Arrow: Season 5 is going to be exploring the theme of legacy and what happens when the past comes back to haunt you. For Oliver Queen, that means wanting to have a solid team of heroes ready to protect Star City, especially now that he's mayor and Team Arrow as we know it has disbanded.

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Oliver Queen

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Felicity Smoak

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John Diggle

Thea Queen

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Curtis Holt

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Quentin Lance

"[Season 5] deals with legacy, it deals with the past, and the dramatic irony, the dramatic tension, that we get from it is Oliver's always been a guy -- admittedly, not the most self aware dude ever -- but he's always been someone who is trying to move forward. He's always trying to evolve," executive producer Marc Guggenheim told IGN. "The challenge for Oliver this year is how do you evolve and move forward when the past keeps grabbing at you, trying to pull you back."Part of that is going to be striking a balance between his former team members and the new heroes who will be joining Team Arrow. Below, Guggenheim and executive producer Wendy Mericle offer teases of what to expect for Arrow's main characters.Oliver Queen understands that he can't protect Star City on his own, and in Season 5 he's assembling a new Team Arrow to work alongside him. He, Felicity and Curtis will bring on newcomers like Evelyn Sharp and Wild Dog, who will then face off against an array of villains popping up in the wake of Damien Darhk's death."He's going to have a team, so we have talked about having a team of villains, and how would Oliver get his new guys who are really rough around the edges -- totally wet around the ears, not ready for this -- how does he get them ready to take on really trained [enemies]?" said Mericle. "He's very cognizant of the fact that Laurel died in this line of work and he doesn't want that for them."Guggenheim promised an Oliver who is "trying to be an optimistic" and "trying to be bright" -- though of course "circumstances just keep trying to pull him back into the darkness."Felicity is still going to be by Oliver's side when Season 5 begins, but as an ally and a friend; viewers won't have to see any residual baggage from their breakup. "We've talked a lot about how to deal with that," said Guggenheim. "We always play the true five month gap between the season finale and season premiere. And every time we've talked about Oliver and Felicity should talk about their feelings, we realized, wow, that feels really wrong because they've had five months to talk about their feelings. Any mature couple, they've had that conversation."Guggenheim likens their relationship to being closer to where it was in Season 1, where "Felicity was Oliver's sort of light and voice of reason, and voice of positivity, and she's still trying to be that," while Oliver is "again torn between that aspiration and his own nature and his past." He did tease that episode 5 is "probably the most Olicity-centric episode we will have done in Season 5 so far.""There's a very Olicity-heavy scene in [episode] 5. They're adults. At the same time, it feels a little like Season 1," Guggenheim said. "I honestly don't know how many shows have done this where you've gotten two characters engage, broke them up, but still kept them together on the show as partners."Just because Diggle headed off to the army doesn't mean he's going to be out of the show. "With Diggle, he'll be in the army. We'll have storylines with him. Just because he's gone doesn't mean [Team Arrow] don't want him back, or that they're not trying," teased Mericle. "There's definitely contact, and he's going to have his own story in the army where he realizes maybe this isn't the place. Maybe he's going to have to still keep looking for these answers about how to get his sense of mortality back."Expect Thea to follow her older brother into the mayor's office. "She's going to be working as Oliver's chief of staff -- the youngest, least experienced, no college degree staff in the history of Star City," Mericle said with a laugh. This will tie back to the season's theme of legacy, as Thea proves to have a lot of her mother's political prowess in her."She's really good at it. And the fun part with her is that she's Moira's daughter, and Malcom's daughter, and she's trying to be normal," said Mericle. "Can she ever really be normal? It's a good question. With that DNA? Yeah, who knows? She might be a little -- maybe, a little House of Cards, a little Moira-esque action going on. It might be really fun."Beyond helping Oliver and Felicity assemble a team of costumed heroes to protect the streets of Star City, Curtis is going to become one himself: Mr. Terrific."The show has always had these weird moments of... is this going to work? And if it doesn't work, it's really a disaster. I think Curtis in costume as Mister Terrific is one of those moments," said Guggenheim. "But what I think is so great about Echo [Kellum] is he plays it correctly as it's Curtis. He doesn't deepen his voice and suddenly become this badass. He's still true to his character. It doesn't feel like this ridiculous reach."The shadow of Laurel Lance's death is going to weigh heavy over her father in Season 5. "Quentin is going to break your heart this year," teased Mericle. "He's still dealing with Laurel and he's going to play a role in the mayor's office, but he's probably at his -- he's in a dark place."

Arrow: Season 5 premieres Wednesday, October 5th at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz