Arrow season 5 spoilers: Oliver returns to Lian Yu

All fans of Arrow, brace yourselves — Oliver is officially heading back to Lian Yu. In some ways, he’s heading to the Green Arrow’s home.

In a post on Twitter (see below), you can see Stephen Amell share a message that should be very familiar to some fans of the first season of the show, not to mention fans of the Slade Wilson / Deathstroke character. While this is not some sign that Manu Bennett is returning anytime soon (he’s currently in the process of filming season 2 of The Shannara Chronicles), it’s an important callback to his evolution and how Lian Yu created so many heroes and monsters. This island and its surroundings were in many ways the origin story of both Oliver and Sara Lance, and then also the beginnings of Slade’s descent into madness.

Yes, looking at this does make us be reminded further precisely how much we miss Slade, but have a little joy at the fact that we are in the midst of the show’s best season since Bennett was a series regular in the case. In Prometheus, we’ve got the first villain who seems ready and capable to match wits with Oliver on some sort of deeper, emotional level. He understands what makes him tick, and has a personal motivation to try and break him rather than kill him. It’s a very different motive than we’re used to with the majority of the show’s villains that the show is throwing out there. Even someone like Slade Wilson did eventually want to kill Oliver, though his plan was to strip everything away from him before doing so.

Oliver returning to Lian Yu is likely to happen via some of the flashbacks, which should help to bridge the gap at this point between where we are right now in Russia to where are at the time of the pilot. There will be no more flashbacks after this season, so this marks the chance for the writers to get all of this out of their system. (To be fair, it’s possible that the team comes up with another device for season 6, but nothing is confirmed as of yet.)

What we can tell you is that if you want to get some additional news and insight right now when it comes to Arrow season 5, our suggestion is that you head over to the link here.

What do you want to see from Oliver back on Lian Yu? Share now in the comments! (Photo: The CW.)