created conflict within the team and, eventually, he won me over. I liked that Oliver, even inadvertently and in the process of failing his own vow not to kill again by eliminating Darhk, inspired Rene to pick himself up, make more of himself, and carry on. Rene’s hatred of metahumans and aliens appeared and faded way too fast for me in the Invasion Crossover: we should’ve gotten hints of his distrust of anything paranormal from his interactions with Ragman’s rags from the first time they met. Even so, ultimately accepting Flash and Supergirl shows he has more common sense than most characters in “fear of the other” allegories do. I thought Rene really started to shine when the show started paring him up with Curtis and Quentin; he played off both men exceedingly well. I’d been low-key sensing a vibe from his and Curtis’ growing friendship, so I laughed and agreed when Dinah wondered when they’d start dating. Rene got deeper with the reveals about his tragic family life and his struggle to get his daughter (Eliza Faria) back, which rounded him out nicely. Even if his turnaround on wanting to get Zoe back felt a little fast, Rene’s reaction to seeing her again for the first time in so long made it work for me. Quentin’s own tragic family past provided a solid bulwark for Rene to rebuild his own on, creating an understanding between them that worked really well. Being kidnapped by Chase certainly put a roadblock in Rene’s way to getting custody of Zoe, so I’m interested to see how long it will take to work through what looked like his irresponsible nature. I don’t know anything about Wild Dog in the comics, so wherever they want to take Rene in Season 6, I’m down.

Evelyn Sharp/Artemis I liked Evelyn Sharp (Madison McLaughlin) in Season 4, so I was glad to see she’d be on Team Arrow this year. It seemed for a brief moment in the early episodes that she’d function as a new voice of reason among the new recruits, which made for a nice balance between Curtis’ eagerness and Rene’s angry impatience. Unfortunately, she seemed to get the short straw in terms of character development among the new recruits (and moments like Ollie’s “little girl” comment in the second episode were unhelpful and unnecessary). I would’ve loved to know how she felt about finally getting to work with Laurel’s old team. Did she feel she was living up to Lance’s legacy? Did once holding the Black Canary mantle make her doubt her (truly shocking) decision to side with Prometheus at all? In hindsight, she was one of the season’s bigger missteps, as she had both built-in tension with Oliver from Season 4 that could’ve been focused on and they could’ve done a lot more with her journey from Canary acolyte to villain. I didn’t see her turn coming and I believed it—even if at first I thought it was a trick and she was a triple agent, which would’ve reflected both Young Justice’s Artemis and Black Canary’s comic roots of pretending to be a criminal to take down criminal syndicates from within—but I would’ve liked to know more about her reasons for doing it and how she felt about working with Prometheus. We got just enough to sell it and I was left wanting more so much that I was relieved Chase only pretended to kill her when he captured Ollie; losing her would’ve been a waste. However, with her probable death in the Season 5 finale, it’s a shame they likely won’t get to explore her motives (or where she’d go now that Chase is gone) further. It also would’ve been fun to play with her as a mole on Team Arrow more, but I suppose she had to blow her cover to save Prometheus earlier than expected. Ultimately, she had the makings of a solid supporting enemy and I liked what McLaughlin did with the screentime she had. Unfortunately, she didn’t get enough time to really dig into Evelyn’s potential. I especially would’ve liked to see her played up as a dark foil for Thea; an externalization of Thea’s struggle like Chase was for Ollie.

Rory Reagan/Ragman Ragman was my least favorite of the new recruits; he just didn’t click with me on any level. His origin and introduction felt a little rushed, particularly the explanation for his ancient and magical rags. I’m more than willing to roll with the weird and I love that Arrow isn’t averse to playing in the larger DC toy box anymore in terms of superpowers, but the rags’ presence in this season felt off even to me. It didn’t help that their abilities were never really well-defined. While absorbing a nuclear blast was something only he (and Firestorm) could do, beyond that there was just a lot of bullet-catching and rags used as tentacles that weren’t really impressive in the grand scheme of Arrowverse heroes.

I did like his talk about fathers with Oliver and his connection to Havenrock and Felicity, but their agreement to keep each other’s heads above darkness never felt fully explored (though this was more due to the awkward handling of Felicity’s actions than Ragman himself). I had hoped Felicity’s confession of redirecting the missile would help drive Rory’s character more strongly and purposefully, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be. In hindsight I get the sense that maybe he was supposed to be a serene, calming influence on the team (once he got over his early vengeance quest), but if that’s the case it didn’t work for me. Curtis seemed more primed to be the optimist in the face of tragedy and Rory came off as bland in comparison to the rest of the team. I liked that he was insightful, identifying the meaning behind one of Prometheus’ attacks. It was also good Reagan was able to contribute to the Invasion Crossover by figuring out what the Dominator language was based on, but the chance to create potentially interesting conversations between Rory as a devout Jew and Curtis as an atheist—particularly when so much of this season and series has been about saving souls and becoming better people—was dropped as soon as Curtis found out Rory’s deduction was correct. Looking at self-betterment through both a religious and secular lens could’ve been an interesting addition to the show’s meditation on the struggle for self-improvement.

Ultimately Rory just seemed to be there, with hints of opportunities for him to become a more engaging character appearing sporadically, but never really capitalized on. This is nothing against Dinicol; I think the problem was that the writers introduced too many new recruits at once and advanced the others while Rory’s arc was repeatedly nullified by not fully exploring the plotlines or by low-key reactions from him. They could’ve tightened up both Team Arrow and the first half of the season by mixing Wild Dog and Ragman, by giving Rene some family in Havenrock. As much tragedy as they would’ve heaped on Rene in losing his wife to violence and his parents(?) to the nuke, it would’ve fit with his already angry crusade and probably would’ve sparked bigger fireworks when he found out Felicity was responsible. Their similar stories made Rene and Rory feel redundant at first, and since Rene had the better arc, I’d have traded Rory’s screentime for more of everyone else. Dropping Rory would’ve also allowed for more time to explore Evelyn as a traitor.

Dinah Drake/Black Canary 2 While I was ambivalent about Dinah Drake’s addition at first—if there was to be a new Black Canary, I was hoping for a Black Siren redemption arc instead—I was quickly won over. I’m still not sure giving her identical powers to the Laurels is the wisest idea, but I liked that they named her after the comics’ first Black Canary. Her past as an undercover cop was a neat shout-out to Drake’s comics M.O. of infiltrating crime rings as a criminal to take them down from within too. Dinah fit in with the rest of Team Arrow nicely and I enjoyed her bonding with Oliver over Prometheus and the effects they have on the people around them. I also liked that she found herself on the Star City police force by the end of the season and, if she survived the finale, I’d like to see her encounter the other cops’ opinions of vigilantes in town. It’d be fun to see how she maintains her identity while also working as a cop too, and how he dedication to the law by day informs her vigilantism at night. I thought Oliver’s obsessive search for a Laurel replacement was a little odd, but the moment when he found out her real name was Dinah totally sold me on it. That said, I never felt Oliver’s belief that the team absolutely needed a new Black Canary was fulfilled by Dinah. I don’t mean this as a knock on her character, because I liked what she brought to the team, but I felt like she instantly fell into the group and didn’t stand out like I’d expected someone fitting Ollie’s expectations would. Laurel certainly left a hole in the team last year in the very well-handled fallout of her death, but by the time Dinah was introduced, it didn’t feel like there was still a missing piece demanding to be replaced by this specific person. To that end, I hope to see more of what Ollie saw in her next year!

Quentin Lance After years of dealing with heartache after heartache, it was nice to see Quentin finally on the road to recovery this year. I also liked that his “reveal” as Prometheus was treated exactly as the red herring it was and that he came forward so quickly instead of making himself look guilty. Working for Ollie as Deputy Mayor was a fun inversion of their previous dynamic I hope we see more of in Season 6. I also loved how he bonded with Thea and Rene and hope both those relationships continue into the new season as well. Thea seemed to come into her own as an adult by dealing with Quentin on the same level this year (a huge turnaround from their Season 1 interactions) and I’d like to see them lean on each other to continue fighting his alcoholism and her darkness. Again, I really like that this show has never played around with how hard it can be to beat addictions of any type. I liked how invested Thea became in Quentin and how involved he was in Rene’s life in turn. Lance’s playfully antagonistic relationship with Rene was a lot of fun and reminded me a bit of early “spoiled” Oliver’s interactions with Quentin in the first season. I loved that Quentin and Rene developed a true bond over losing their daughters and Quentin’s dedication to helping Rene get Zoe back was perfect. In terms of his own daughter, Quentin got a significant moment to show he’d fully put Laurel’s death behind him by passing her mantle on to Dinah, which I liked a lot. It might be easy to write Quentin off as an expendable part of the show, given his increasingly limited presence in fight scenes and now that his daughters are dead or traveling through time, but Season 5 found a lot of new territory to mine with him by flipping relationships and discovering new connections between characters he’d barely interacted with before. That’s certainly a lesson about finding new character combinations in your writing: you never know what results will come out of different pairings. I hope he survived the finale, because I’m very excited to see how he deals with Black Siren next year as well!

Adrian Chase/Prometheus I was sure Chase was Vigilante, so I was thrown off the Prometheus trail for quite a while. I thought perhaps Prometheus was Tommy Merlyn, resurrected by Flashpoint or from Earth-2, angry about both his death and Laurel’s and using similar methods to Malcolm’s in the first season, or Robert Queen of Earth-2, who is that world’s Green Arrow and someone we know nothing about (I’d love to see him on the show regardless, BTW!). A version of either Tommy or Robert would’ve been a great way to bring the show full-circle, I thought, and would be much more emotionally satisfying than Prometheus being the son of some random guy we never knew Oliver killed. I figured out Chase was Prometheus after Oliver visited his mother Amanda (Corina Akeson)—once we met her, the story about revenge for his dead dad had to be true—and eventually I remembered Caity Lotz’ initial casting announcement had her listed as Dinah Drake, not a recast Sara Lance. I figured they were pulling the same trick here (Segarra’s casting announcement mentioned he was Vigilante in the comics), and Chase made absolute sense given Prometheus’ extensive reach into City Hall. While the reveal didn’t affect me emotionally (and it could’ve been more dramatic than him casually taking off the mask after fighting Vigilante), the insane intensity Segarra generated and the personal hell Chase put Oliver through absolutely made up for it and turned Prometheus into a strong contender for best villain of the series so far. If not my favorite enemy, Chase was certainly the most effective and damaging. He’s also a huge improvement on the comics’ Prometheus, who was imposing, but felt like another in a long series of villains billed as “anti-Batmen” as if that was some skeleton key to instant awesomeness.

I loved that Chase was miles ahead of everyone else for the whole season and his planning screwed over Team Arrow at every turn. Once he was revealed as the villain, it felt like he almost never stopped menacing Oliver until the season was over. It was clear he’d go to any lengths—even killing his own wife (Parveen Dosanjh)—to win and I couldn’t wait to see what new attack each week would bring! When he was briefly captured, they described Chase's escape plan as him wanting to be captured (or at least Dig guessed that), but I didn't think that was necessary at all; it could've easily been a backup plan in the event that he was captured. I’m just tired of the “villain wants to be captured” trope, so I’m choosing to believe Dig was wrong here. Chase’s anti-surveillance technology was cool and clever, and a smart way to tie Felicity’s Helix subplot into the main one. His father being killed by Oliver gave him a nice connection to Evelyn’s thoughts about her own parents’ murder, which was a great subtle strength to their partnership. Chase getting “justice” for his father also paralleled Oliver following his father’s List very nicely.

Styling Prometheus as yet another evil archer wasn’t stunning, but the addition of sword and throwing star skills made him a neat echo of three of Ollie’s former big bads: Malcolm, Slade (Manu Bennett), and Ra’s al Ghul (Matt Nable). Chase’s friendly demeanor before his fiendish reveal could also be an echo of Darhk’s affable nature. Bringing Robert’s List back into play was great and Prometheus killing people whose names were anagrams for criminals on it was ingenious! I also really dug the idea that Prometheus’ weapons were Oliver’s melted-down arrows; that was a cool personal touch that made Ollie’s past coming back to hurt him literal. Adrian being so calm and collected after Ollie found out who he was—even just going to work like it was nothing—was psychotic and perfect. The way he talked openly to Oliver about what he was doing with only the thinnest of veils felt very “comic book supervillain” (as did insisting Rene continue doing his City Hall job), but there was never any doubt that Chase was incredibly dangerous. Since the entire season felt like they were wrapping up threads from the last 10 years of Oliver’s life, Chase kidnapping William had me very worried he’d kill him too. Oliver didn’t need that pain (and it’d be a waste of the Ollie-as-a-dad aspect William adds to his character), so I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way. Even so, they had me truly nervous on that boat in the finale, both for William’s life and Oliver’s soul. I didn’t want Oliver to kill Chase and prove him right about who Ollie was, but he had to go and what a way to do it! The way Chase emotionally ripped into Oliver and shattered him emotionally (metaphorically stealing this “god’s” fire, you could say) was brutal, and his well-executed plan for revenge easily sent him to the top tier of Oliver’s rogues gallery. I’m glad he’s dead, because I don’t know how they could top this onslaught with repeat appearances.

Malcolm Merlyn John Barrowman’s Malcolm Merlyn has long been my favorite of the Arrow bad guys. I loved that he’s been increasingly conflicted between his lust for power and his twisted love for his children for the entirety of the show…and that Merlyn found a way to turn that conflict into a deliberate choice where he views his power grabs as best for his family, no matter who they hurt. Once he offered William up to Chase, though, I was absolutely over any remaining sympathy I had for him. I've wanted Malcolm to mastermind one last supervillain plot before dying for years now, particularly after the masterful downfall of the League of Assassins, but I was surprised by how fitting his rather low-key death was. As wishy-washy as Malcolm had become over the last two years, switching sides so often that Team Arrow didn’t even bat an eye when he was momentarily teaming up with them again, his trajectory firmed up across the Arrowverse this year and I'm satisfied with where his final arc took him. Felicity said it best: he was a bad guy and a worse father, but he did love Thea. I felt the emotion between Barrowman and Holland in their final scenes together and I can’t wait to see her deal with it. Merlyn’s appearances were always welcome and I’d be down for flashbacks—such as this year’s cool flashback to Malcolm planning the Undertaking—but I’m glad Malcolm is really, really dead. Plus, even if it wasn’t his plan, we got that final supervillain arc over on Legends of Tomorrow and it was great!

Laurel Lance-2/Black Siren I think they definitely missed a chance to have Laurel of Earth-1 working within the legal system in tandem with Ollie's team much more than she did and I would've preferred her retiring from vigilantism to focus on that to killing her. That said, Laurel’s death truly felt like it mattered and impacted everyone around her (arguably even more than she did in life) and bringing Laurel-1 back via Flashpoint, the Lazarus Pit, or time travel would’ve undermined that. So, I was really happy the show didn’t revive her and instead brought Black Siren into the fold after her introduction last year on Flash. I’m definitely down for a redemption arc for Laurel-2, which could make a potential battle with Dinah over Laurel-1’s legacy interesting. We also have no idea what she’s done on her world, so I’m absolutely eager to see where Laurel-2 has come from and what she wants now that she’s marooned here. The one thing I thought was missing from Black Siren’s appearance this season was a scene where Barry told Oliver they had Laurel-2 locked up; Flash left its titular team choosing not to say anything about her to Ollie’s crew. I would’ve liked to see when and how Barry broke the news to them and how Ollie reacted. Besides that, her introduction here was strong and she was well-utilized. The Ollie/Felicity and Laurel/Prometheus cat-and-mouse games were exciting and the question of who was the leader of each pair fleshed out their dynamics well. I had hoped she’d join the Legion of Doom over on Legends to meet Sara, so hopefully they’ll meet next year. I can’t wait to see her and Ollie try to redeem Laurel-2, even if there ends up not being anything of the person they loved within her. It’d also be cool to bring back Alex Kingston as Dinah Lance of Earth-2, who could’ve passed her villainous legacy on to her daughter Laurel in a twisted version of the comics’ Black Canary history. Siren’s origin echoes another part of Canary history, wherein Dinah Drake crossed from Earth-2 to E-1 to join the Justice League in the Silver Age. No matter what they do with her, Black Siren is probably Arrow’s best female villain, Katie Cassidy seems to have a blast playing her, and I can’t wait to see what they do with her next!

Allies It was great to see and/or hear about Robert (Jamey Sheridan) and Moira Queen, Shado (Celina Jade), and Yao Fei (Byron Mann) again as Arrow wrapped up its first five years! Susanna Thompson’s return in particular was very touching, as we finally got to see the moment where Oliver told Moira he was alive in the season finale. Both Amell and Thompson were fantastic in that scene! The only other returns I would’ve liked were Tommy and especially Roy, but both got shout-outs in the 100th episode. Lyla going full-Waller as the head of ARGUS was interesting and I wonder if she and John’s marriage will hold up if this continues. She made good points about Team Arrow breaking the law, but I also think Ollie’s people have an argument about the government overstepping its bounds and the need for vigilantes to step in. I like that neither side is purely right or wrong. I do think it’s too easy for Team Arrow to get away with things like sabotaging prisoner transports just because Lyla runs ARGUS, so I wonder if she’ll continue down this path and that support system will no longer be at Ollie’s disposal. I kinda hope so; Ollie and company facing real consequences to their actions would make things harder on them and require them to act smarter (or at least stealthier).

I am a huge fan of Nyssa (Katrina Law), so I’ll take any and all appearances from her I can get! I liked that they included the bit from Legends about Ras telling Nyssa to go to Lian Yu to rescue Sara in the first place. Nyssa bickering with Malcolm was so much fun, as was the banter between all the villains on Ollie’s last-ditch team! I hope she and Talia lived to fight another day, because I definitely think there’s more to explore there. I would absolutely be down for Nyssa appearing on Legends to reunite with Sara as well! Getting Slade back after so long was a huge win for the show (and a surprise, given all the apparent bad blood behind the scenes) and I’m excited to see his quest to find his son next year. Older, wiser, saner Slade was an unexpected and inspired choice for Ollie’s finale team. I never liked that Shado was fridged to make Slade insane (even though Slade was a fantastic villain), but his appearance here leads credence to the theory that it was really the Mirakuru amping up his anger and driving his madness all along. It was so good to see him and Ollie patch things up and come to an understanding, moving beyond their problems instead of falling into an endless cycle of violence and hatred. I think Ollie could’ve called Roy for help in the finale, but I can also see him not wanting to drag him back into the life or put him in danger. He could’ve called Barry, but Flash had a lot on his plate around finale time too.

I was never really sure where I stood with Susan Williams. I didn’t hate her and she definitely didn’t turn out how I thought she would, but I don’t think she ever gelled with the rest of the show for me. She was fine for the role she had. I thought for sure Oliver’s Russian past would come back to bite him via her search into his ties there, so I was surprised she never brought them to light. On the other hand, I was worried they’d ruin his mayoral stint, so I’m glad she didn’t. I didn’t think she needed to be dating Ollie and their relationship seemed like it was meant to engineer more drama when she was kidnapped than if she were just an ally. I do believe she really fell for Ollie, regardless of whether she started dating him just to get closer to the target of her investigation or not, and I believed he had feelings for her, but not anything as strong as what he’s felt for Felicity, Sara, or Laurel. I was definitely on her side when Thea and Felicity got her fired for plagiarizing articles, especially since they made those accusations up. That was simply wrong on their part and I’m glad Thea owned up to how badly she’d screwed up.

Christopher Chance (Wil Traval) was a cool, low-key addition of a little-known DC superhero and I liked his use both in the present and the past. It was especially cool that, while doubling Oliver when his life was in danger, he managed to continue Oliver’s socially conscious policies. I’m very glad Captain Pike (Adrian Holmes) has been such a solid, continuing part of this show. I think he’s got to know Oliver is Green Arrow by this point and I’m interested to see what he’ll do with that information if he does. The split-second Captain Singh (Patrick Sabongui) and Flash “cameo” was an excellent, perfectly-executed use of the shows’ shared universe and of Green Arrow and Flash’s friendship. Little connections like that are so much fun! Billy was bland at the start and never evolved into a character I cared about. His career as a cop didn’t bring many complications to Oliver’s life until he died, I didn’t see the spark between him and Felicity, and I think we needed to know him much better before Oliver accidentally killed him. As such, I didn’t care that he’d died. The same goes for Paul leaving Curtis; I feel like the overwhelming majority of their scenes were brief appearances by Paul, mainly focused on him chastising Curtis for not telling him where he went or for putting himself in danger. If Paul appears in Season 6, I want to know why Curtis fell for him so we can get a sense of what he’s lost.

Enemies I loved Talia (Lexa Doig) and the tack they took with her! Making her Yao Fei's mentor was an awesome way to bring the flashbacks full-circle while also incorporating her backstory from Legends of Tomorrow. It was cool to have her generate Ollie’s vigilante style and even inspire the Series Sell, which was another smart tie to the beginning of the flashbacks and the series itself. Her reason for turning on Ollie to help Chase was a great use of the show’s history and a twist so simple and logical in hindsight I’m surprised I didn’t see it coming. Doig’s Talia is definitely up there with Batman the Animated Series’ version as my favorite, so I definitely hope we get to see more of her in the present. I’d also love to see more of her relationship with Nyssa, so hopefully they both survived the destruction of Lian Yu.

Thomas Church (Chad L. Coleman) was a good opponent to start the season with and a smart herald of the “back to basics” tone of the year. He earned his badass status by casually ignoring his thugs getting shot and being so intimidating, so I quickly grew to really like him. Despite one moment where Wild Dog had a chance to kill him and inexplicably didn’t take the shot, Church felt suitably untouchable. Even so, his death felt like a natural end for his character. I expected him to have a bigger hand in the season’s events, but what we got felt just right. Even with only a handful of appearances, Dolph Lundgren’s Konstantin Kovar was an excellent final flashback foe. He seemed to pick up the baton from Church as a villain on a similar level, which was a nice subtle bit of continuity while Prometheus operated on a whole other plane. I liked Kovar’s turnip story (a popular Russian fable) about unity and I hadn’t been expecting all the Bratva infighting, but dropping Ollie into the middle of it worked really well. At first I didn’t think Kovar needed to survive his initial major fight with Ollie—he was imposing enough after just two appearances—but popping up again to nearly prevent Oliver’s “escape” from Lian Yu was a nice final battle for the flashback timeline.

It was awesome to see Anatoly so much this season, in both the flashbacks and the present! He’s one of my favorite Arrow characters, so it was great that he got such a big role here and could return in the future. I loved that the flashbacks seemed to imply he was still doing evil for the greater good (and certainly convinced Ollie of this), only to twist things so that he really was the bad guy. He caused Ollie to screw up massively, and I really liked that their former friendship held that sort of sway over Oliver. Helix was a fun development and I liked that it encouraged the return of Felicity’s dark side from her college days (coupled with what she’d done to Havenrock). Helix proved to be a sufficiently powerful force, so Oliver going up against a network of hackers is going to be a fun new challenge for him. I can see them being the big bads for the show next year (especially if Michael Emerson is playing their mysterious leader, Cayden James), at least for the first half. Like Flash and Supergirl, I wouldn’t hate it if Arrow found a way to split the season up between two main antagonists.

Vigilante (??) may not be the most inventive name for a vigilante, but he certainly proved formidable! I loved the tricks built into his costume, like a flash grenade to stave off revealing his identity. His method of killing criminals without a second thought seems like he’s been set up to be a dark reflection of Oliver next year, so I’m looking forward to playing out that presumed Punisher vs. Daredevil interaction in Season 6. I absolutely fell for the casting announcement—saying that Chase was Vigilante in the comics—so I just assumed that he was Chase for most of the season. So, who is he? I ran down my theories in an earlier blog, but essentially I think it boils down to two suspects: Captain Pike and Paul Holt. I don’t think we’ve seen Pike and Vigilante together and the mystery man vanished completely after Pike was nearly fatally wounded. It’d also be interesting to pay off Pike’s long tenure on the show with him becoming a vigilante himself, and a public official moonlighting as a vigilante can parallel both Ollie and Dinah. But my money’s on Paul; maybe he thinks he can clean up the streets so Curtis will stop going out, and we’ve already seen Vigilante get Curtis in a position to easily kill him, but he didn’t. He could have literally any motive, since we barely know Paul at all, and Curtis was so busy with Team Arrow that he wouldn’t notice if Paul weren’t home either. Stephen Amell also mentioned that Vigilante will be one of several people who are villains for each specific member of Team Arrow (if they were to team up, would that make them a Green Arrow Injustice Gang?), so perhaps he’s Curtis’ opposite number. I also considered that—whether he’s one of these two or not—Vigilante could be an operative of Helix, since their overall goals seem similar and he’s gotta get his tech from somewhere. Whoever he turns out to be, I really like that we got a badass mystery villain in Prometheus and a second secret identity comic fans didn’t even bother to consider for the longest time. It’s so cool that this red herring gets to be his own mystery next year!

I love that these shows can pull off cameos like Anarky (Alexander Calvert), just like the comics. It makes the world feel full and the threats ever-present. I thought Cupid (Amy Gumenick), Chien Na Wei (Kelly Hu), and Liza Warner (Rutina Wesley) teaming up would be fun and it was! I kinda expected a grander scheme than just a hunt for Church’s money and some gang hits, but I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to this team returning. I also liked Warner losing her last shred of faith in justice in Star City because Quentin worked with Darhk last year. I definitely hope China White isn’t dead and that she was only shot in the shoulder (what an inauspicious way to go that would be!). Cody Runnels was a strong minor enemy as Stardust. He felt like a comic book villain, his powers played well, and Ollie's takedown was brutal. Brick’s (Vinnie Jones) mention was nice and I’d like to see him on the show again. We finally learned The Count’s (Seth Gabel) name, which was a cool bonus, and I hope that the Werner Zytle (Peter Stormare) version returns with some of his comic book reality-warping tech. I didn’t expect Captain Boomerang (Nick E. Tarabay) to betray Ollie at all, though I totally should’ve. If he’s dead (and he probably is), I’ll miss him and wish he’d been used more often. I liked him better than the Suicide Squad Boomerang and it would’ve been fun to see him clash with Barry more than once.

General Plot Notes I liked that Arrow played in a larger world in Season 3 and touched on magic in Season 4, but getting back to the street level heroics was a welcome breath of fresh air. While I definitely miss Team Arrow members like Roy, Sara, and Thea, most of the new recruits grew on me and I came out of the season liking them and their steep learning curve. Overall, they had a pretty good arc coming together as a team despite serious growing pains. It was fun to play with them not knowing Oliver’s secret identity at first; Team Arrow taking orders from Ollie on com without realizing he was in the hospital with them felt like a classic spy/comic moment. Another classic superhero moment came when Team Arrow did some bystander rescuing early in the season, even if “citizens burn cars and fire into the night” was kind of a random action scene premise.

The stunt work was fantastic throughout the season! Since the villains were more physical than Darhk and his magical powers, the stunt team seemed to have many more opportunities for show-stopping fights and they certainly delivered. Even if Alias and The Dark Knight beat the show to it, a grapple hook-plane extraction will probably always be cool. I will always love Green Arrow’s trick arrows—they’re a fun and iconic bit from the comics—and this season boasted a very cool variety of them! My favorite new ones were the bulletproof screen arrow and what the writers referred to on Twitter as the “Parrowchute.” The anti-molecular spray from early on in the season was another cool gadget.

The flashbacks—and flashbacks within flashbacks—worked really well to look back at the history of the series. Callbacks to people like Isabel Rochev (Summer Glau) and Yao Fei were great, as was a flashback that connected to Ollie’s Season 3 flashback trip to Starling City. For the first time since Season 2, I loved the flashbacks just as much as the present-day action and felt like they tied into the rest of the corresponding episodes smoothly while satisfactorily finishing the story of Oliver’s five years away. Flashbacks in both Season 3, with its promise of a change of pace from Lian Yu, and Season 4, with the introduction of magic, started well, but both also felt like they became excuses for a fight or chase scene that didn’t move the story forward significantly rather than important pieces of Oliver’s past from about midseason till the end. That wasn’t the case this year and nearly every flashback felt important. Even with the strongest and most relevant flashbacks since Season 2, I’m glad that fixture of the show is finally over. At about eight minutes an episode, so much screentime will be freed up to expand the present-day stories now. I’m hoping that if they continue to dip into the past, it’s like on Daredevil and only done as needed rather than an obligatory part of each episode. If this structure was an intentional metaphor for drawing back an arrow before firing it—showing us where Oliver came from while also showing his heroic trajectory—that’s a cool idea, but I’d rather focus on the present. I’m glad we’ve finally got the whole picture of Oliver’s origin and it’s fitting the flashbacks ended just as Ollie was forced to let go of his past and will no longer be anchored by it.

On one hand, I wish they’d made more of the Arrow segment of the Invasion crossover about the Dominators. On the other, the Arrow part was an excellent way to celebrate the 100th episode of the show: the Dominator tech provided a cool method of looking at the past and what could’ve been for our heroes while furthering the overall plot as the Dominators studied their non-metahuman brainwaves to program the metabomb. Though Smallville certainly developed the DNA for Flash and Supergirl and probably the proof-of-concept for a Green Arrow show, Arrow built all four of The CW’s current super shows, so including their anniversary in the first 4-show crossover made perfect sense. This was a great celebration of the show's legacy and I liked that the Legends part acknowledged this whole universe started with Ollie and Sara. Team Arrow’s dream world reminded me of the “Perchance to Dream” episode of Batman: The Animated Series, and if you’re going to borrow a plot, that’s a great one to use! All the callbacks to the show’s past were great and this is one of my favorite anniversary episodes ever. It was good to see Laurel and the Queens again. In a perfect world I would’ve liked to see what Ollie and Laurel were doing with their lives beyond him maybe taking over Queen Consolidated and them getting married, so that felt like a minor misstep. I assume she's running CNRI, but I wish it had been said. It's been a long time since Ollie, Sara, Thea, and Quentin were this happy and at ease, and that was awesome. I loved that they found ways to incorporate Roy, Tommy, and Andy Diggle (who was initially supposed to be the Ghost Dig fought, so I'm going to fan-canon this that it was Andy with a mask on) even though their actors were unavailable. It would've felt incomplete without at least Roy and Tommy (and the nod to Donnell's Chicago Med show was funny!). Giving everyone some catharsis by allowing them to kill their arch-enemies to break out of their fantasy world was perfect. Thea, Sara, and Ollie passing weapons to each other was an outstanding bit of fight choreography! I was glad the show played the reality of Team Arrow having no idea how to escape the Dominator ship and barely got away, while “So…this is double the number of spaceships I thought I’d ever be on” was a hilarious line from Thea!

The Crossover’s subplot about Cyberwoman felt kinda haphazard at first since we’d never met her, but in hindsight it's cool (and very comic booky) that their world has random super people running around without the need for elaborate introductions. Cyberwoman was exactly what they needed to justify Flash and Supergirl being called in and didn't need to be anything more than that. I think it would've been tighter plot-wise to send Barry and Kara against Dominators trying to secure tech that could be used against them or something, but ultimately Cyberwoman worked for me. It would’ve been cool to see a quick cutaway to Team Arrow during the final battle with the Dominators, because it felt like they (and especially Thea, who left after the Legends rescued them without explanation; that was particularly weird given how enthusiastic she was at first, but maybe the Dominator fantasy world got to her) were a little forgotten in the Legends portion. I liked Oliver getting a little overwhelmed by the sci-fi happenings, even though he’s lived in a world of magic and super-science for four years now (six if you count his experience with the supernatural on Lian Yu). “One sci-fi problem at a time” was a great way to demonstrate his limits, and benching Kara in the Legends part because he couldn’t handle how weird things were getting worked well for me, no matter how unfair or unreasonable that decision was. I liked his human reaction to the stranger bits of his world: it wasn’t irrational hatred like we saw from Wild Dog, but just a guy coming to terms with the fact that he can’t take on everything, no matter how hard he fights that fact. I also loved his support of Barry as the leader of this nascent Justice League.

Season 5 showcased one of Arrow’s finest hours and one of my absolute favorite episodes, “Spectre of the Gun.” It was not only a very good “very special” episode about the gun debate, but a huge step towards Oliver discovering his iconic liberal side from the comics. I love that they took the time to dig into current issues with the gun control debate, and it was smart to present all sides of the gun argument from nearly all the characters. Even the "let's not talk about it"/”don't make it political” point of view was brought up and shot down as unhelpful. I know that got a lot of hate online, given Felicity voiced it even though she’d been the victim of gun violence, but I’d argue that she probably has a very solid point of view on the debate, but like she said, she doesn’t think talking about it helps. It’s also good to let every character be wrong occasionally. I would love if Arrow took more inspiration from real-life issues in the coming years: not only would it fit with this being the most grounded of The CW’s super shows, but it would play perfectly with Ollie’s developing politics. Dealing with these topics at least as much as Supergirl takes on feminist issues would be a great way to revitalize and refocus the series while keeping it relevant. Marc Guggenheim told me a while back that it’s difficult to get these issues on air despite them wanting to, so I appreciate that they’re trying and I hope they can swing more episodes like this!

Particularly in the back half, Season 5 kept up a constant intensity that felt like a return to Seasons 1 and 2, when every few episodes would feel like any other show’s midseason or season finale. The pressure on Team Arrow and specifically on Green Arrow was great; a perfect use of Ollie continually making his alter ego out to be a bad guy for the greater good. I felt this worked much better than the similar plot at the end of The Dark Knight, which resulted in Bruce retiring as Batman. Here, Ollie still had to go on being Green Arrow (and his black masked nameless vigilante) to save the day, which made both his job as a mayor trying to keep order difficult because he had to hunt himself and his vigilante life increasingly harder since his cops were always after him. The fact that Green Arrow actually murdered Detective Malone (albeit accidentally) and wasn’t just framed worked really well too. I do feel like we needed a scene where it was made public that Green Arrow was no longer considered a cop killer by Ollie or the police, though; I can connect the dots and say the news reported that Chase set him up, but it feels like we missed something with it not being said onscreen. It felt like after all the pressure he’d been under, Green Arrow got cleared a little too quickly. Likewise, attacking the ARGUS transport and letting Chase go probably shouldn’t have been something Ollie just got to walk away from; he’s got friends in high places because Lyla runs ARGUS, but that was an opportunity to make things even harder for him that his connection to Lyla negated.

Oliver being kidnapped by Prometheus and tortured for an entire episode felt like a completely different sort of story for the show and it was absolutely intense. Whatever my misgivings about the revelation in that episode, Amell and Segarra’s acting was fantastic and the tension was insane. Ollie’s revelation at the end was a massive shock when we should’ve gotten release from Ollie’s torture, which played really well into the destroyed man Ollie was in the following few episodes (and my own disillusionment in him). Even free of his captor, the real villain was apparently himself. Chase trapping Oliver and Felicity in the Arrow Cave was a cool use of a bottle episode that made it stand out from the show’s usual adventures. The writers and director of that one (all women, which was cool to see!) did a great job of escalating all the threats and keeping Ollie and Felicity on even footing over who was right and wrong in each situation. Sometimes they were even both right in different ways: I knew Felicity was right about the elevator shaft being booby-trapped, but I was also 100% behind Ollie trying to climb out anyway; were I in his shoes, I wouldn’t have been able to sit and just assume it was rigged when it could easily be a way out.

Bringing everything full circle back to Lian Yu worked perfectly and I love that they wrapped things up for this chapter of Ollie's life so completely. The fights were on point like always and I really liked how seamless the cutting between the present day and flashback battles were. They also did a good job of splitting between the chaos of the final battle and giving the individual face-offs (Nyssa/Talia, Ollie/Chase, Laurel/Dinah) enough time to feel like weighty battles. Neither Chase nor Savitar over on Flash felt dragged out this year, so kudos to the writers for keeping the stakes and tension high, especially in the last segments of the season. I have no idea how anyone could survive the destruction of Lian Yu, but it seems like most people will. Rene, Dina, and Black Siren all have series regular contracts for next year, so they lived. Marc Guggenheim has said he’d never kill Thea, so she’s safe too. I can’t see them killing off Diggle or Felicity, though I wouldn’t mind Felicity’s spinal tech being damaged to the extent that it can’t be easily repaired or replaced and she has to deal with her paralysis far more than we saw in Season 4. I’d hate to see Curtis go and hope they won’t do that. I could see Quentin dying, but I feel like there’s a lot of potential with Black Siren joining the cast next year that’s worth exploring. Slade survived according to the Season 6 trailer. Talia and/or Nyssa could die, but I’d be very sad to lose either of them, especially Nyssa. Samantha is probably dead; bringing William onto the show full-time next year would let us see Ollie as a dad, which is something entirely new. I hope Malcolm is really dead; it feels like time. Even if Boomerang survived that mine (hey, Deadshot took an arrow to the eye and got better!), I doubt he’d be in a position to get to cover from the island blowing. Artemis is probably dead, since we last saw her still locked in that cage and that’s a shame; she could’ve been explored more.

Had this been the final season, it would've been great, but I'm stoked to see how Ollie can grow now that his past is truly behind him. Despite some missed opportunity for more depth in the new recruits, lack of repercussions to Felicity destroying Havenrock, and the somewhat ill-defined reveal that Ollie liked killing, I loved this season and it certainly feels like they've set up a whole new ballgame for Season 6. With callbacks all season long and a villain who challenged Ollie to face who and what he is—along with the end of a major part of the show’s format in the flashbacks—it definitely felt like they closed this chapter of his life and the series.

This has been a long ten years for Oliver and I can't wait to see where Arrow goes from here…when Oliver becomes, I assume, something else.

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