Even before the season started, we knew that John Constantine was going to be making an appearance and, with him, the introduction of magic into the Arrow/The Flash universe.  “Haunted” did not disappoint in any way, in fact, I hope we see more of John Constantine, especially with Darhk as this season’s main villain.

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Last week, Laurel and Thea brought Sara back to Star City without the rest of Team Arrow, especially Oliver, knowing anything.  The beginning of tonight’s episode had two different parts. First, the fallout of the rest of team learning what happened after Sara escapes and begins going on a rampage of assaults in the city.  The second part was how Oliver met John Constantine on the island five years earlier and their first adventure together.

A few friends guessed last week that Laurel and Thea wouldn’t tell Oliver about Sara until she recovered fully, but the ladies didn’t even tell him when Sara broke out and was going all “Huntress” on the city, even when her primary target ended up being Thea.  Looking at this in a deeper level, the writers skillfully added another layer of reuniting Team Arrow allowing Oliver and Laurel and even Thea to be forced into dealing with in their opinion Oliver’s judgmental arrogance and hypocrisy.  One of the best conversations was Laurel telling Ollie how she has always put the Queens as a priority, but that he has never done the same with her family.  There was some Truth that Oliver had to swallow and think about to get his team cohesive.

One of the throw always was when Oliver was telling Laurel that she is way in over her head and that there are forces in the world that she didn’t understand, like the Lazarus Pit, and then pulled out the Constantine card.  I was thinking “Really, Oliver!?!!”  How she or anyone else was supposed to know that he had someone like Constantine on speed dial if he didn’t share ANY of such experiences about the island.  At the same time, we all knew that it was dangerous to bring Sara back to life, and luckily for the Queens and the Lances, the CW was able to obtain John Constantine as a guest star.

All joking aside, this season has masterfully crafted small and not so small reasons to separate and bring Team Arrow back together and in doing that adding magic, this new layer of reality, to a very scientific CW universe to date.  You can see that Darhk has influences of magic, but in what we have seen so far you could explain them away as being a meta.  The hope is now to allow him to have even more aspects than what we have seen to make him in to even more a scary villain.

Constantine was brought in to restore Sara’s soul to her body.  It was suggested that Sara’s body was returned from the dead, but not her soul.  Connect that to the blood lust we found out about last week with Thea’s condition and her fighting skills and the Sara host was more than dangerous, she was homicidal.  After Team Arrow captured her, John mystically entered her with Oliver and Laurel to free her soul from whatever was holding her soul within the Lazarus Pit.   I thought it was interesting that Constantine was in as much of the back story as he was in the present day.  I have to believe that this is so much more than a onetime guest appearance, who knows maybe they may use this episode to have him be part of a greater role on Legends of Tomorrow or green light him for his own Hellblazer series.

With his guidance, Sara was fully healed.  Some of the questions not answered were how this would affect Sara’s blood lust, if at all.  One step forward with the fate of Sara Lance, after all there are only a few more new episodes left before the first break this season.  One thing we do know is in those episodes, the White Canary probably will be born setting up another hero for this winter’s mid-season premiere of Legends of Tomorrow.  And with now Sara Lance on Arrow and Firestorm on The Flash, Arrow is shifting again to a hero who was believed to be killed at the end of last season, Ray Palmer.   For the last couple of weeks Felicity and Curtis have been working together to translate some coding from Palmer for Felicity on her phone, and Curtis deciphered was this week’s cliffhanger which according to the coding is that Ray Palmer is alive and in trouble and all of it is connected to the nano-tech in his ATOM suit.

It looks like Arrow will be jumping out of the mysticism and magic and jumping head first into the world of uber tech and science allowing Curtis even more of a role within Team Arrow while returning Ray Palmer as the Atom.  Who knows, maybe we will also get Mr. Terrific before 2016.

Remember to catch new episodes of Arrow on Wednesday nights at 8 pm/7 central.  You can also watch The Flash on Tuesday nights at 8 pm/7 central.