Season 5 begins with a deadly new criminal, Tobias Church, threatening Star City, which forces Oliver to consider forming a new team of superheroes to help him do battle. In flashbacks, Oliver faces off against the Bratva in Russia.

Arrow kicks off the fifth season with an episode that I can only describe as choppy and a bit frenetic. I loathed the fourth season (as it seems many did) and the creators feel like they got the message and have decided to get Ollie and his team closer to their street roots.

A new group of vigilantes have risen having taken the example of Arrow as their inspiration. Of course Ollie isn’t the biggest fan of that and would rather they didn’t. But, there’s lots of crime as a new crop of crooks have rose as well. With Black Canary’s death still on his mind Ollie isn’t sure if he should get a new team. The concept is good but the episode is just a cacophany of events, one after another.

The episode feels like you came half-way into something. It’s an improvement over last season, but there’s so much the feels choppy and like a missed arrow.

The production value is upped but that also brings a lot of bad with explosions that look like they’re from low grade magic tricks and stunts that are just… bad. Really bad. There’s one scene that involves sensors and explosions that looks comically bad.

There’s some good. There’s some bad. There’s a break neck speed in the episode that doesn’t feel like it works. This could be a bumpy season.

Overall rating: 6.95