This season in Arrow, Oliver and the gang are going to face a gritty crime lord named Richard Dragon. The season 5 finale left a lot of fans on a major cliffhanger, with Prometheus initiating an explosion on Lian Yu that may or may not have wiped Team Arrow out. The season 6 trailer revealed that Katie Cassidy’s Black Siren, Juliana Harkavy’s Black Canary, and Manu Bennett’s Deathstroke survived the explosion on Lian Yu, but it still has not been revealed who else survived.
Assuming that more heroes of the team will survive, Oliver will then take on a mentor role just as what executive producer Marc Guggenheim said, he will guide the survivors from the traumatic experience, both physical and emotional. We can also expect in this season that Oliver may have his hands full considering that his truce with Slade may not last and that Helix is still a major threat in the city’s security. Then when season 6 opens, there will be a new villain that will challenge Oliver and the team. In the Arrow SDCC panel, EP Marc Guggenheim revealed that it will be Richard Dragon and explained to ComicBook.com that this version will be a more grounded, gritty nature of Team Arrow’s nemesis:
“You know, what I really like about our interpretation of Richard is, he’s very grounded. He’s not a flamboyant big bad, he doesn’t wear a costume, he really is a crimelord, sort of in the Tobias Church model. For Tobias we only really saw him for about five episodes, so we were excited about the prospect of doing a cool, gritty crime lord, but for a longer period of time. We’ve never really done that on the show before, so it’s different.”
In the comics, Richard Dragon’s original version is a thief-turned-hero with an incredible mastery of a variety of martial arts. In the New 52 reboot, he was first introduced as Ricardo Diaz Jr., a son of a drug kingpin who was trained by the League of Assassins. He kills his sensei and dons the name Richard Dragon. He then became a crime lord, leading a deadly team named the Longbow Hunters. From Guggenheim’s description, it seems that the version they’re taking on is from the New 52.
Recently, executive producer Wendy Mericle describes, ambiguously, season 6’s big bad as “these people and this person,” vaguely suggesting that there will be multiple villains and that we may also get a version of the Longbow Hunters. The Hunters in the comics includes Killer Moth and Count Vertigo, which, in the series, we’ve seen the Count numerous times in the earlier seasons.
Mericle also reveals that the villain would not mainly focus on affecting Oliver Queen and the Green Arrow but would also affect “the whole team personally and very directly.” In the comics, Diggle was the one responsible for the death of Diaz’s drug lord father so we will probably have some plot points connected to it. The showrunners also said that they’ll be continuing their season 5 promise that the show will still be grounded and it will be interesting how the story will intertwine with the characters in season 6. With a team of villains coming to Star City, it would be one heck of a season for Team Arrow.
‘Fallout’ will be the title of the season premiere of Arrow that will air on CW at 9pm on Thursday, October 12.
