#arrow reactions

Sara’s introduction to the team was alright. I wasn’t crazy about it and thought she was a terrible influence on Oliver both in the present and in the past. That’s my interpretation of her character during season 2 which I know is not shared by many. But she was constantly in his ear pushing him to kill people. She was the one consistently telling Oliver to kill Slade in the flashbacks (unless I’m totally mis-remembering). She was also very much kill all our problems solution pushing in the present. Which I understand, she’d spent the last what 4 years with the LoA, so it’s understandable that her violent tendencies were amplified. But you know what, she understood herself, she understood where she was emotionally and ultimately made a decision she felt was best for herself and for Oliver and returned to the LoA with Nyssa.

Roy’s introduction to the team felt more earned as well. He wanted to help the city and those who lived there. He was (mostly) willing to be trained and learn and improve his skills. When he was fully added at the beginning of S3 it seemed seamless. No one’s skills needed to be diminished to fit him in. He was still learning and earning his place. By the time he gave up his life to save Oliver from prison I had fully embraced him as a character and was actually sad to see him go. Additionally at this point Oliver was arrested. Oliver had started this whole team and was willing to take the fall for everyone. But John, Felicity, and Roy were not happy about that and didn’t think it was right that he take the fall alone. No way were they going to stand by as one person took the fall alone. They were all going to get out of it or all go down together. That is a real team built on trust and faith in each other.  By the way I have to add this link to a vid that I love so much from that time in the show. 

https://youtu.be/iHITUAbqiqM

Also in season 3 LL suited up. I’m not a fan of that character. I hated how she was added to the team. I hated her motivations for suiting up. I hated how Oliver had to “die” to bring her onto the team. I hated how John was sidelined from the field so she could be out in the field. John is a special forces soldier and he’s sitting in the bunker with Felicity while she’s out in the field to make her arc happen. Now I’ve never rewatched those first eps of 3B because I dislike them so much. But I remember being so pissed at her swinging from the helicopter stunt that seemed well out of any skill set she should have. I remember being incredibly pissed that she insisted on being in the field and I feel like one of the ops went wrong and a cop got shot as a result of her incompetence.

This is where my annoyance with how people getting added to the team began. To add LL, Oliver needed to be diminished, so they temporarily “killed” him. Dig and Roy should have been able to handle field situations on their own with Felicity as back-up in the lair. Once again John is a special forces soldier. Roy grew up in the Glades and was trained by Oliver and John for over a year now. But for reasons (plot) lets sideline an original character to make a comic character mask happen against all realistic sense. So began the sidelining of OTA (both as a unit and as individual characters) to make comic characters happen. I just feel like every time a new comic canon character is added, in some form or fashion, Felicity or John or Oliver or their relationships with each other are diminished or pushed to the side. And so began my reticence to ever really embrace a new character again.

Thea was the next character added on to the team. She is a whole ‘nother issue. She has never been a character I’ve particularly cared for, but she’s grown on me, finally. She was introduced as a whiny entitled brat in season 1. I totally understand her reasons for why she acted the way she did. But I didn’t connect with that or want to watch it. It is what it is. Which probably colored my perception of her sudden fighting skills she gained with Malcolm. I never bought it, still don’t frankly. But she’s grown on me and I enjoy her as Oliver’s sister now finally. I enjoy the wonderfully resilient and strong woman she has grown into. But I also won’t be sad to see her go if she takes off with Roy when he returns this season. That girl has had so much tragedy and heartbreak in her life, she needs her quiet happy ending. So for whatever reason I’ve never really connected with her character, but I’ve also never felt anyone was diminished or pushed out to add her to the team.

Curtis is up next. This is a character that I’ve had the opposite reaction to. While I grew to appreciate Roy and Thea, I’ve grown to resent Curtis’s presence on the show. I enjoyed Curtis’s introduction. I liked his relationship with Felicity, his child-like wonder at finding the lair and helping out superheros. I liked how he was complementary to Felicity’s skills. But now, now wow what a change I’ve had with regards to his character. So many times now I feel like instead of speaking in-sync with Felicity it has turned into speaking over her. Things that Felicity could have done without issue she now needs his help with or needs him to do it for her. But really the thing that bugs me the most (and this is totally on the writers) I absolutely resent that Felicity’s company has to be a joint venture with him. This is a genius, who built her own computer at age 7. Who graduated with a double masters from MIT at age 19. Who won numerous intellectual competitions. Who basically ran Queen Consolidated for Oliver and then ran Palmer Tech without issue. She can’t start a company on her own? Give me a fucking break. That’s not even mentioning the fact that he put tracking nanites in her pancakes last season, which he used 2 eps in a row to track her. (I know I just rewatched to verify). And now he is acting all offended because they spied on him digitally for like a day to look for a traitor to the team. Get out with that hypocrisy. You put nanites into someone’s body without permission and you are whining about being digitally tracked. So yeah, I’m done with him as a character. His being on the show is, in my opinion, hurting the story lines Felicity should be getting.

Evelyn and Rory I’m just briefly going to touch on. They were both there for such a short period of time. Evelyn’s story line irritated me because I felt she had been set up as a 17 year old high school student and no one ever brought up the fact that she should still be in school. No one encouraged her to figure out what to do with her life. I feel like her age as she was initially introduced was just ignored or forgotten. Rory was alright as a character, but I’m firmly on the no metas on team arrow team. He was way overpowered. He was basically immortal when wearing the rags so why anyone else should be out in the field risking their lives when he was on the team made no sense.

Rene, oh this is a character I dislike, possibly even more than LL. Now some personal info first. I have 3 adopted cousins. Two were abused children who were put into foster care and then adopted by my cousins. Another was born to a drug addicted mother and was initially in a foster home that kept her drugged to keep her quiet before ending up with my cousins. I have very strong feelings about foster care. So when I say that Rene initially wanting nothing to do with Zoe and wanting her in foster care. Well he lost me there. And I can’t ever see myself liking him on that basis alone. That is not even touching on the fact that I find him rude and disrespectful. That comment last night about not liking how Felicity is talking to him? He has repeatedly ignored her asking him to stop calling her Blondie. Now I get the situations are totally different now than in season 3 and there are children involved but Rene was pretty damn quick to throw Oliver to the feds to save his own ass. He never let anyone know what was happening. Then he had the gall to make that beautiful speech about Oliver and Felicity when he would be testifying against Oliver soon enough. He brings nothing to the team. He is a body with a gun and that is it. No special skills, nothing that couldn’t be replaced with just about anyone else. I want him gone forever from the team. It especially irks me that he is supposedly doing all this to regain custody of Zoe. Yet he is still putting himself in harms way every day going out into the field when it has repeatedly been said there is no one else for Zoe to go to, no extended family. So what the hell is going to happen to her if he is killed?

Dinah, she’s tricky. I’ve really not had strong feelings one way or the other about her. As a character she never particularly bothered me one way or the other, she was just there. I’m not a fan of the meta ability like I said before. I’m firmly on the leave the metas on the other shows in the arrowverse team. I will say I mildly resented how she got an apartment shown within a season of being on the show when it took til season 3 to see Felicity’s. I resent that she quickly got a job as a police lieutenant when Felicity has been jobless for almost 2 seasons now. I resented that scene she had with Oliver in Russia last season. That felt entirely unearned, they’d known each other for less than a month. I resented all the scenes she’s had with Dig last season and this season. Because here we go again. One of my reasons for watching, Dig and Felicity’s friendship, is being ignored and sidelined because of the need to add in a comic cannon character. So her hanging out with Vigilante, who was trying to kill Oliver last season, and keeping him a secret from the team yeah that cemented my mild dislike for her character.

In all I find that the addition of all these comic character masks diminished the team in general. I miss the early fight scenes with Oliver kicking ass alone or with Dig. They were enjoyable to watch and frankly seemed more physical. Now they are big wide shots to then zoom in multiple times to give everyone’s stunt double their 5 second fight scene. Now Oliver always needs everyone in the field with him all the time for optics.

Are some of my complaints emotional and not logical? Absolutely! I don’t watch shows where I don’t emotionally connect with characters. So when I emotionally react to what I perceive as characters I love being changed or sidelined to push characters to the forefront that I don’t care about I’m going to get upset. And being constantly upset leads me to resent those characters even more.

In general I feel that the addition of all these characters has diminished the quality of the story I could be getting. Arrow has had some wonderful character growth and character based episodes. They’ve also had some horrible episodes where characters have acted well out of established character in order to move plot or cause drama. I don’t know. I just feel like some of the shows that I have loved the best have had small casts and spent time developing and highlighting the relationships between those characters.

So in conclusion I just wanted to get all those thoughts out of my head. I really want Curtis and Rene gone forever and I’m leaning that way with Dinah as well. I’m not looking forward to the manufactured drama that is going to be needed to inevitably bring the newbies back on to the team. I cringe at the thought of who (if not all) of my loves (OTA) will need to be diminished to justify needing the newbies permanently. But I am looking forward to hopefully many wonderful scenes with Felicity and Dig and OTA in general. Those 3 in any combination are magical. My love for them as individual characters and as a found family is why I continue to hang on and watch. Because as much as the show drives me crazy and irritates me at times, they then turn around and throw me an emotionally satisfying scene or episode and I’m happy again.