Arrow: 8 Ways Season 5 Has Saved The Show

3. A Grounded Set Of Villains

One problem with Arrow is that no villain is ever going to match Slade Wilson/Deathstroke from Season 2. Not only was Manu Bennett a great fit for the role, but it was right place right time: Arrow was hitting its stride, Flash hadn't came along yet, it had stakes that were incredibly personal, and delivered some of the best action on TV between two well-matched characters with a shared history we'd spent a long time exploring.

It's not much of a surprise, then, that Ra's al Ghul and Damien Darhk didn't come close to living up to that. Matt Noble was a solid if unspectacular Ra's, not quite nailing the required presence and suffering from other issues around the League. Neal McDonough was quite brilliant in his role, but the character's powers were too out there, his purpose too broad, and it took Arrow too far away from its grounded nature.

This season we were promised a return to the earlier days, with a villain who was a direct result of Oliver's actions as the Hood, and that's what we've received in Prometheus. He's a terrifying foe and serves as a dark mirror to Oliver, and made for an excellent (and genuinely surprising) twist, with Josh Segarra increasingly great and unhinged as Adrian Chase.

It's not all Prometheus either. Chad Coleman's Tobias Church was an excellent foil to re-establish the street level threat and then bump up Promethus' own billing, Vigilante isn't too far off being as much of a threat as Prometheus and remains a big mystery, and Talia al Ghul is an effective way of tying back to both the show's past and Oliver's. They're all pretty grounded, focused on hand-to-hand or bow-and-arrow combat, and give the show its gritty feel back.