Arrow: 8 Ways Season 5 Has Saved The Show

8. Cutting Back On The Magic

Arrow started off about as grounded as a superhero show can be, with the onus very much on using weapons and hand-to-hand combat, and when characters die (as they often did) they'd stay that way, meaning the deaths of Tommy Merlyn and Moira Queen packed a real punch.

However, the arrival of The Flash completely changed this world by introducing metahumans, and Arrow tried to adapt rather than just doing its own thing. It introduced the League of Assassins, and with it the resurrecting capabilities of the Lazarus Pit; later it introduced Damien Darhk and his mystical dark forces. There was magic in the air, but not in the scripts. Characters came back from the dead, but the show felt like it was dying.

This season has largely cut back on all of the magic and mysticism that's plagued the last couple of seasons. While Flash and Legends of Tomorrow can deal with metahumans and time travel, Arrow undoubtedly works best on a more purely human level. There was an element of the mystic with Rory, but it wasn't overdone nor a key part of the plot. For the most part it's been left behind, returning to grounded days of earlier, and that's definitely paid off.