Arrow Season 5 Fight Scenes Are Brutal And Stephen Amell Has The Bloody Nose To Prove It

08/14/2016 10:15 am EDT

It sounds like Arrow is stepping up its game when it comes to action scenes. Rumor has it that the fights in Season 5 are particularly brutal, even by Arrow standards. Showrunner Wendy Mericle even draws a comparison to HBO's Game of Thrones.

"I can say it looks amazing," Mericle tells TV Line. "We're now part of this [TV] universe where you have Game of Thrones and the way that they deal with violence and how they do their fights, so it's our attempt to do something similar. It's bloody. You're in it. We're doing a lot more 'first person' – not necessarily point of view – action. Stephen has been a huge proponent of doing that, and it's going to feel real and in your face."

If that wasn't proof enough, Arrow star Stephen Amell has some physical evidence in the form of a bloody nose he got when his face met someone else's foot during a, according to his Facebook post, "Big ass fight sequence."

Amell adds that it was "Totally worth it." Fans will have to wait until October to see for themselves.

In Arrow Season 5, "Newly appointed Mayor Oliver Queen finds himself challenged as he fights on two fronts for the future of Star City. With Diggle back in the military and Thea adamant about hanging up her hood as Speedy, Team Green Arrow is down to just Oliver and Felicity – but they're no longer the only vigilantes in town. Green Arrow's public defeat of Damien Darhk at the end of Season Four has inspired a new crop of masked heroes to step up and defend the city, though their painful inexperience makes them obstacles, rather than allies, in the field. The arrival of a deadly new adversary will force Oliver to confront questions about his own legacy, both as mayor and as the Green Arrow."

Arrow returns to the CW on Wednesday, Oct. 5 at 8 p.m. ET.

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