Season 5 of Arrow is set to feature a whole bunch of new villains, but one will be bigger and badder than all the rest as Oliver prepares to finish his five-year development from the ruthless Hood to the hero Green Arrow. The next antagonistic archer will be known as Prometheus, and his connection to Oliver's past may give him a personal edge over Star City's Emerald Archer. Executive producer Wendy Mericle has this to say about how Prometheus will connect to Oliver's days gone by:
It does tie back to Season 1. I will tell you that it's going to be a shock to Oliver to find out who this guy is and what his backstory is. We really wanted Oliver [Stephen Amell] to have to reflect on who he was when he came back from the island. Specifically, also what legacy his father had left -- his original mission. The thing he says when he comes back is 'I want to right my father's wrongs.'
Arrow's fifth season will feature an Oliver who has never been farther from the person he was when he first returned from Lian Yu with a mission to rid Starling of the criminal and corrupt. Showrunner Marc Guggenheim has already revealed that Prometheus will fit with the theme of legacy for Season 5, so Wendy Mericle's hint that his origin will tie back to Oliver's actions in Season 1 means that we should definitely expect Oliver to face some demons from his early days as a vigilante.
It looks like at least one of those demons will be wrapped up in a pretty package. Prometheus' alter ego - who is currently known only as "James" - has been described as a contemporary of Oliver's who is extremely charming and charismatic. He has a trauma in his past that set him on a quest for revenge. Considering how kill-happy Oliver was in Season 1, it might be hard not to side with James at least a little bit. Oliver killed kind of a lot of people, and some of them probably deserved lighter sentences than being shot to death with arrows.
The public of Star City may believe that the Green Arrow is an entirely different archer from the Arrow who "died" in Season 3, but James will evidently figure out that Oliver has been the man beneath both hoods. This presumably means that James is the only person in Star City who doesn't need to have his eyes or her eyes checked. Hopefully Oliver dealing with his actions in Season 1 will mean a revisitation of his father's notebook that had served as his roster of criminals. The notebook has been missing since the end of Season 1. If James lost a loved one due to Oliver's list, the time may be right for it to resurface.
Oliver won't be the only character dealing with problems from his past. Mericle went on in her chat with Zap2It to tease that Diggle will still be dealing with the death of his brother and Felicity won't be entirely over her role in the nuclear destruction of Havenrock. The original members of Team Arrow will have a lot on their plates; hopefully Arrow can deliver on all of their stories in this all-important fifth season.
Arrow returns to The CW on Wednesday, October 5 at 8 p.m. ET. Check out our fall TV premiere schedule to see when your other favorite shows will be back, and don't forget to take a look at our breakdown of what we know so far about Arrow Season 5.
