The Suicide Squad itself is pretty much translated right from the comics, even down to the brutal way they’re terminated if they don’t follow orders (but really, who cared about Shrapnel anyway?) In the books, the Squad has had a rotating roster, and this week we got a surprising and amazing cameo featuring one of the New 52 Squad members: Harley Quinn! She isn’t really seen except through a cell block door, but she’s voiced by Tara Strong, who voices the character in the Batman Arkham games. It’s a great, quick little moment that had me giddy with fanboy delight. I doubt we’ll see her again, but her existence in this universe gives us hope that Batman is out there somewhere, too. After all, you can’t have Harley without the Joker, and you definitely can’t have the Joker without the Dark Knight.
Okay, now that I’ve geeked out a bit, let’s get back to the episode. We get no island flashbacks this week, and instead get some flashbacks of Diggle and Lyla in Afghanistan, escorting a group of civilians to safety. One of them points out that there’s a high-value target in their midst, an arms dealer and sex trader named Gholem Qadir. Oh, and guess what? Qadir is the one the Suicide Squad is targeting! Imagine that…
Unfortunately, the flashbacks never really live up to their full potential this week. They’re meant to flesh out a bit of Diggle’s backstory while showing us that he and Qadir have a history. Diggle saved Qadir’s life, and the man now feels indebted to him. I get what they were going for, but the sequences are very brief and don’t really shed enough light on the current story to make it truly mean anything. The flashbacks kind of felt like filler, but in an otherwise great episode that’s easily forgivable.
In the end, Qadir is less of a villain and more of a plot device. He was mostly there to give the Suicide Squad someone to fool, which is fine. The important thing here is Diggle, who we got to see many sides of this week. We’ve seen him as the stoic bodyguard, the good natured friend, and the tortured soldier. This week we got to see him as competent action hero, suave partygoer, and concerned ex-husband, all while battling the morals of working with a group of expendable convicts. David Ramsey has always been one of the best actors on the show, but he was exceptional this time around, making us really care about Diggle in a way that we just haven’t this season. His arc this week reinforced that excitement I felt last season, when he donned the Arrow costume to kidnap Oliver and Moira Queen, proving that he just isn’t utilized enough in this show, and when he is used, it’s not to his full potential.
I mentioned before that this episode helps flesh out the Arrow and DC universe a bit, and I want to expand on that. We spend so much time in Starling City that it’s easy to forget that there’s a whole world out there full of comic book characters up to no good, and this episode helped shed some light on that. In fact, I was kind of hoping that this was secretly some backdoor pilot for a Suicide Squad show, because all of the elements are there.
We already have an interesting group of characters for the show to follow (like Deadshot, who gets a nice chunk of screentime this week and some much needed character development), and a pretty basic plot that would lend itself perfectly for a full series. In fact, it kind of reminded me of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., only better. A.R.G.U.S. feels very much like DC’s version of S.H.I.E.L.D., and could act as the same sort of glue that keeps the expanding TV universe together. I would be completely fine with Diggle leaving Arrow to headline a Suicide Squad show, and think the reaction to tonight’s episode was positive enough for producers to at least consider the possibility.
All in all, this was another satisfying episode in a show that just keeps getting better. By revealing at the end of the episode that A.R.G.U.S. has been tracking Deathstroke, the writers have successfully turned what could have been a filler episode of Arrow into the next logical step towards taking Slade down. As with many of the developments on this show, it all felt very natural and helped raise the bar in several respects. All cheesy drone-strike action sequences aside, I’m just incredibly happy that we finally got a Diggle-centric episode, and hope as things move forward from here that he’s not pushed back into the sidelines. Unless they do it to give him his own show, in which case I’m totally okay with it.
