Arrow: Who Is Vigilante?

SPOILER ALERT: Make Sure You’re All Caught Up on Arrow Season 5 BEFORE Reading This!

Arrow season 5 just made the big reveal that this season’s big bad, Prometheus, is actually Adrian Chase, the Star City D.A. and friend to Oliver Queen and Co.

That reveal was shocking for fans – many of whom bought into the red herring that Adrian Chase would be revealed to be his DC Comics alter-ego, Vigilante. Now that Chase is Prometheus and obviously not Vigilante, we’re left with the question of who is actually under that mask and ski goggles. We’ve taken the liberty of pulling together a few candidates from the show to help us answer the question: Who is Vigilante?

Quentin Lance

Arrow just pulled off a massive twist on fan expectations, but why assume that there will be just one? A second big twist would be revealing that someone intimately close to team Arrow was actually Vigilante – and we can’t think of a better, or more interesting choice than Quentin Lance. 

After all Quentin’s been through since Laurel’s death, it would be intriuging to learn that he had taken a skewed approach to honoring her legacy – and that he has embraced Oliver’s philosophy of justice in a darker, twisted, way. 

Lance would have access to Vigilante’s arsenal (due to his police captain days); he would have the motivation (personal loss); and the relevant training to make it happen (working with team Arrow). 

…However, with Quentin being in the Limo when Vigilante attacked it, makes it hard for him to be the guy shooting. Unless he had help…

Captain Frank Pike

Frank Pike is an Arrow character that we’ve seen a lot of, but maybe not taken notice of like we should. Which would make him an inspired choice to play Vigilante. 

Pike was promoted to Captain after Genesis Day – and given what he’s seen happen in Star City in the last few years (and all the officers he’s lost), it would be understandable if Pike had snapped and decided to take matters into his own hands. 

It could be voluntary, or it could be a conflation of Pike’s character and some classic DC Comics versions of Vigilante (see next page) – but it would be a way for the show to have developed a major character right under our noses.

Other DC Coimcs Versions

There have been several DC Comics versions of Vigilante – and any one of them could still be the person we finally see revealed under the mask. 

There is a female version, Patricia Trayce, who was a Gotham City detective that worked mostly with Deathstroke. There’s also Justin Powell, a man who was traumatized by a murder he witnessed as a child, and created a secondary persona he was unaware of, which became Vigilante.

Finally, there’s Dorian Chase, the brother of Adrian Chase – which would be kind of a “soap opera” approach, but could also be something Arrow pursues. 

Tommy Merlyn

Arrow fans were leaning heavily toward the theory that Prometheus was actually a resurrected Tommy Merlyn. Actor Collin Donnell hopped over to make an appearance in the 100th episode of the show this season – only fueling speculation that he was returning as Prometheus. 

Well, maybe Tommy Merlyn came back, and didn’t get all the training that would be required to make him a martial arts ninja master like Prometheus; maybe he came back and just got himself a lot of guns. 

As a Merlyn, Tommy has the financial resources to build himself into Vigilante – and definitely the motivation to do a better job of defending the city than Oliver/Green Arrow has.