Arrow Season 5: 10 Things You Need To Know

When Arrow first started, it had a five season plan.

That was the goal: get to Season 5, and the story of Oliver, the man who was lost on the island and the one who wears the costume, would be coming to its natural end.

It's unclear yet whether that will prove to be the case. Arrow's popularity soared over its first couple of years, delivering intense, furious, and gripping TV that generally wasn't available when it came to superhero shows. However, it has been in a downward spiral since the early days of Season 3, and hasn't fully managed to pull itself out of it.

After two seasons that were at best mixed bags, Arrow may well find itself forced into realising that five-year plan whether it wants to or not. And that's where Season 5 becomes increasingly important. It may or may not be the show's last (I'd wager not, since The CW's DC Universe is continuing to expand, and Arrow is the foundation of that), but it does represent it coming to some sort of end.

The show will come full circle, old characters will be back, and even some of the new ones will have ties to the past. As Arrow Season 5 steadily approaches, here's what you need to know.

At the end of Season 4, Team Arrow was a pretty disparate group. Diggle left to go back in the army and hopefully find himself, Thea was hanging up the Speedy outfit and leaving vigilantism behind, and Felicity was the only one left besides Oliver in the Arrowcave, but their relationship was fractured, and she herself had yet to process the emotional trauma of all those nuke deaths.

For Thea, she hasn't left Star City completely. Instead, she'll be turning her focus to Oliver's Mayoral duties. Unsurprisingly, he's not a great Mayor (running around at night as the Green Arrow probably doesn't help), but Thea is said to have a real knack for it, and we'll be seeing her essentially running the office this year.

Dig will be in Chechyna with the Special Forces, still trying to deal with the deaths of his brother and Laurel, and his part in them, although he will be back at some point - with a new helmet designed by Cisco - and have to deal with all the new members of the team.

For Felicity, it's going to be about trying to continue working for Oliver while still coming to terms with the amount of people she inadvertently killed, which given it was around 2000 may take some time. There's also apparently going to be a new boyfriend for her, which could either significantly reduce or increase all of the 'Olicity' drama this year.