One thing many Arrow fans consistently complain about this season is the decreasing relevance of the show's flashback scenes.
Although those scenes played an important part in the show's first two seasons, since then, they've become less important to the series' overall plot. However, even knowing that, and understanding that fans feel that these scenes are pointless, Arrow showrunners still plan on continuing to use those flashbacks in season five.
"Part of the appeal of the flashbacks — certainly in the first two years, but I think the first three years — is seeing what a big difference it is between Oliver Queen in the present day and Oliver Queen five years ago," Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim said to TV Line. "The problem is that we are telling a five-year story in the flashbacks of Oliver becoming the guy you met in the pilot. So the deeper you get into the flashbacks, the closer he becomes to being that guy, and, thus, you lose that element of the flashbacks that was so interesting, which is how different he was ... That's something we have struggled with this year."
In Arrow's first two seasons, the flashbacks were important, as they explained how Oliver Queen gained the skills and personality changes that eventually made him take up the role of vigilante. This season, though, the flashbacks show no continuity with present day, and often feel like unimportant filler on a show that some fans feel has either already jumped the shark or is very close to doing so.
Co-executive Arrow producer Wendy Mericle did state that this season's flashback scenes are "emotionally or thematically connected" to Oliver's present, but that the writers deliberately wanted to play around with flashbacks that have nothing to do with what's going on in the rest of the episodes, the very thing about which fans seem unhappy.
Add that to fans being upset about the recent killing off of a major character whose last words were about pushing the Oliver and Felicity romance yet again, and there are many fans who may make season four their last.
Mericle promised that the writers have a plan in mind and know where the story with the flashbacks will go and that at least a few key details about Oliver will eventually get revealed this season through those scenes.
Arrow airs on The CW on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EDT.
