Arrow: 10 Mistakes It Must Fix In Season 5

With the sheer volume of superhero TV shows around at the moment, Arrow is in danger of getting left behind.

It's easy now to forget that Arrow can be credited with helping to kick-start the modern trend of comic book series, proving that superheroes could indeed work on the small screen. Not only did it launch its own universe, but since the series debuted Marvel have also got in on the act, with their lighter ABC shows, and the darker Netflix ones. Indeed, Daredevil takes what Arrow started and progresses it to an R-rated level.

As for those Arrowverse shows, which includes The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and now Supergirl, all have started to surpass their progenitor. Each have had their struggles, especially Legends in its first season, but they seem on more solid footing than Arrow does right now, and it's The Flash that's the cornerstone of the universe.

The quality of those shows is part of the reason, but it's also because of a worrying decline in Arrow across seasons 3 and 4. In that time it has been dividing and alienating its fanbase, making stranger and poorer storytelling choices, and moving away from the show everyone loved in the first place. With more fans turning off, or at least getting pissed off with the show, Season 5 takes on added importance.

Thankfully, the show can still be saved, it just needs to correct these mistakes.

Early on in the show's run, the flashbacks were an effective storytelling method. Charting Oliver's time on Lian Yu, they informed the present day narrative and helped to expand Oliver's (and Slade's) character, while also serving as an entertaining part of the show in their own right.

That started to change in Season 3, when the flashbacks took Ollie off the island and instead placed him in Hong Kong. The show tried to tell a story parallel to that of the current one, but it didn't advance our understanding, and the scenes themselves were pretty dull; there was nowhere near enough material to fill the 23 episodes.

Season 4 flashbacks promised us Coast City, an exciting prospect given which major superhero is from there. However, that was simply some bait-and-switch, and Oliver ended up back on Lian Yu. The flashbacks were just as boring as the year before, and despite some forced attempts at making them mirror the present storyline - in terms of linking Shadowspire to Darhk, magic, and Oliver's choices - it never, at any stage, felt necessary or even entertaining.

Season 5 won't be doing away with the flashbacks, but it does have another chance to get them right. Oliver is supposedly heading to Russia, which means we'll finally see him becoming a captain in the Russian mafia, which - even though it's coming a long time after the question was really being asked - should still be interesting to see play out.