Theory: Arrow Season 7's Real Villains Are In The Present And Future

The Ninth Circle - one of Oliver Queen's greatest enemies in the Green Arrow comics - seems poised to threaten Star City in both the present and the future of Arrow's seventh season. Earlier episodes suggested that the Ninth Circle might be the secretive organization that John Diggle and Lyla Michaels are working to expose. Now there is reason to believe that the Ninth Circle is also behind the sinister scheme at the center of the flash-forward storyline set in 2038.

The plot of Arrow season 7 has seen the former Team Arrow separated, as its members sought new ways to try and save their city in the wake of Oliver Queen's imprisonment. For John "Spartan" Diggle, this meant taking up a command position alongside his wife, Lyla Michaels, with the anti-terrorism group ARGUS. Their storyline saw the two career soldiers forced to play both sides against the middle, as they began investigating a mysterious criminal financial organization headed by someone called Dante, which seemed to have been purposely ignored by their bosses in the US Department of Defense.

The storyline set in the not-too-distant future of Star City boasts similarly high stakes. It was here that Oliver Queen's son, William Clayton, Roy "Arsenal" Harper, the second Black Canary, Dinah Drake, and future Black Canary Zoe Ramirez uncovered a plot to bomb the ghettos of Star City, while leaving the gated community called the Glades untouched. The latest episodes of Arrow confirmed that the local government of the Glades is involved in the bombing plot, mirroring a storyline from the comics which involved the Ninth Circle.

The following breakdown will explain what the Ninth Circle is and their history with Green Arrow in the comics. It will also reveal what little we know about the group and their leader Dante in the reality of the Arrowverse, and consider how the organization may be tied into the fates of Star City in 2019 and 2038.

This Page: The Ninth Circle In The Comics and Arrow Season 7
Page 2: What The Ninth Circle Mean For Arrow's Present and 2038

The Ninth Circle Were Hinted In Arrow's Midseason Finale

Jean-Leon Gerome and Dante (He Hath Seen Hell)

The first reference to the Ninth Circle came in "The Demon" - the fifth episode of Arrow season 7. It was here that Curtis "Mister Terrific" Holt discovered an image of a painting among the encrypted files belonging to a recently captured black market weapons dealer. The painting was determined to be Dante (He Hath Seen Hell) by 19th Century French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

The significance of this image would not be revealed until "Unmasked" - the eighth episode of Arrow season 7 and the mid-season finale. It was here that Lyla discovered that the painting was being used as a digital calling card by multiple terrorist organizations in relation to their financial holdings. Searching for the name Dante led her to a bank account that had been used to send payments to the mercenaries known as the Longbow Hunters. All of this pointed to someone called Dante leading a vast underground financial institution that catered to criminals around the world. While this group has not been given a name yet, it sounds exactly like an organization from the Green Arrow comics called the Ninth Circle.

The Ninth Circle Explained

First appearing in Green Arrow: Rebirth #1, the Ninth Circle are a recent yet immediately popular introduction to the mythology of Green Arrow. The Ninth Circle is a bank built on the belief that there is no immorality where profit is concerned. Headed by a mysterious figure known only as Dante, the group specifically adopted Satanic imagery based on the Divine Comedy to mock the idea of evil's existence.

The Ninth Circle caters to those who believe that greed is good and selfishness a virtue. Are you a mad scientist who needs a loan to finance your research into a new chemical weapon? Or perhaps you're a embezzler who needs a place to hide the fruits of your skimming where the SEC won't see it? The Ninth Circle is there to discretely meet your needs, no matter how distasteful.

Green Arrow first encountered the Ninth Circle while investigating the activities of one of their intermediaries - the Underground Men. A modern-day gang of slave-traders who primarily prey upon the homeless and other people who won't be missed, the Underground Men were responsible for providing the "product" for the Ninth Circle's many operations involving human trafficking. This included recruiting soldiers for the Burned - the Ninth Circle's private army, who are ritually baptized in lava and brainwashed into mindless servants who obey the orders of the Ninth Circle's leadership without question.

Disturbingly, the leadership of the Ninth Circle are all the heads of legitimate businesses and respectable politicians. They meet wearing masks, so that none could betray the rest of the ruling council should one be caught. As Green Arrow worked to uncover the organization, he was shamed to discover that both of his parents had been members. Perhaps nothing speaks to the evil of the Ninth Circle quite so much as the fact that Lex Luthor was offered membership and he turned it down because even he found their activities distasteful.

Page 2: What The Ninth Circle Mean For Arrow's Present and 2038

Arrow ARGUS Deupty Director Bell and ARGUS Director Lyla Michaels

What The Ninth Circle Mean For Arrow's Present

There are two challenges testing Lyla Michaels and John Diggle regarding the Ninth Circle. The first problem is that they are having to tackle the organization indirectly, due to their fears that their immediate superiors in the Department of Defense are connected to the Ninth Circle and are trying to hinder their investigation. The second problem is that they are unable to fully draw upon the resources of ARGUS to tackle the Ninth Circle and Lyla's second in command, ARGUS Deputy Director Bell, seems to be looking for any excuse to cry corruption to their superiors.

It is unclear precisely what Deputy Director Bell's motivations are. At best, it seems that he might be overly ambitious and is angling for a way to take the position of ARGUS Director for himself the minute he can make a case that Lyla Michaels is abusing her authority. At worst, he might be a unwitting dupe working on behalf of the Department of Defense forces that are a part of the Ninth Circle. or be in the direct employ of the Ninth Circle itself.

Whatever the case, Lyla Michaels and John Diggle will be playing a dangerous game for the foreseeable future. Their only lead to Dante was the crime boss Ricardo Diaz - a criminal who Deputy Director Bell already complained had too many resources spent upon securing his capture over the half-year John Diggle spent trying to bring Diaz to justice. Even with Curtis Holt having tricked Diaz into revealing how to contact Dante, and Diggle masking ARGUS' interest in him by reviving the Ghost Initiative program that recruits convicted criminals as covert operatives, it seems likely that Deputy Director Bell will continue to hound Diggle and keep a close eye on Diaz's involvement in any ARGUS operations.

What The Ninth Circle Mean For Arrow's 2038

The existence of the Ninth Circle in the future of Arrow has not been as directly established as it was in the present. However, the central plot line set in the world of Star City 2038 bears a remarkable resemblance to that of The Rise of Star City - a storyline that was part of Benjamin Percy's critically acclaimed revival of Green Arrow. It was The Rise of Star City which explained the ultimate goals of the Ninth Circle beyond the simple acquirement of wealth and power.

Utilizing their agents within Queen Enterprises (who had stolen Oliver Queen's company away from him) and the local government of Seattle, the Ninth Circle enacted a plan to turn Oliver Queen's hometown into the first of many "Star Cities." Each Star City would be built upon principals of laissez-faire capitalism, with no taxes levied and no social services beyond those which local businesses would be willing to pay for. The theory was that this would encourage businesses to move into the communities and invest in them, with the benefits trickling down to the working classes. The reality was that it created a shelter for the Ninth Circle and their clients to do as they saw fit, with the working class of Seattle being turned into virtual slaves for the idle rich, forced into slums outside the city proper.

This seems very much like the state of Star City in the year 2038, with The Glades (currently the worst neighborhood in Star City in 2019) having been gentrified into a gated community with a near-impregnable security system known as the Archer Program. The rest of Star City, by contrast, has devolved into a dystopian hellscape. The flash-forward storyline has centered upon a team of Star City's vigilantes stumbling across a plot to blow up Star City while leaving the Glades untouched, presumably as a precursor to expanding The Glades into the now-vacant territory.

Killing the poor to make things better for the rich by facilitating a terrorist attack is certainly an activity the Ninth Circle in the comics would be willing to finance. It was also shown, in Arrow's season 7 mid-season premiere, that Mayor Rene Ramirez (aka the vigilante Wild Dog in 2019) is aware of the bombing plot and that one of his financial backers is involved with a group that is said to be organizing the whole affair. Blackmailing politicians into serving their interests, unsurprisingly, is another frequent tactic of the Ninth Circle. It's possible that some other organization might be using similar tactics in the future, but given that Arrow frequently linked its flashback storylines and modern-day storylines in its earliest seasons, it seems a safe bet that the Ninth Circle will prove to be the ultimate villains in both time periods.