Where Arrow’s Season 6 Big Bad Went Wrong

I am a firm believer in the idea that, to a certain extent, a show’s central arc is only as good as its “big bad” villain.

A villain that can add depth to the series and create a believable and engaging obstacle for characters to encounter and eventually overcome. A good villain may be unpredictable, but they still need to have some logical path towards the endgame by the end of the season.

Unfortunately for Arrow Season 6, the “big bad” came in the form of an underwhelming villain — The Dragon.

What started off as an interesting peek at a cabal of villains that included a pair of faces we’ve seen before, turned into a story that changes too many hands to sustain any interest by the time the back half of the season comes around.

The season started off with the promise of the unveiling of Cayden James (played by the immensely talented Michael Emerson).

The show delivered on the promise relatively well as James was re-introduced to the team through Felicity revisiting her mission with Alena leading up to that ARGUS jailbreak on Arrow Season 5 Episode 19, “Dangerous Liaisons.”

Arrow Season 6 Episode 4, “Reversal,” did a solid job of setting the foundation for James’ troublemaking ways, especially with the trouble heading Felicity’s way as he noted that her digital fingerprints were all over the server that he had attempted to hack.

While Felicity seemed to have begun dealing with James, Diggle had his own issues with a villain, who we later learned is Ricardo Diaz. Diaz came onto the scene and offered Diggle a solution to the nerve damage he sustained on the island in the Arrow Season 6 finale.

With those drugs and the team’s thwarted attempts at dealing with Diaz, there were signs that Diggle would be the one to face off against him.

And of course, Oliver’s former friend and current enemy (of sorts), Anatoly, returned to cause some problems for him while the rest of OTA was dealing with their own villains as well.

Admittedly, I did believe that the cabal would serve as chances for some of the core characters to face off against their own villains — and it did seem that way during Arrow Season 6A, with Digg getting drugs from Diaz, Felicity’s history with Cayden, and of course Oliver and Anatoly’s unfinished business.

There was even an opportunity for Dinah to get in on her own villain with her former partner and boyfriend, Vince, being revealed as Vigilante.

But as the cabal of villains began to develop and the stories began to branch off, there was no clear indicator as to the direction the villains’ plots would be going and what the point of the sheer number of villains would be.

Unfortunately, those hopes that each member of OTA would be getting their own villains were dashed rather quickly as these villains’ focuses shifted solely to Oliver. That shift in focus was hurried and came off as almost a quick switch in the story’s direction.

Granted, James’ vendetta against the Green Arrow and in turn, Oliver, started to clear up a bit as it was revealed that Oliver allegedly killed his son a year ago as indicated on Arrow Season 6, Episode 13 “The Devil’s Greatest Trick.”

But while that cleared up Cayden’s motives, it was a short-lived sense of gratification as he died at the hands of Diaz in that interrogation room by the end of “The Devil’s Greatest Trick.”

Where the thread gets lost is the motivation and the point of making Oliver the target, especially when Diaz got involved.

We don’t ever get insight into why Diaz was doing what he’s doing. From what can be gathered from Arrow Season 6 Episode 19, “The Dragon,” he was an orphan and bullied as a child and grew up to be a drug dealer with a thirst for killing people that got in his way.

There’s no indication that he ever crossed paths with Oliver in the past or even had an agenda set to destroy the man’s life until he realized that Oliver was an obstacle in his plan to take over the city — that’s what I gathered his plan was but your mileage may vary on what it actually was.

Even with the whittling down of the cabal of villains, as James was murdered and Anatoly switched sides (as we all thought/hoped he would), it did not benefit Ricardo Diaz’s story.

In fact, it only helped highlight how weak Diaz is as a villain.

Even with somewhat questionable villains in past Arrow seasons, there has always been a clear narrative indicator as to what draws the villain to Oliver and the villain’s desire to destroy or kill him or even take over Star City.

With Malcolm Merlyn in Arrow Season 1, it was his need to make Starling a better place after his wife’s death in the Glades and Oliver’s unwillingness to let the Undertaking happen. Slade, the second-best Arrow villain, only had vengeance on the brain after his time on Lian Yu with Oliver.

Ra’s al Ghul was looking for Merlyn and decided that he’d look for a successor in the meantime (and Oliver got in the way of the plan to find Merlyn). Damien Darhk…well, it involved magic and creating a new world. Darhk may have contributed to my issues with Arrow Season 4, so that’s all you’ll get out of that.

Adrian Chase aka Simon Morrison, the Arrowverse’s best villain, attempted to burn Oliver’s life (and island) to the ground, one very brilliantly twisted move at a time as payback for killing his father back in Oliver’s early Green Arrow days.

It’s that meaty kind of motivation that is missing in Diaz’s story, or that’s just not clearly portrayed.

Diaz showed up on the scene as a drug-dealer bringing some experimental drug to the streets and to Digg’s attention with no real insight into who he is. For so long, that’s all we knew about him and was given the impression that he was just a minor villain.

It did him no favors when out of nowhere he murdered Cayden James while in police custody, and all of a sudden, he had the entire police department under his control.

Add to that, the poorly constructed backstory that didn’t add any depth to his character and just a run of the mill sob story, and you’ve got what viewers end up with — an ineffective villain with no real answer as to why he’s doing any of this.

When it comes to Diaz, his every move was trite, lacking any of that real sinister villainous energy. Seeing him take over the city’s government felt like it came out of nowhere and was unearned in the face of everything that happened throughout the season.

Even when Diaz showed off his fighting skills, it lacked the kind of skillful movements we’ve seen from villains in the past.

Sure, we’ve had villains like Damien Darhk and Ra’s al Ghul that don’t really fight in the hand-to-hand kind of way, opting instead for the muscle to support them in the form of Ghosts and the League of Assassins.

However, they still had an alternative edge with the mysticism and the magic available to them.

Ultimately, what Diaz lacks in being a compelling villain is motivation and that logical thread that brings all of these independent actions (that come off more like nuisances than actual villainous acts) together to blow things up for the team and make for a compelling villain arc.

A villain after power just for the sake of having power adds nothing to the story and will ultimately weaken the story’s effect.

Part of what makes an ineffective villain is the lack of organized forward movement in the story, and Diaz’s story in Arrow Season 6B lacked that.

But who knows? Maybe Arrow Season 7 will course correct and make him a more substantial villain, considering he’s managed to survive the season.

Only time will tell how the end of his story will turn out. But his story has left a bit to be desired.

Arrow returns for Season 7 Mondays at 8/7c this fall on The CW.

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