Arrow Season 7: 5 Ups & 2 Downs From 'Inheritance'

1. Emiko Is The Season's Real Big Bad

If this episode taught us anything about Emiko Queen, it's not only that she's capable of killing her own brother, it's that she apparently already tried to do it once and, in doing so, killed her father. But that only scratches the surface of her true capabilities, as 'Inheritance's closing moments also revealed that she is the leader of The Ninth Circle.

From Ricardo Diaz's multiple reintroductions to the Longbow Hunters to Dante himself, this season hasn't been able to settle on one specific villain, and it seems that the reason for that has finally been revealed - she's been under our noses the entire time.

As the new Green Arrow, Emiko has been a part of the season since the beginning. While she hasn't exactly had an in-depth character journey to make viewers warm to her, this episode highlighted that there is potential there. In the flashbacks, we got to see that she does actually feel things and that her feelings towards her father are what ultimately led her down this dark path in the first place, while the present-day narrative proved that she can do more than grunt and argue.

Whether or not her newfound charisma was down to the fact that she was simply hamming it up for Team Arrow remains to be seen, but she was a formidable adversary and that, at the very least, promises to take her to an interesting place. As a broody sidekick to the show's protagonist, she wasn't exactly a cutting edge addition to Arrow, but as the secret mastermind who has practically engineered the events of the whole darn season? Now that sounds like an Emiko with potential, and one that could let Sea Shimooka show us what she's really capable of.

Now, for the negatives...