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Arrow To Take Back-To-Basics Approach In Season 5

When Arrow began its run four years ago, it was set in a world inspired by The Dark Knight Trilogy in the sense that superpowers didn't exist. By Season 2, that notion was completely thrown out the window when we met Barry Allen, who would soon become The Flash and get his own spin-off. Since then, we have seen mysticism introduced via villains such as Damien Darhk and Ra's al Ghul.

When Arrow began its run four years ago, it was set in a world inspired by The Dark Knight Trilogy in the sense that superpowers didn’t exist. By Season 2, that notion was completely thrown out the window when we met Barry Allen, who would soon become The Flash and get his own spinoff. Since then, we have seen mysticism introduced via villains such as Damien Darhk and Ra’s al Ghul.

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Entertainment Weekly had the chance to catch up with the cast and executive producer Wendy Mericle this past weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, and one repeating theme throughout the interview was the desire to bring the series back to its roots, so to speak, and have Team Arrow deal with more street-level threats.

Mericle elaborated:

“We’re going back, like Stephen [Amell] said, back to season 1 so we’re going to have some really badass monsters. We’re kinda really going back to the crime and the city, when we come back to it, it is – Mayor Queen’s in office and things are better and there’s no ultimate, impending terrorist attacks, but there is a lot of street crime and the mobsters have really taken over the city.”

That sounds like a welcome change to me. Personally, I’ve always felt it most appropriate for non-powered heroes to deal with non-powered villains. One of the things that makes Green Arrow and his cohorts so appealing is that they dispense justice to bad guys who commit crimes we often see in the real world, albeit with a certain comic book flair.

Lead actor Stephen Amell shared Mericle’s sentiment, yet also took the time to sing the praises of stunt co-ordinator James Bamford, who will once again have the opportunity to sit in the director’s chair this season:

“Bam – we call him Bam Bam – gets it and gets the theme of the show, and it feels like it’s a street-level crime-fighting show and it’s about saving Star City and cleaning it up, which is what the show is. I think the best version of the show is when we focus on that.”

Arrow returns for its fifth season on Wednesday, October 5 on The CW.