Just a few points before I go to bed . 1 . Dead Black Canary is probably closer to S 1 than alive BC because she wasn ' t BC by a long shot . 2 . Felicity has MAJORLY taken a backseat this season . They ' ve had one episode where they focused on the relationship between her an Oliver , where they basically spent 2 3 minutes out of 42 mind you discussing it maturely and agreeing to move on . No drama , no crying , just an adult conversation . 3 . They ' ve made a point all season to show how out of their league the new team is . 4 . Yeah , Spartan has a shit helmet . He ' s got a new one that ' s better than the old one , but still pretty lame . Overall the season has been flooded with callbacks to S 1 , multiple legitimately good villain arcs the season opened with a 4 episode villain arc featuring Chad L . Coleman from The Walking Dead , a so far mysterious and legitimately dangerous and imposing villain no magic bullshit , just a straight up badass . There ' s a lot of Oliver Queen doing his day job as The Mayor , which has meant the return of Oliver Queen as a character outside of being GA . This includes multiple new cast members who do not know his identity seriously missing for the last two seasons . The fight choreography is back in it ' s stride . It ' s seriously up there with the first two seasons . They ' ve also had a trick arrow sometimes multiple each episode . The flashbacks are legitimately interesting . No boring slavery , no mind numbing arcs , it ' s just Oliver enduring a shitload of torture , trying to kill people and hunting down a particular enemy . We also have the return of Anatoly Knyazev , from S 2 on Lian Yu . Oliver also isn ' t losing every fight this season , I think he ' s been legitimately beaten once . And even that would be a stretch . Oh , and if you really want the icing on the cake , the show openly acknowledges Felicity in the backseat . She ' s actively ignored by the team , her preaching included . Like they actually just cut her off or ignore her all together . Oliver stands up to her , doesn ' t back down . She ' s had a couple of annoying moments in the season , but that ' s no different from every season . Hell , Oliver stands up to everyone . There ' s a point when the new team try to stop him and I ' ll just leave that at that . Genuinely the only thing I dislike about the season is Curtis and at least we get to see him get the shit kicked out of him regularly . Oh , and lastly . They basically address plot points the next episode if it ' s a liesecret . So far , nothing has been kept secret or lied about that served to create drama . edit And Donna is gone . Pretty sure for a long time , by the look of it . They offscreen addressed her disappearance and never once even bothered to show her in the Previously on section to give context clues for her disappearance .