Arrow Season 5 may be months away from debuting on TV, but work has already begun on crafting the latest storyline for the Emerald Archer and his allies. Yesterday, we learned that Season 5 will have a new vigilante patrolling the streets of Star City. Now the word is out that the show is casting a crime lord villain who will be loosely inspired by Idris Elba’s character on The Wire, Stringer Bell.
According to the description from TV Line, this character, tentatively named “Anton Church,” is an “apex predator” who is seeking to fill the void left by the Season 4 baddies Damien Dark and H.I.V.E. He’s skilled at “cutting through the shadows” to take out the biggest threat first, which for Arrow, of course, means Oliver Queen. In addition to Stringer Bell (seen below), the report also listed Game of Thrones and Aquaman star Jason Momoa as inspiration for a “physical prototype.” Until now, the only thing we knew about Arrow’s new main villain is that he won’t have any superpowers, according to Stephen Amell.
To save you the trouble of typing “Anton Church” into a search engine, he is not a DC Comics character. As is the case with most early character reports on these kind of shows, this is a pseudonym meant to disguise the figure’s identity until the show officially reveals it, either on their own or to a specific outlet. So it’s hard to deduce who this person will be, though he obviously will have brains and brawn. On The Wire, Stringer Bell, a drug kingpin, was calm under pressure and used his intelligence to carefully plan strategies rather than rush into action. Oh, and he was one of he most ruthless villains TV has ever known.
Okay, so maybe that doesn’t narrow down the list of candidates by that much, but it definitely sounds like he’ll be a welcome change of pace from the previous mystical baddies, Ra’s al Ghul and Damien Darhk. Personally, the Batman villain Black Mask comes to mind, and if Gotham or the upcoming Batman movie don’t plan on using him, he could be the latest member from the Caped Crusader’s rogues gallery Arrow has adapted for their own needs. Now the question is whether “Anton” is targeting Oliver as Star City’s mayor (if he’s still in office by that point) or as Green Arrow.
While the new Arrow character reports are most welcome, details about Season 5 are still relatively sparse. After recurring during Season 4, Echo Kellum will now play Curtis Holt as a series regular. This will also be the final year of flashbacks to Oliver’s time away from home, and in the Season 4 finale, he set forth to Russia to fulfill his promise to Taiana. These gazes back into the past will finally reveal how he became connected to the Bratva, a.k.a. the Russian Mafia.
Arrow Season 5 will drop sometime in the fall (likely early October) on The CW.
