Arrow premiered last week, and the first two episodes have already been very different than any other season of Arrow we have seen so far.  We have seen Oliver dark and angry before, but this time is different.  Last season ended with Oliver trading his own freedom for the safety of his family and team.  This season begins months later with Oliver in prison trying to keep his head down, while Felicity and William are living in witness protection and completely hidden away from their old life.  All of the old team members have different lives now.  Alter-universe Laurel is now Mayor.  John is working for ARGUS along with Curtis.  Wild Dog is running his own boxing gym with his daughter, and Dinah is the new Chief of Police.  Felicity has not been able to move on and after being found and attacked by Diaz even while in hiding, she is done with hiding.  She wants to fight.  She knows she will never have her family safe and be free until Diaz is gone.

Meanwhile, prison has changed Oliver.  The Green Arrow that we know and love is gone.  He is fighting to survive.  Fighting to get back to his family. But mainly trying to keep to himself and just do his time.  Until he realizes that he can no longer do that.  After being bullied and forced to be different, we finally see that he still has some fight left in him.  Another change is that we are no longer getting flashbacks, instead we are getting flash forwards.  Flashes to a future date when William is a grown-up and returns to Lian Yu. There he finds Roy who is still wearing his Red Hood.  We don’t know what has happened, except that it appears that Thea and Roy didn’t stay together and that Felicity and Oliver never return to William.  For the audience, I am not sure that knowing this future so early on is the best choice of the writers.  Honestly it is kind of distressing for me.  I still want to believe that Oliver gets out of prison and that Felicity, Oliver and William get to be a family again. But these flash forwards show a very different outcome.  One where the team doesn’t appear to ever reunite and William is left to fend for himself.

The Team has been divided before, but this season things are different.  Everyone is in a completely different place with different opinions about what to do next.  Felicity realizes that she and John are no longer fighting the same fight.  She knows she needs to reach out to someone else.  So instead she turns to the same FBI agent that put Oliver in jail–knowing that she is the one person who wants to catch Diaz as badly as she does.  Sadly for William he is being sent back into witness protection services alone.  So now he has lost his mother, his father and even his step-mother.  Alter-universe Laurel is still grieving the loss of her quasi father Detective Lance, and by all appearances seems to be a different person than before.  Oh, and did I mention there is a new Arrow on the scene?  We have no idea if this Arrow is good or bad, or what they even want.  There have been no clues as to who they are.  But Wild Dog is supportive of this new Arrow, while Dinah is opposed.

I don’t know exactly how I feel about this new story line for Arrow.  I am hoping they do something amazing with it, but for me the Arrow should always be a hero even if he is a dark one.  And he needs to be with his Team in some capacity.  I much prefer them working together against an enemy–no matter how horrible.  I also wish they had chosen a new villain for this season.  I had enough of Diaz all last season and am kind of in disbelief that he is still in this season as well.  Being a fan of Arrow for this long means that I will stick with it until the end, but I have to say that I am not all that impressed with this season so far. I am actually enjoying the other CW super hero shows more than Arrow at this point.  But we will see what this new story line brings!