ARROW Returning to Street Crime And Mobsters In Season 5

Perhaps the desire to introduce spinoffs for The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and the animated Vixen series is what led Arrow astray after season 2?  Once a grounded series, where the producers cited Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy as inspiration, the lid on superpowers and magic was blown off its hinges with the introduction of the Lazarus Pit, magic and particle accelerator explosions.  But with the fifth season set to kickoff three months from now, it appears Arrow will be attempting to get back to its roots.  Said Stephen Amell, "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."  Executive producer Wendy Mercile added, "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."

Sounds good on paper and the introduction of the new vigilante team in the Comic-Con trailer certainly conveyed tones of  a show looking to start fresh.  It will be interesting to see whether the show sticks to this mandate or reintroduces the unpredictability of magic and superpowers in the back-half of the season.