Loved It? Hated It? What did you think of "We Fall?"

[Raissa]

Ra's didn't really specify how much Darhk stole per se, but it's obviously been enough that he still does indeed have his youth up until this present day point...so I'd guess he got away with quite a lot of it. Also there is a possibility that he discovered a previously untapped Pit that Ra's never discovered yet, but that was never established/confirmed yet.

As for why they would reuse Ra's again...Look, I'm not going to lie. Ra's isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea when it comes to comic villains. But asides from Arrow de-aging him a bit (he's actually 600 plus years old in the comics and animated media shows), he's basically an exact copy of the Batman character. So I knew what to expect from him when he showed up finally in Arrow season 3. Which is probably why I don't feel he's so underwhelming as most of the view around here seems to reflect.

Everything he did to and for Oliver was basically a page by page play he did for Bruce in the comics. He temps Oliver to join the league, trains him, tries to hook him up with Talia (or in Oliver's case, Nyssa), the master and student have a falling out, and a war between the two erupts. Like it or not the Cw really did hit the major plot points of any LOA story line involving Ra's.

I think CW fans felt Ra's was so underwhelming probably because it felt like the man himself did so little. But that's how he operates. He gets others to do his dirty work for him. He's a shadow play character, the type that can actually be used to actually define all other shadow player characters. He exploits, manipulates, and leverages. He's got a system cooked up so great that he can accomplish what thousands of people can't do and does so barely with out lifting a finger of his own to do so. Not that he isn't capable of doing so mind you, but when he has this kind of power at his disposal, why should he?

Honestly, if Arrow hadn't tainted season 3 with the whole Felicity is now our universe's sun subplot I'd argue for season 3 being the second best of the entirety of the show. As is Felicity poisoned season 3 to the point were anything decent like Ra's gets overshadowed by her and I think that's why people are having negative feelings towards Ra's. It's not so much the character itself it's just the other "gag me please" portions of the season that his him associated with it now.

Trust me, there's tons they could do with Ra's character should the actor make himself available and the writers can come up with something decent for him. He's a world shadow/chess player that thinks DECADES ahead at a time. If Ra's is indeed behind the current crime syndicate Oliver's group is facing I'm sure it's just in fact a small part in his much grander scheme that somehow involves the entire world, I'm sure.

Word X infinity -- Ra's was my favorite villain for all the reasons you mentioned. Slade was cool, but he lacked the depth of Ra's. Minus the Olicity crap, S3 was golden. Plus, we needed Ra's. Malcolm influenced Oliver. Ra's influenced Malcolm. That whole Undertaking of Malcolm's doubled as a ceremonial effort to destroy where he came from, so he could fulfill the terms of Ra's succession regardless of whether the current Ra's countenanced it or not. In turn, Ra's was influenced by Damien. If anything, we now need a Ra's-Damien story line which fills the gaps because being stymied by Oliver and now Sarah takes the Damien/Ra's/Malcolm/Oliver cycle full circle. The writers had always put the broad strokes in. They just tend to suck at the details.