Unlike most Arrow episodes, and as the promotional pictures released prior to its airing hinted,[1] "The Dragon" features minimal participation from the main cast members.

Stephen Amell (Oliver Queen), Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak) and Echo Kellum (Curtis Holt) are only briefly seen as the plot focuses on main antagonist Ricardo Diaz's (Kirk Acevedo) quest of becoming a crime lord.

Having fulfilled his personal quest of becoming a crime lord, Diaz locates Jesse and brings him atop a building, where he shows him a recovered fragment of his burned father's picture.

Writing for Entertainment Weekly Chancellor Agard praised Katie Cassidy's and Emily Bett Rickards' performances in the episode, but considered many points of its plot "predictable".

Club, compared the episode unfavorably to season 5's "Underneath", which also focused on specific characters with limited participation of the remaining cast.

[11] In a 2/5 stars review, Den of Geek's Delia Harrington called the episode "overly long, and low on substance".

She said the problems with it reflect issues of the season as a whole, which, according to her, include the absence of a good villain and the inability of the writers to establish Laurel's morals.

He said it "succeeded in lending new depth to Diaz" and that "Kirk Acevedo certainly had no trouble in dominating the screen in the absence of the majority of the main cast.

He also noted that Diaz is the first main antagonist of the series who's "neither motivated by a hatred of the Green Arrow nor by a desire to destroy Star City".

[4] On the other hand, he felt that the Felicity/Curtis' subplot "didn't really add much" and that it should have been replaced with more flashbacks of Diaz's past explaining how he became a skilled martial artist and how he entered the crime world.