Arrow went through some major highs and lows in the course of its fourth season, and the finale left the show looking very different than it did in the premiere. The series is currently on hiatus until Season 5 kicks off in the fall, but that hasn't meant that all is quiet on the Arrow front. New characters have been announced for next season, and the latest will be a vigilante with what is pretty much the best name ever. This new vigilante will be known as...wait for it...Vigilante.
The new vigilante Vigilante -- also known as Adrian Chase, if you want to be dull -- will be played by Josh Segarra of Chicago P.D. in Season 5 of Arrow. The character has been described as Star City's new district attorney who has befriended the interim mayor Oliver Queen. Chase will originally seek to clean up the streets of Star City via the justice system before taking on more clandestine actions. Segarra has signed on for a regular role, according to Deadline, so we can bet that he won't meet the same fate as the rest of Star City's district attorneys and end up murdered after a couple of appearances.
If Adrian Chase's Arrow role is at all similar to his DC comic role, however, he won't be entirely free of tragedy. DC's Adrian Chase first appeared in a New Teen Titans story in 1983 as a New York D.A. whose family had been killed by the mob. The loss of his wife and children motivates him to pursue justice outside of the law. Arrow hasn't always stuck to comic canon for plot, but Arrow does love killing off women to kick-start origin stories, so it's a safe bet that if Mrs. Chase exists, she will be dead before or shortly into Season 5.
If you're anything like me, you snickered just a little bit at the fact that a vigilante called Vigilante will be joining the eponymous scene in Star City, and not Angie Tribeca or some other spoof. Arrow has pretty much been embracing the ridiculous lately, and Vigilante the vigilante could fit right in for Season 5.
Personally, however, I'm a bit wary of what his regular cast status will mean for the rest of the Arrow squad. The show has already signed another actor as a regular to play the new vigilante Wild Dog in Season 5, and Echo Kellum was bumped up to regular status for Season 5 as well. Even if Arrow is looking to replace Katie Cassidy after Laurel's death, three guys is a lot to fill into one gap. Hopefully, the rest of Team Arrow will still get plenty of screen time.
That said, Adrian Chase trying to work within the law and then turning to vigilantism when the law fails him could really work as an origin story. As the D.A., he could present a fascinating juxtaposition of enforcing the established law and enacting his own rogue version of order. Arrow never pursued any conflict between Laurel's drive to fight as the Black Canary and her oath as an attorney; Arrow could well do so with Chase's drive to fight as Vigilante.
Unfortunately, there are still months of hiatus left until we can expect to see just how hard Josh Segarra thinks about it before finally coming up with the name Vigilante on Arrow. Check out our summer TV premiere schedule to see what you can watch in the meantime, and take a look at our breakdown of what we know so far about Arrow Season 5 for a peek at what's to come next.
