Post — Aaron Ngo

I'm starting to give up on Arrow season six. There's no way the show can recover from this.

They gave us a Ricardo Diaz centric episode and it was incredibly off putting especially after the Oliver-centric episode. This episode should've came sooner if they planned to flesh him out more and his backstory isn't even all that interesting.

Katie Cassidy's portrayal as Black Siren stood out more than Diaz, which begs the question: why didn't they give the centric screen time to her instead? I care more about Black Siren's backstory than Diaz and her willingness to follow him does not fit with her character and they failed to even state a reason... Rant over for now!

Spoilers ahead:

The episode opens to a flashback to Diaz's childhood to an orphanage and how some random bully hurt him a few times, putting Diaz on the path of villainy. That's what haunts Diaz. It does not impress me. I almost stopped watching when I saw a dragon in the episode logo instead of an arrow, realizing the next 40 minutes would be dedicated to Ricardo Diaz, but I continued onward because I made it this far... I can suffer for a little longer.

Unlike the some of the previous Arrow villains (Slade, Malcolm, Adrian), Diaz possessed no direct connection to Oliver Queen. That made him interesting, but it stops there. In fact, his character became less interesting as the episode progressed... I couldn't believe how boring it got. It was like the Arrow took real notes from The Walking Dead and applied it to this episode.

Diaz and Black Siren take center stage for most of the episode. Laurel E2 helped a lot to keep the episode interesting only because of how she reacts to his brutality. The show is trying to show us Laurel is not okay with how far Diaz is willing to go for his silly goals, but it also paints her as naive for sticking around with this guy.

What does she get out of this romantic partnership? Why does she even want it? Seriously someone tell me because I don't know.

Diaz's goal in the episode is to get a seat with a powerful crime organization called The Quadrant. Before now, we haven't heard of them, but they control crime or something across the country and are powerful people. Diaz wants in on their group. The exact reasons are not clear, but he is desperate.

The Representative played Diaz around because he and his father only saw him as a low-level thug. This repeated a lot throughout the episode, which added to our lack of interest in Ricardo Diaz. If even the minor characters can see how lame Diaz is, why can't the main characters see that too?

After the Representative tried to have Diaz killed, he decides to get revenge.

Diaz and Black Siren took out the representative using C4 and get the info on the Quadrant meeting. Before the duo invades the meeting, Laurel E2 compares Diaz's anger to her first boss, Zoom. I liked how they mentioned this because we did not get enough info on her relationship with the Speed Demon.

Laurel E2 tells him that his anger, his dragon, will be his undoing someday just like Zoom. Diaz calls what Jessie, his childhood bully, and the anger he left inside him the dragon. I thought that was weird, but whatever.

The duo get into that meeting and Diaz somehow convinces The Quadrant to give him a couple minutes to explain what he has to offer. The Father of the Representative refuses to listen because he is a thug, which prompts Diaz to shoot him outright. The other members disapprove but welcome him to the table anyway. What did I witness?

After successfully joining this group for unknown reasons, Diaz goes collect his old pal Jessie and sets the poor guy on fire. Black Siren hated seeing this but did nothing to stop it from happening. I think they're going to redeem her next season. She has been underused this entire time, and I don't see her coming to the good side by season's end.

Oh Yeah. Let's talk about Felicity and Curtis subplot. They're working on Helix Dynamics, their startup company and talk about their teams. Felicity is worried about Oliver because she's not there to monitor him anymore. A little more interesting than Diaz, but not by much.

She thinks Oliver got hurt in an explosion as the Green Arrow for two minutes, freaks out, but is glad to find him in the living room relaxing. This is Oliver Queen's only scene in the entire episode. A sharp contrast compared to his centric episode last week.

I was not pleased with this episode for the most part. After it ended, I spent the next day thinking about it, trying to find some good in there, but only found Black Siren. My thoughts kept going back to: why aren't we giving her the screen time she deserves? Stop latching her onto people like Zoom, Adrian Chase, Cayden James, and Ricardo Diaz. Have her stand out on her own.

Give us back the Oliver-centric episode last week. At least that one was entertaining. My review on that is here if you want to check that out. Comment or message and let me know how you felt about the latest episode. We're almost there at the end, people.

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