‘Arrow’ season 2 spoilers: See Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen with a mask!

There has always been one part of the superhero genre that has been a little cheesy: How some people are never able to figure out that someone that they know is actually a secret crime-fighter. While “Arrow” has been able to largely avoid this problem, haven’t either Laurel or Quentin Lance ever thought about why Oliver disappears so much, or how The Hood at least seems to be around the same height and weight as him? Also, is that hood really that secretive for the character?

Maybe it is for that reason that we are going to find the character finally getting some sort of a mask moving forward … even though we don’t really see this making that much of a difference at all. You can still see enough of the man’s face to not really cover up who he is.

You can see a first look at this new take on the Oliver costume to the left via Entertainment Weekly, and executive producer Andrew Kreisberg does his best to explain the need for a change:

”Conceptually, it was something we wanted to do because Oliver himself is evolving as the Arrow–  from vigilante to hero, sort of from Arrow to Green Arrow — and we wanted to see that progression in his costume as well. As Oliver is embracing being a hero, being a hero means stepping out of the dark and being more of a symbol, so he has to take steps to conceal his identity more.”

This mask does at least mean that we will see The Hood coming out of the shadows at least a little bit, and we could see this at least marginally helping him when it comes to characters who do not know Oliver Queen. But everyone else? Let’s just say that there is a reason that you have to suspend belief sometimes when it comes to shows like this.

This is the second time that we have heard some big news regarding “Arrow” over the past several days; we just found out yesterday that Grant Gustin’s character of The Flash is only going to appear in two of the show’s episodes, and is not going to have some sort of backdoor pilot that airs a little later next year.

Photo: The CW