Arrow Season 5 Premiere Recap: "Legacy" *SPOILERS*

Season 5 of Arrow premiered last night [Wednesday October 5^th]. “Legacy” showed us the many faces of Oliver Queen: Oliver Queen as the Green Arrow, Oliver Queen as Star City’s Mayor and Oliver Queen as an assassin in Russia. We’ll start off discussing Oliver Queen as the Green Arrow.

Star City is being run by a solo Green Arrow, armed with new arrows, specifically a bomb decoder or computer and a parachute. There are also new emerging vigilantes trying to help our hooded hero, however Mr. Queen doesn’t want to create a new Team Arrow. He believes Thea and Diggle will come back.

Later in the episode Oliver must come to terms with the fact that Team Arrow is no more. Luckily for Oliver, Felicity has been looking into the new vigilantes popping up all over the city. She convinces Oliver to recruit and train them after Curtis is attacked by two thugs doing re-con. Curtis also demands to join Team Arrow to which Oliver agrees.

This couldn’t come at a better time as a new sharp shooter has just arrived in Star City. Meet Prometheus (not related to the DC Comic characters, this is Arrow’s own original character). Prometheus has an axe to grind with Oliver and will be stirring up some trouble in Star City for the vigilante. The question remains who is this villain and what did Oliver do to piss him off? As season 5 is tied to season 1, could this be a character we have seen before or could this be Mr. Kover? The man Oliver is seeking in Russia.

“Legacy” gave us another look into Oliver’s past. This time he is in Russia in some sort of fight club, killing for sport. On the hunt for a Mr. Kover, Oliver kills a man during a fight and is captured by Bratva. Thankfully an old friend and member of Bratva, Anatole, comes to Oliver’s aid and stops him from being killed. Oliver is then brought into another fight by Anatole and begins his initiation into Bratva. That is if he survives the 7-on-1 match.

Mayor Oliver Queen also did some bidding in this episode. He called out SCPD for being corrupt during their gala and said he was hesitant about setting up an Anti-Crime Initiative (a task force of sorts) within the department because of it. Now that Captain Lance no longer runs the unit, corruption and crime within in the force has increased significantly. Fortunately Captain Lance makes his return to Star City in time to see his daughter’s, Laurel “The Black Canary” Lance, commemorative statue. However, he is in no shape to run the department or anything else for that matter. Lance has once again fallen off the wagon after Donna Smoak left him. Oliver does convince Lance to come to the ceremony but it is quickly cut short thanks to Tobias Church and crew; they open fire at the service and take Oliver hostage in hopes to drag out the Green Arrow. If they only knew they had him in their possession already.

Oliver insults Church and gets himself isolated from the group. An SCPD officer takes him to a separate room and punches him in the face a few times. Oliver warns the officer about the dangers of hitting him again. The officer laughs as he believes the mayor to be zipped tied to the chair. Oliver shows the officer his now free hands and proceeds to kill the officer in order to keep his secret. Thea aka Speedy briefly comes out of retirement to help her brother only to arrive when he is killing the SCPD officer. Needless to say she was not pleased.

The duo escape and come back to where Oliver was held in order to rescue the other hostages taken by Church. This time Oliver has back up in the form of Speedy and 4 brave and loyal SCPD officers, hand selected by Detective Malone; a man Lance knows is squeaky clean, he doesn’t even double park, and trust worthy. After successfully saving the hostages and escaping before the building blew up, Oliver announces the start of the ACI, which is to be led by Detective Malone.

Church also gathers all of Star City’s criminals for a meeting, asking them to assemble and work together as one under one chain of command, presumably him. However, it seems like his reign of this team won’t last too long, especially with Prometheus in town. It won’t be long before he comes knocking on their door.

Other exciting things “Legacy” brought us:

We finally learned what Laurel made Oliver promise: “Please don’t let me be the last canary, that way a part of me will always be out there with you.” AWWWWW!!!!!!!

Felicity has a new man, ACI team member Officer Benton.

New CG which looks amazing and really added to the episode overall.

Next Week:

Training day for the new recruits

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