In Review: Arrow – The Dragon

Synopsis:  Looking to expand his empire, Diaz and Laurel meet with The Quadrant, a coalition of mafia families who run national organized crime. Meanwhile, after Oliver’s recent decision, Felicity and Curtis double their efforts on building Helix Dynamics.

Review: This episode starts with a Flashback that sees Ricardo Diaz in an orphanage being bullied and physically tortured by a bigger kid. It’s a promising beginning to what could possibly be the strongest episode of the season thus far and it doesn’t even feature all that much of the Green Arrow either.

Most of the episode is focused on Diaz and Black Siren as they go through the motions of getting a meeting with The Quadrant. Apparently, Diaz wants to make them an offer that they can’t refuse.

Having us see the world through Diaz’s point of view for an episode was a fun idea and it gave Kirk Acevedo a chance to show some acting range, which is something he’s not really been given enough by the writers to do until this episode. Diaz is relentless as he keeps going after the Quadrant and does not care who he has to go through to get to them. His single-mindedness actually seems to shock Black Siren somewhat who is also seeming somewhat horrified by how easy Diaz seems to be able to kill in cold blood. 

Elsewhere we have Curtis reunite with Felicity in order to continue building Helix Dynamics, but when Felicity glimpses a news feed about the Arrow and a large fired she becomes very concerned and goes home. Thankfully she finds Oliver survived the fire.

Overall. This has to be the strongest episode of the season. It was an interesting and fun idea to have an episode that focused more on the villain than the hero. And now that Diaz seems to have the Quadrant on side. It will be interesting to see what effect it has on his plans for Star City and how he will deal with the Arrow.