The Canary has a complete career separate from Oliver, so maybe they could make (Black Siren) a regular on Flash or a future spinoff show, instead? Get Sara back on Arrow, and let Laurel/Dinah play on Legends, maybe?
Spoilers Arrow - Season 4
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
But isn't it a contradiction to say that it's ambiguous enough to draw an unambiguous conclusion? Just because there's a back door, that doesn't mean it's the producers' preferred or intended option. Just the opposite -- it's their fallback position if something happens to change their plans. Hedging your bets does not mean that you intend to reverse your decision; it means that you hope Plan A succeeds, but have a Plan B ready just in case. At the moment, it sounds as though their Plan A is that Laurel is dead, but they've left themselves enough wiggle room that they can potentially change that later. The existence of a Plan B does not mean that Plan A isn't still Plan A.
You forgot Jemm.
However someone chooses to analyze the character it does not change the fact that her death is apparently only used as a plot device to continue the contrived relationship drama of Felicity and Oliver.
And that's what people are pissed about. It's another fridging of a female character(something Arrow already has a horrible track record of) and this time it's used to prop up a subplot that has already overstayed its welcome ages ago for many of the show's fans.
I don't think it is a contradiction. Because it creates a question mark about the finality of Laurel's death. Because there could be a fallback in place. It's not as irrefutably a done deal as even the producers are declaring.
Even before you introduced the idea of them hedging their bets, I thought the way they shot the scene right before she went into convulsions and later expired, it made me suspicious that something was up.
Sara back on Arrow. I do like the sound of that. And Black Siren on Legends could be interesting. I do think they need to shake up the Legends cast next season, with an all new or mostly new roster. I think it can be a great way to introduce audiences to lesser known DC characters.
People are pissed off about a perception that isn't actually accurate.
It's the same thing that happened with Tara's death, and has, sadly, already escalated to the same level of reckless hate.
Yeah, but I'm just saying there's a substantive difference between "Her death is intended to be real but they've left an option to retcon it later" and "Her death was absolutely faked, period." Yes, they've left their options open, but what I'm saying is that TV producers always leave their options open to go more than one way, because that's just common sense in a business this unpredictable. Just because you pack parachutes on a plane, that doesn't mean you intend the plane to crash. It just means you're preparing for contingencies.
Which perception would that be?
That Laurel's character was mishandled and that Marc Guggenheim has some overwhelming bias towards Felicity and her relationship with Oliver at the expense of every other character on the show.
Neither of these things is even remotely true, just as it wasn't even remotely true that Joss killed off Tara simply to feed into a trope of all lesbian relationships on TV and film ending in tragedy as some sort of punishment for the characters for their sexual orientation and a dismissal of LGBT characters/relationships as being "abnormal".
Laurel's character was horribly mishandled, that's been a consistent complaint for years. She was finally in a good place though.
And bringing up Felicity or for that matter shipping at all is a serious case of a dog that don't hunt in terms of how her death was as horribly mishandled as her life. The fact that it's even considered as a major reason for people to be angry by Guggenheim or that random blogger is a serious case of completely missing the point.
ETA: ^ Exactly. If they were really set on killing her off - which I think was a mistake when it made a lot more sense for it to be Captain Lance or (for your "shocking twist") Felicity's mom or Oliver's son - it could've been handled much better.
And bringing up Felicity or for that matter shipping at all is a serious case of a dog that don't hunt in terms of how her death was as horribly mishandled as her life. The fact that it's even considered as a major reason for people to be angry by Guggenheim or that random blogger is a serious case of completely missing the point.
ETA: ^ Exactly. If they were really set on killing her off - which I think was a mistake when it made a lot more sense for it to be Captain Lance or (for your "shocking twist") Felicity's mom or Oliver's son - it could've been handled much better.
Just because something is trumpeted as truth doesn't mean it actually is. People can claim that Laurel was mishandled until they're blue in the face, but the show itself doesn't actually corroborate that assessment, as is outlined by and demonstrated in the article/character analysis I linked to earlier.
The decision to kill off Laurel is disappointing, but acting like it was done as part of some nefarious agenda or out of a negative bias towards the character is just irrational and has no actual basis in factual reality, just as the perception that the character was mishandled has no actual basis in factual reality.
I both agree and disagree. I do think Laurel was mishandled (and badly cast, though Cassidy was less unappealing these past couple of seasons than she was in the first two), but it makes no sense to believe that was the result of some campaign against the character. Why would TV writers ever include a character they didn't like? They create the whole thing. The characters' personalities are what the writers want them to be. How could they dislike their own preferences? That's a contradiction in terms. Even if they're adapting a pre-existing character and don't like how that character was handled previously, that doesn't prevent them from doing their own version, as we've seen many times in the Arrowverse. So it's bizarre to conclude that the people who shape these characters' personalities are somehow trapped into shaping them in a way they don't like, and then somehow taking revenge on their own creations for turning out that way. That is such an irrational conclusion that I could barely wrap my mind around writing the sentence.
Nobody tries to mishandle a character. Nobody wants an aspect of their show to work badly, and nobody would deliberately sabotage a major character on their own show. That would be self-defeating. So it's ridiculous to attribute it to malice when it's simply the result of human fallibility. Everyone involved in making a show wants it to work on every level. They try their best to make it work on every level. But it's hard to achieve that. Sometimes decisions made with the best of intentions still turn out badly or produce unintended results. A TV series is a very complicated construct that has to be assembled on the fly. That makes it very, very hard to achieve perfection. So if something goes wrong, it makes no sense to attribute to a deliberate desire to sabotage one's own creation. Things are inevitably going to go wrong anyway, so any producer who made more things go wrong on purpose would probably lose their job pretty quickly.
Christopher, did you read the analysis article I linked to? It lays out how and why the show's approach to the character worked using only what we saw onscreen. It's a great read that unpacks and addresses all of the criticisms against Laurel and demonstrates why and how they're inaccurate and not actually based on what the writers did.
I glanced at it, but it sounds very subjective and gushing, more an expression of personal sentiment than an analysis. Nothing wrong with people having their own personal feelings and attachments toward characters, but what works for one person won't necessarily work for another.
^ It's not; trust me.
In spite of the author not being a Laurel fan, the article is very much an objective analysis of the character and how she was handled on the series, and of why her death ultimately matters.
In spite of the author not being a Laurel fan, the article is very much an objective analysis of the character and how she was handled on the series, and of why her death ultimately matters.
^Maybe you're talking about a different article, then. The one I saw was very pro-Laurel.
Anyway, I have no dog in this fight. I wasn't crazy about Cassidy, but I have no interest in arguing about how the character was handled. I do think she was handled better this past season or so than in the past, although I won't particularly miss her and I didn't feel anything when she died (although that's partly because I expected it to be fake). But that's just me. Others are perfectly entitled to like the character and her handling.
Anyway, I have no dog in this fight. I wasn't crazy about Cassidy, but I have no interest in arguing about how the character was handled. I do think she was handled better this past season or so than in the past, although I won't particularly miss her and I didn't feel anything when she died (although that's partly because I expected it to be fake). But that's just me. Others are perfectly entitled to like the character and her handling.
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