My thing with this episode is that it comes far too late in the game to really mean something. I'm not the first person to make the comparison but this season of Arrow really does feel like season 3 of The Flash. There are about 4 or 5 brilliant episodes, but the elongated wait to see the big bad reveal/any sort of details on the villains was delayed so long that it lost all sense of gravitas or weight to the situation. Ricardo Diaz isn't a horrible villain, but it never feels like the show gave me a fighting chance. Heck, even his episode this week wasn't as good as it could have been and I still feel like there's a lot to learn about him (and he was in all but one or two scenes!).
In many ways, this wasn't an Arrow episode, rather a Dragon episode. I'm glad they were able to at least give Diaz some time to be fleshed out. Only, the flashbacks scenes he was given were far too brief and almost inconsequential. Yes, he got back at his old nemesis, Jesse, who tormented him as a child, but did we really get enough of those scenes to warrant Diaz burning Jesse alive? That felt a little out of left field. On the flip side, his rise to criminal prominence within the "quadrant" is a neat change from anything we have seen from an Arrow villain before. While it does beg the question of if Diaz is really the ultimate takedown this season or maybe it's the quadrant after all.
I don't know, but what I do know is that it's tough to really put Diaz even in the conversation with any previous Arrow big bad, because he doesn't have a personal connection to Oliver Queen or a vendetta against him. Even Malcom Merlyn was Oliver's best friend's father and Damien Darhk's wife was running against Oliver for mayor. So this is the first time a big bad hasn't had an immediate connection to our hero, and in some respects that's interesting. But at the same time, it makes the conflict feel a little distant and not worthy enough. But maybe that's just me.
7.0/10