Nocking Point: Arrow Episode 501, "Legacy"

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Submitted by RJ Carter on Thu, 10/06/2016 - 14:36

Stop me if you've seen this one before: A CW hero begins a new season of a much-watched show, and the premiere ultimately reveals a new villain with a set of abilities exactly the same as the hero.

With THE FLASH, we started with the Reverse-Flash, moved on to Zoom, and are now potentially facing off against The Rival and/or Savitar. In ARROW we've been up against the Dark Archer, Damian Darkh (who admittedly was a bit more than a weapons master), and we conclude "Legacy" by meeting another hooded character who leaps off buildings and fires arrows. It's a big DC Universe out there, writing staff. You don't always have to have an equal-but-opposite villain.

But I'm moving too fast -- something I usually reserve for the show with the red-suited character.

At the end of last season, we saw Team Arrow go their separate ways. The death of Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy), the Black Canary, seemed to sober up everyone from this drunken binge of "leg's all put on leather and go fight crime." And so Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), the newly elected mayor of Star City, goes it alone as the Green Arrow, and it's a lot harder without all his backup. Sure, he still has Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) and her eager assistant Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum) as his I.T. team (and who in I.T. wouldn't rather be super-hackers tracing bad guys and putting them away?), but when it comes to the enforcement arm, Green Arrow is it.

Except...he's not.

There are others in Star City, vigilantes who have been inspired by the Green Arrow to go out and fight the good fight. Some of them only appear in pencil sketches (and if they bring in Adrian Chase as The Vigilante the way that sketch promises, you will hear me squeal from coast to coast!), but one of them we get to meet live and in person -- Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez), the hockey-masked bruiser who's been given the name Wild Dog. And while Ollie pins for the old team to come back together, Felicity urges him to move forward with his life and recruit the newcomers.

Ollie's going to need the help as soon as he can, too, because Star City is being invaded by an ambitious criminal leader, Tobias Church (Chad L. Coleman), nicknamed Charon. He's ruthless, and his first act to take over the city is to call out Green Arrow and take him down. Unfortunately, his plan for this is to kidnap the mayor and use him as bait.

Oliver's time spent as Green Arrow has been cutting into his duties as mayor. And his speeches as mayor have been undercutting his support in the police department, as he's been publicly calling out police corruption at police events. And while he holds out hope that at least his sister Thea (Willa Holland) may return to the streets as Speedy, he may have to rely more on Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne), former cop who has fallen off the wagon again.

As Church insinuates himself as the leader of all the crime families in Star City for the purpose of removing Green Arrow, we meet up with another villain during the closing credits. A little research digs up the name Prometheus for this newcomer. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the DC Universe, Prometheus is not just another bowslinger. In fact, he didn't really use bows at all in the comics. He was, however, the "anti-Batman," the villain who had a contingency plan for everything. On top of that, he also had a helmet he wore that allowed direct input into his brain so that he could program it with the knowledge and reflexes he needed. If he ran into something that required a black belt in karate, simply put on the helmet, insert the disk labelled 'Karate Black Belt' and suddenly he was one. You get the idea.

If this is truly that Prometheus, Green Arrow could be up against one of the biggest villains the Justice League itself has ever faced -- and lost against. It also happens, however, that in the comics, Green Arrow was the one who managed to finally take down Prometheus, after a great cost to Star City and the personal loss of one of his crimefighting partners. Fans, be ready to cringe if Roy Harper decides to return to Star City this season!