For the past few seasons, Arrow‘s been a bit crazy, featuring supernatural threats, magical villains and crossover shenanigans. The fifth season, which premiered Thursday night, is being toted as a “back to basics” return to normalcy — except it also proved that bringing Arrow back to its roots doesn’t mean it can’t also engage in a bit of delightful comic book goofballery.
On the whole, “Legacy” really was all about capturing the tone of Arrow‘s early successes, before the days of PARACHUTE TRICK ARROW. It’s no boxing glove, but it’s pretty damn glorious. This is the exact sort of level of silliness Arrow should have alongside its return to the more rooted world of its earlier seasons. We know there are still big crossovers with Flash, Supergirl and Legends to come that could take the show away from that “back to basics” hallmark, but if it can keep at it, while giving us occasionally silly moments like this, season five should be a return to form for the Emerald Archer.
Assorted Musings
- Felicity has a new boyfriend, and it’s one of the cops in Star City PD! It really wouldn’t be a CW show without some relationship drama, would it?
- Even the flashbacks this season are being driven by the “back to season one” mentality, as we get to see how Ollie developed his Bratva connections. These are already nowhere near as dull as last year’s pointless flashbacks, so hopefully that trend continues.
- While it was nice to see Laurel again in the flashback to her death, they really shouldn’t have kept cutting back to her Black Canary memorial statue in this episode. The face sculpt on that thing was not great! Poor Laurel.
- So, mystery archer person who shows up to off that one member of Mayor Handsome’s new police team is apparently DC Comics character Prometheus — but not really, as Arrow is basically making its own version and using the name. The most famous version of the comics Prometheus was a dark foil to Batman, so Arrow‘s is likely the same, but for Ollie. A… dark archer, if you will. If Prometheus randomly shows up in a scene to start delivering lengthy plot dumps, we might be able to guess who’s behind the mask.