John's estranged stepfather, General Roy Stewart helps Team Arrow when John is captured by the Ninth Circle.
- Almost Kiss: Connor and Mia almost kiss while hiding from J.J.'s goons.
- Annoying Arrows: Averted; the arrows Emiko fires into Dante cause painful, debilitating injuries that make his Karmic Death a much more painful affair, which was likely the point.
- And This Is for...: Emiko, when killing Dante for the murder of her mother.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Dante leaves Diggle and Stewart unguarded in a room with Diggle's Spartan gear, even leaving his own torture tools on a table in the same room. Predictably, they escape.
- Cain and Abel: When his adoptive brother Connor comes calling, JJ orders one of his mooks to shoot him.
- Call-Forward: In the Flash Forward, part of Star City is "Deathstroke" terrority, a nod to Grant Wilson later conquering the city. At the moment it's just a city gang led by John Jr. Diggle.
- Canon Character All Along: John Diggle is revealed to be none other than John Stewart... in a roundabout way; if he had taken his stepfather's surname, he would be John Stewart instead of John Diggle. As mentioned in the Elseworlds crossover, John's Earth-90 doppelganger was the Green Lantern of that world.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Holding a gun doesn't make Felicity a fighter, as Virgil easily disarms her.
- The DIA soldiers easily dispatch the Ninth Circle soldiers with their much more advanced weaponry.
- Daddy Issues:
- Diggle has a ton towards his stepfather, General Roy Stewart. He blames for him for leaving his birth dad behind in an op and then six months later dating and married his mother and proceeded to treat John and Andy like recruits instead of his children. John makes a point of addressing him as "General" instead of dad or father. The truth is more complicated; Diggle's birth father was a negligent soldier and got himself and two other marines killed. It was a story the General concocted to spare John and Andy the Awful Truth, and once John is informed, the two men make peace.
- Diggle's own children have some complicated feelings towards him in the future; the expectations that John placed on his sons led John Jr. to rebel against his father and become a leading member of a gang modeled after Diggle's old enemy Deathstroke, and Connor, although he's much more reasonable about it, clearly has some issues with his adoptive father's parenting as well.
- Escape Artist: General Stewart is able to escape his restrains with the help of his shoelaces.
- Evil vs. Evil: Emiko takes out Dante for murdering her mother, but gives no sign of abandoning the Ninth Circle's lethal plans.
- Forced to Watch: When torturing Roy Stewart doesn't work, Dante opts to torture John in front of him instead.
- Four-Star Badass: General Stewart hasn't lost a step despite his age, holding his own against Ninth Circle mooks and keeping pace with Diggle in the field.
- From Bad to Worse: The armored assassin that all but wiped out the Canaries in the Flash Forward? Galaxy One has an entire army of them.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Two non-lethal examples.
- Years ago, General Stewart took the fall for John's father, who lost his life due to a mistake on his part, in order for John to be able to still see him as a hero.
- Felicity destroys Archer so it can't fall into the Ninth Circle's hands.
- History Repeats:
- Diggle hates his stepfather. Sadly, in the Flash Forward, John Jr. hates his parents too.
- Like the present day Diggle brothers, Connor and John Jr. have a Cain and Abel relationship.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Dante tries to justify his murder of Emiko's mother by claiming that her mother was making her weak and that Emiko needed to fully embrace the Ninth Circle in order to reach her full potential. Emiko doesn't buy it.
- Internal Reveal: Oliver tells Emiko that Dante killed her mom and has been using the Ninth Circle to gaslight her. But since he has no hard evidence, she predictably refuses to believe that Dante would betray her like that. Subverted in that the end reveals that she did believe him and she kills Dante. However whether Emiko will change her feelings about her brother or abandon the Ninth Circle is up in the air.
- Karmic Death: Dante murdered Emiko's mother to mould her into the perfect leader for the Ninth Circle, so it's really only fitting that he dies kneeling before her.
- Killed Off for Real: Dante, courtesy of Emiko.
- Manly Tears: Both Roy and John are in tears when they are saying their goodbyes.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Felicity is very unnerved at having provided criminals a potentially dangerous weapon with Archer, even comparing herself to her father. Alena assures her that she is most certainly not like him.
- Not Quite Dead: Turns out Virgil didn't die after jumping out of the window.
- Parent-Child Team: Roy Stewart and John.
- Parents as People: General Stewart loves John like his own son, but his method of treating him like a recruit and not a son was by no means perfect. But on the other hand, he could've told John the truth about his father any time but didn't even though it meant John spent a lifetime hating him rather than tarnish the memory of John's father.
- John himself in the future, which put Connor and John Jr at opposite ends of the moral spectrum.
- Sadist: Dante cracks a Slasher Smile while torturing Diggle and General Stewart. After he's spent his previous appearances as nothing but The Stoic, it's quite jarring.
- Save the Villain: Rene desperately believes that Emiko can be redeemed, the same way Laurel was. At the end of the episode, he seems to have lost this hope.
- Survival Mantra: Roy recites his name and rank while Dante tortures him.
- The Unfavorite: It's revealed that John Jr feels this way compared to Connor; Connor was everything their parents wanted in a son, while John Jr. felt he could never measure up so he joined the Deathstroke Gang to rebel.
- Tough Love: Roy Stewart was very hard on John and Andy, but it was all just so they could protect themselves.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It's implied that Alena, of all people, is responsible for Galaxy One's army of Super Soldiers, as she probably went ahead and rebuilt Archer, against Felicity's explicit wishes.
- Villainous Legacy: Even without any obvious influence from Slade or his sons, Deathstroke remains a significant symbol in Star City; a gang in the villain's image has emerged in the Flash Forward.
- You Killed My Father: After finding out the truth from Oliver, Emiko murders Dante to take revenge for her mother's murder.
