Arrow Season 5 Casts Its Bratva Leader, Previews Villain Prometheus

The first official synopsis for Arrow Season 5 is here, and we have everything else you need to know, too!

The show that really started it all for the CW will be back for at least one more season. The CW revealed plans for Arrowseason 5 back in March, and the first information is starting to make its way out there. This article is your one-stop location for everything you need to know about Arrowseason 5...

Arrow Season 5 Latest News

Arrow has cast David Meunier in the recurring role of Ishmael Gregor. According to Deadline, Gregor is "the slick and intimidating Pakhan ("Godfather") of the Bratva, whom Anatoly (David Nykl) reports and [who] takes a special interest in Oliver Queen."

Sounds like Gregor will mostly feature in the flashbacks, but — as we've learned from previous seasons — flashback villains don't always stay in the flashbacks.

Arrow seems to really be focusing on making the flashbacks, er, watchable this season, casting some exciting talent to take on the Bratva characters that will no doubt populate Oliver's time in Russia. Meunier was great as recurring character/criminal Johnny Crowder on Justified, so we know he has the acting chops to make the flashbacks more interesting.

Here's Meunier chatting withh HuffPost about playing the bad guy...

We've also got some new photos from the Arrow season 5 premiere, which can all be viewed in the gallery at the top of the article. The various images preview Oliver fighting some Russian gang members in his mayoral digs rather than his suit, the return of Anatoly, and our first real look at Prometheus...

Arrow Season 5 Story

There aren't too many new details in here, but we figured you'd like to see it anyway...

After a violent shipwreck, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) was missing and presumed dead for five years before being discovered alive on a remote island in the North China Sea. Oliver returned home to Star City, bent on righting the wrongs of his family and fighting injustice. As the Green Arrow, he protects his city with the help of former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), computer science expert Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), his vigilante-trained sister Thea Queen (Willa Holland), former police captain Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne) and brilliant inventor Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum). Newly appointed Mayor Oliver Queen finds himself challenged as he fights on two fronts for the future of Star City.
With Diggle back in the military and Thea adamant about hanging up her hood as Speedy, Team Green Arrow is down to just Oliver and Felicity – but they’re no longer the only vigilantes in town. Green Arrow’s public defeat of Damien Darhk at the end of Season Four has inspired a new crop of masked heroes to step up and defend the city, though their painful inexperience makes them obstacles, rather than allies, in the field. The arrival of a deadly new adversary will force Oliver to confront questions about his own legacy, both as mayor and as the Green Arrow.

Mericle also teased the de-mystification of Star City. (Thank god.) After a season particularly ruled by magic, Arrow is looking to return to the gritty groundedness of its first season. Speaking on the subject, Mericle teased...

This year we’ve gone back to the real criminal underworld of Star City. We’ll be dealing a lot with the criminal underworld and the kind of gangs and mobs that are there. We’ll see Bratva, we’ll see Triad, we’ll see the Los Halcones, and we’ll see some of the Bertinelli family, as well. You won’t necessarily see some of the same faces, but you’ll see some of those same groups from earlier on. It’s much more of a gritty crime threat to the city ...
For us, it’s a little more real. If you look at where the world is right now, there is this focus on what’s happening in our cities and what’s happening with violence in the streets. We’re able to reflect that back, in some way, and have dialogues about it in the writers room, and have our characters talk about it, too. It’s not magic. It’s not metas. It feels very much of the world we set out to explore, in Season 1.

Arrow Season 5 Trailer

Fresh off the release of a new trailer for The Flash season 3,we've got a brand new trailer giving us a glimpse into Arrow season 5 and it teases a new chapter in the Oliver Queen story. Check it out...

The biggest takeaways from the relatively short trailer? Laurel is getting a statue. Curtis is trying to do the salmon ladder. And Thea seems to have a lot of authority — as she probably should, given past leadership decisions of this group.

Here's the previously-released ArrowSeason 5 trailer, revealing a team of new vigilantes, and our first look at one of the villains...

ArrowSeason 5 officially kicked off production on the first episode, which is called "Legacy" on July 6th. It boasts a story by Greg Berlanti, a script by Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle (so that's all three of the showrunners accounted for), and it will be directed by James Bamford.

Mr. Bamford is also the stunt coordinator on Arrow, and helped give the show its action-identity. This is the episode that Stephen Amell is teasing will have one of the most punishing single take action sequences in TV history. Get ready!