This surprisingly good trailer for ARROW season 5 cannot be stopped

Pardon my French but season 4 of Arrow was merde complète et totale. After a constantly improving first season and an incredible second season, the CW produced DC Comics show hit an uneven patch in its third. But whereas season 3 was a combination of highs and lows, season 4 was nothing but lows. So, so very freaking low. One second after the credits started rolling on the laughably bad fourth season finale, I had thrown in the proverbial towel. I was done this show and it’s suddenly horrendous fight choreography, ridiculous scripting and cheap looking production.

And then they announced Dolph Lundgren would be in a villain in the upcoming fifth season and it looked like I was going to be needing my towel back. Damn it.

Besides for the addition of Lundgren, this would be the last season to feature the tiresome flashback mechanics, and the show had also got rid of some annoying characters and started taking it a little bit back to its early days as Steven Amell’s Oliver Queen now had to train a new team consisting of young, untested masked vigilantes. An action packed new extended trailer has dropped showing off some of that training, including Echo Kellum’s Curtis Holt finally taking his first steps to becoming his comic book counterpart Mr. Terrific.

Along with him, we also have Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez), Artemis (Madison McLaughlin), and Ragman (Joe Dinicol) joining the team, and get the first look at this season’s other big villain Tobias Church, played by The Walking Dead and The Wire‘s Chad Coleman.

So two things: 1) Alas, no Lundgren yet; and 2) how badly did they miss that punch at 0:51 mark?! Yeesh! Besides for those two fumbles (well, one really – but it’s a bad one!), this does indeed look much better than the drek we got given last season. Then again, I’ve had morning constitutionals that look better than last season’s Arrow.

Arrow returns to screens in a couple of weeks on October 5th.

Last Updated: September 22, 2016