Oliver Queen is responsible for his next enemy. The Star City superhero will be up against a new villain in “Arrow” Season 5, and showrunner Wendy Mericle said it’s Oliver’s fault that this bad guy exists.

“[The villain] is somebody Oliver unwittingly created in Season 1 when he was a killer in a hood,” Mericle said in the print edition of TV Guide. “This guy is going to be collateral damage who lost someone to the Hood and [has] spent the last several years training and plotting for revenge. He will be a true dark mirror to Oliver Queen.”

Mericle wouldn’t name the villain in the interview, but as previously reported, Tobias Church (Chad L. Coleman) will be the big bad in Season 5 of the CW drama. Church is a gangster who wants to unite all the villains in Star City and lead them. He’ll consider the Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) to be a major threat.

The idea that Oliver inadvertently caused his newest enemy’s rise to power lines up perfectly with a hint that Amell dropped this spring. “I’ve heard that our big bad, our villain, is something that you can really only do once you’re in the fifth, sixth or seventh season of a TV show,” Amell teased to Variety in May.

Church won’t be the only reference to Season 1 Oliver. The flashbacks are in their fifth year, and Oliver was gone for five years. Presumably, this flashback storyline will lead into where Oliver was when the series first started. Mericle said the glimpses into the past will be set in Russia and focus on Oliver’s time with the Bratva. Judging from the photo Amell posted to Twitter, it seems like the future superhero will be honing his fighting skills.

It might take more than a good punch to take out Church, though. The new villain doesn’t have magic powers, but Oliver will still need help defeating him. He’ll be rebuilding Team Arrow with some new members, including Curtis (Echo Kellum), a.k.a. Mr. Terrific. “We will be doing a real origin story on Mr. Terrific in Season 5,” Mericle added. They’ll also have some help from several new vigilantes.

“Arrow” Season 5 premieres Wednesday, Oct. 5, at 8 p.m. EDT on The CW.

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