An exclusive clip from the newest episode of Arrow season 6, ‘The Devil’s Greatest Trick,’ shows a side of Cayden James the villainous hacker hasn’t yet shown. Cayden has been in a thorn in Team Arrow’s side for quite a while now, orchestrating an effective dismantling of the vigilante group and routinely bringing Mayor Oliver Queen to heel by extorting millions of dollars from Star City after successfully staging a number of cyber attacks on the beleaguered metropolis.
But, like most villains, James’ motivations aren’t so simple. The former hacktivist and leader of Helix, who was illegally imprisoned by A.R.G.U.S. before making a splash as one of the most effective and unlikely Arrow villains in the series’ run, is compelled by the mistaken belief that the Green Arrow is responsible for the death of his son, Owen Post. Owen’s death happened while his father was incarcerated by A.R.G.U.S., and was made to look like collateral damage from one of the Green Arrow’s nightly confrontations with the city’s criminal population. But, as Team Arrow discovered, in addition to how unlikely it would be that one of the world’s greatest archers would not only miss his target but also strike a civilian, the Green Arrow wasn’t even in Star City when Owen’s murder took place.
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As such, Owen’s death and his father’s subsequent quest for vengeance appear tied to a much larger mystery, one with someone else apparently pulling the strings of the master puppeteer. But while the question of what’s really going on simmers away, Arrow aims to provide a little background on Cayden’s relationship with Owen, and, as it turns out, their father-son dynamic was awfully reminiscent of many other fraught parent-child relationships seen on the show.
As the above clip demonstrates, Cayden, like Oliver, Diggle, Quentin, Malcolm, or any other father that’s had even a whiff of a parental storyline on the series, found it difficult to manage his home life with his work life, and that means potentially missing out on cheering Owen on at the big game. Though he clearly was not winning any Father of the Year Awards, Cayden didn’t want to let his son down, despite obviously having done so numerous times in the past, thanks to his obligations to that “weirdo hacker group” he runs.
Though the encounter is fairly familiar, with Cayden making a promise he’s almost certainly not going to be able to keep, it does help paint the villain in a different light. An effort to humanize Cayden more may signal a shift in the focus of Arrow season 6, with another big bad coming in to shake things up for both Team Arrow and Helix. If this clip is any indication, more information along these lines may be headed viewers’ way tonight.
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Arrow ‘The Devil’s Greatest Trick’ airs tonight @9pm on The CW.