Arrow I will never understand why the fandom attacked Laurel in season 2.

[Snow Queen]

Yeah, it's Cassidy for me. The writing hasn't done her any favours but I find her a black hole of charisma that drags the show to a halt whenever she shows up.

 

[Jedi Arrow]

I think Cassidy is a good actress, especially this last season. And from what I saw of the previews of her guest appearance on Flash, there too.

 

[coluanprime]

I think Cassidy is a good actress, especially this last season. And from what I saw of the previews of her guest appearance on Flash, there too.

I agree, Katie was a much better actress this season and her Flash appearance shows how much charisma she has when the writing allows her to have fun.

 

[godisawesome]

"Fun" is the imperative word there, I think. I feel that Cassidy has been directed consistently even if her plot and writing have been wildly inconsistent. Unfortunately, it's a very joyless and mellow direction, likely stemming from the way Laurel was envisioned by the creators. They wanted a very serious, professional woman who had a very rough go of it in her past, and I think they wanted the audience to always remember that. Which is not a bad concept, exactly, but it made Laurel effectively a gender-flipped Oliver without his place as the main, proactive vigilante. And another issue her season two plot may have had was the lackluster plot arc she had in season one leaving her low in fan estimates, so if she fell in fans' favor, she fell farther than she might have otherwise.

I mean, Season One had a lot of dodgy pieces for Laurel at the end, in particular the sudden resurgence of her and Oliver's relationship. It was just too soon, both story wise and meta wise. Two of Laurel's defining traits and arcs on Season One were her anger and disappointment in Oliver for the circumstances of his and Sara's death, and her sincere and actually pretty healthy relationship with Tommy. And most of the cast was still working out the chemistry they'd perfect in Season Two. As a result, Laurel falling for Oliver again became an emotionally illogical move on two fronts, while the on screen portrayal was stifled by Cassidy and Amell having not quite worked out how they thought the characters should act towards each other while a director failed to give them any help in that area.

So Season Two hits, and Laurel has lost even the little bit of fun from Tommy's relationship with her, and nothing in the season map sets up to give her any spark of joy till deep into it. That was probably too far to go without giving Cassidy some room to flex her range. And for a good portion of Seaosn Two, there's an enjoyable counterpart to Laurel who does get to flex her range on multiple stages. While the creators drag out Laurel's isolated Demon In A Bottle plotline and keep Cassidy in a holding pattern, Lotz is brought in as a guest star who gets to play radically different versions of the same character, both on the island and in Starling. Cassidy was trapped in a situation where even her smiles were kind of directed to have a sad edge to them, while Lotz got to play a totally scared castaway, a confident and assertive fighter in battle, a warm and even occasionally maternal figure in the cave and clock tower, and a person enjoying her second chance at life.

And I'll still argue that Lotz's Canary was closer in spirit and portrayal to the more modern Birds Of Prey version of the character than Cassidy's, while Cassidy may be closer to the version of the character more often seen in Green Arrow's books, where her fans sometimes feel she's being mis-portrayed.

 

[Batsfan1]

"Fun" is the imperative word there, I think. I feel that Cassidy has been directed consistently even if her plot and writing have been wildly inconsistent. Unfortunately, it's a very joyless and mellow direction, likely stemming from the way Laurel was envisioned by the creators. They wanted a very serious, professional woman who had a very rough go of it in her past, and I think they wanted the audience to always remember that. Which is not a bad concept, exactly, but it made Laurel effectively a gender-flipped Oliver without his place as the main, proactive vigilante. And another issue her season two plot may have had was the lackluster plot arc she had in season one leaving her low in fan estimates, so if she fell in fans' favor, she fell farther than she might have otherwise.

I mean, Season One had a lot of dodgy pieces for Laurel at the end, in particular the sudden resurgence of her and Oliver's relationship. It was just too soon, both story wise and meta wise. Two of Laurel's defining traits and arcs on Season One were her anger and disappointment in Oliver for the circumstances of his and Sara's death, and her sincere and actually pretty healthy relationship with Tommy. And most of the cast was still working out the chemistry they'd perfect in Season Two. As a result, Laurel falling for Oliver again became an emotionally illogical move on two fronts, while the on screen portrayal was stifled by Cassidy and Amell having not quite worked out how they thought the characters should act towards each other while a director failed to give them any help in that area.

So Season Two hits, and Laurel has lost even the little bit of fun from Tommy's relationship with her, and nothing in the season map sets up to give her any spark of joy till deep into it. That was probably too far to go without giving Cassidy some room to flex her range. And for a good portion of Seaosn Two, there's an enjoyable counterpart to Laurel who does get to flex her range on multiple stages. While the creators drag out Laurel's isolated Demon In A Bottle plotline and keep Cassidy in a holding pattern, Lotz is brought in as a guest star who gets to play radically different versions of the same character, both on the island and in Starling. Cassidy was trapped in a situation where even her smiles were kind of directed to have a sad edge to them, while Lotz got to play a totally scared castaway, a confident and assertive fighter in battle, a warm and even occasionally maternal figure in the cave and clock tower, and a person enjoying her second chance at life.

And I'll still argue that Lotz's Canary was closer in spirit and portrayal to the more modern Birds Of Prey version of the character than Cassidy's, while Cassidy may be closer to the version of the character more often seen in Green Arrow's books, where her fans sometimes feel she's being mis-portrayed.

She wasn't.

A character being happy and/or fun doesn't define whether or not she's likable.

Neither does main character status, gender or romantic interactions.

 

[Batsfan1]

The Prism Awards... Yeah...

She's just a bad actress.

I don't see how.

 

[Loki882]

She was a killer. How is that more likable?

Blackmailing is barely a dark path. Especially on a show where the main character is a killer.

It's really all bad writing. Season 2 had a lot of this with a lot of characters. Sara flip flops what she finds acceptable. Slade's characterization and motivation is an absolute work of parody. Isabel Rochev's motivation could have been a comedy skit. Oliver was relegated to making bad and/or stupid decisions for the sake of the plot, which no matter what the writers think can't be swept under the rug by him saying that he made them and not actually explaining why he made them. I'm not even gonna get into Felicity. Diggle was a background player for about 19 episodes out of 23. Quentin, he spent the season doing very little. I'm not even sure what his arc is. Roy hung around for 60 percent of the season, then left, and then was apparently captured by Slade after leaving, somehow, and spent the rest of the season until the finale in mirakuru rage or unconscious. Thea was just there until Slade kidnapped her.

Almost all the characters weren't well written. For some reason some people just don't like not very well written drama, instead of not very well written action drama.

She was a public servant who was blackmailing her boss, THE DA, for her own selfish purposes. That is NOT a good thing. And saying that "well other did bad things" doesn't change the fact that it's a bad thing. That's called a "logical fallacy." All it means is that others were also doing bad things, which doesn't let Laurel off the hood AT ALL. Not to mention sinking into drug/alcohol abuse and using the Starling PD to pursue her own personal vendetta against GA (oh and murdering a guy, lets not forget that). She was going down a dark path, and then the writers just forgot about it. And her suffering ZERO consequences for it makes it all the worse (at minimum, she shouldn't be a lawyer anymore, let alone a prosecutor). The simple fact is that people DIDN'T think that it was "well-written." I don't why you're cannot seem to understand that.

And as for seeing Sara as more likeable. A person who had to do terrible things just to survive and now regrets them/is trying to redeem herself. Yes, many people find that notion more interesting than Laurel's story.

 

[Batsfan1]

She was a public servant who was blackmailing her boss, THE DA, for her own selfish purposes. That is NOT a good thing. And saying that "well other did bad things" doesn't change the fact that it's a bad thing. That's called a "logical fallacy." All it means is that others were also doing bad things, which doesn't let Laurel off the hood AT ALL. Not to mention sinking into drug/alcohol abuse and using the Starling PD to pursue her own personal vendetta against GA (oh and murdering a guy, lets not forget that). She was going down a dark path, and then the writers just forgot about it. And her suffering ZERO consequences for it makes it all the worse (at minimum, she shouldn't be a lawyer anymore, let alone a prosecutor). The simple fact is that people DIDN'T think that it was "well-written." I don't why you're cannot seem to understand that.

And as for seeing Sara as more likeable. A person who had to do terrible things just to survive and now regrets them/is trying to redeem herself. Yes, many people find that notion more interesting than Laurel's story.

I didn't say it wasn't bad. I said it was barely a dark path compared the path of killers. If that's a dark path, then Sara's and Oliver's is pitch black. Of course it was poorly written. A lot of season 2 was poorly written.

Sara only showed regret once and she didn't try to redeem herself. She remained a killer.

 

[godisawesome]

Um, Sara's entire subplot in the modern day timeline was to break from her path as a killer, even to the point of being willing to die by her own hand rather than rejoin the League. Only the finale episode tried to place a positive spin on her deal with the devil for Nyssa's help.

That's not to say that it makes Laurel's actions worse/better or whatever you guys are arguing about. But I would say it demonstrates that the writing staff screwed over both characters with the ending of season two and the first epsisode of season three.

Sara's sudden acceptance of what had been a fate worse than death mere episodes before, and her family's really weird and out of character support for it considering the League had tried to kill Laurel earlier, smacks of the writing staff trying to hammer in a happy ending and do some shoddy groundwork for Laurel as the Black Canary. I mean, if you want to be consistent with the way they'd written the characters earlier, that should be a tearful goodbye for both parties, with a very downer ending considering Sara's being torn from her family again and may very well be contemplating suicide, and Laurel perhaps swearing to find some way to rescue her sister. In fact, scratch that, that's how it should have been written; give Cassidy a a chance to display some of the character's steely determination and give Laurel a reason to improve her skills over the break while motivating her in an ultimately selfless manner. Instead, Sara got fridged in a really stupid way so Laurel could have angst and vengeance before deciding doing good felt good and we had the utter horse $#!+ of the Sara impression.

 

[Batsfan1]

Um, Sara's entire subplot in the modern day timeline was to break from her path as a killer, even to the point of being willing to die by her own hand rather than rejoin the League. Only the finale episode tried to place a positive spin on her deal with the devil for Nyssa's help.

That's not to say that it makes Laurel's actions worse/better or whatever you guys are arguing about. But I would say it demonstrates that the writing staff screwed over both characters with the ending of season two and the first epsisode of season three.

Sara's sudden acceptance of what had been a fate worse than death mere episodes before, and her family's really weird and out of character support for it considering the League had tried to kill Laurel earlier, smacks of the writing staff trying to hammer in a happy ending and do some shoddy groundwork for Laurel as the Black Canary. I mean, if you want to be consistent with the way they'd written the characters earlier, that should be a tearful goodbye for both parties, with a very downer ending considering Sara's being torn from her family again and may very well be contemplating suicide, and Laurel perhaps swearing to find some way to rescue her sister. In fact, scratch that, that's how it should have been written; give Cassidy a a chance to display some of the character's steely determination and give Laurel a reason to improve her skills over the break while motivating her in an ultimately selfless manner. Instead, Sara got fridged in a really stupid way so Laurel could have angst and vengeance before deciding doing good felt good and we had the utter horse $#!+ of the Sara impression.

I didn't really buy her saying that she couldn't take the killing, because before that she without an ounce of remorse killed the Dollmaker, and after her declaration of anti killing, she wanted to kill Helena and Roy.

Season 2 and 3 weren't very well written.

 

[b_boy]

The thing is, she was hated on season 2, but luckly she was good on S3, many ppl don't hate her anymore and now it seems that she'll improve on the action (she's trained a lot during hiatus and I guess the bike jump they mentioned it's her), still no romance (that usually brings the characters down on this show) and, this season promisses to be a lighter one, so I guess she also won't be so sad and more happy, all the things that ppl like more and usually doesn't bring hate with it

 

[Fincher]

I think Laurel was somewhat in the wrong (not because she spoke out but in the specifics of how she spoke out), but I also think Laurel was supposed to be somewhat in the wrong.

 

[DigificWriter]

What bothers me more than anything about the situation re: Laurel is that Marc Guggenheim and the other producers came out and said that they made a mistake in the way they'd handled her character in Seasons 1 and 2, which is really the only blemish on their otherwise spotless record when it comes to this show.

 

[Batsfan1]

What bothers me more than anything about the situation re: Laurel is that Marc Guggenheim and the other producers came out and said that they made a mistake in the way they'd handled her character in Seasons 1 and 2, which is really the only blemish on their otherwise spotless record when it comes to this show.

There are plenty more issues with the show in season 2. Laurel's characterization wasn't really a problem in season 1.

 

[Mani-Man]

Yeah, it's Cassidy for me. The writing hasn't done her any favours but I find her a black hole of charisma that drags the show to a halt whenever she shows up.

Yup, she isnt a bad actess or anything...she just feels misscasted to me.
She just has no screen presence for the character she is supposed to play.

That is objective, but i just think she is pale and boring as Laurel.

 

[Kster95]

Yup, she isnt a bad actess or anything...she just feels misscasted to me.
She just has no screen presence for the character she is supposed to play.

That is objective, but i just think she is pale and boring as Laurel.

Not at all Katie's fault. Its the crappy writing. She was born to play Black Canary.

https://youtu.be/nrJj-H13qJo

 

[Mani-Man]

Not at all Katie's fault. Its the crappy writing. She was born to play Black Canary.

Personally i dont think so, but you are right...better writing could have helped.
But to me, she is just too "boring" as Laurel/Black Canary...she doesnt have this fire, confidence, sass that iexpected from this character.

 

[godisawesome]

I think a lot of the character's initial problems can be found in the implications of calling her Laurel instead of Dinah. Neither name is especially hip or young sounding, but by choosing Laurel as the character's name, the creators were implying a desire for a radically different character than what most of us see as Black Canary. The cast and molded the character as a love interest for a CW show first, with her future part of the plan but not neccesarily part of the upswell to CW.

 

[b_boy]

Personally i dont think so, but you are right...better writing could have helped.
But to me, she is just too "boring" as Laurel/Black Canary...she doesnt have this fire, confidence, sass that iexpected from this character.

She had fire, confidence and didn't take bulls*** from Dean and Sam in supernatural, so again, I would put the blame on the writers for making her character "boring" on Arrow...

 

[Batsfan1]

I think a lot of the character's initial problems can be found in the implications of calling her Laurel instead of Dinah. Neither name is especially hip or young sounding, but by choosing Laurel as the character's name, the creators were implying a desire for a radically different character than what most of us see as Black Canary. The cast and molded the character as a love interest for a CW show first, with her future part of the plan but not neccesarily part of the upswell to CW.

I thought they did the Laurel thing to try and get a reveal at the end of the Pilot that she was Dinah.

 

[Mani-Man]

She had fire, confidence and didn't take bulls*** from Dean and Sam in supernatural, so again, I would put the blame on the writers for making her character "boring" on Arrow...

Eh Tommy Lee Jones is a good actor...didnt help him when they misscasted him as Two Face.
Ryan Reynolds was misscasted as Hal Jordan...yet he does make the perfect Deadpool.

The Best actors dont work if they are used for the wrong role.
You can like her and blame the writers, in my opinion she is the wrong person to play this character.

 

[Kster95]

Eh Tommy Lee Jones is a good actor...didnt help him when they misscasted him as Two Face.
Ryan Reynolds was misscasted as Hal Jordan...yet he does make the perfect Deadpool.

The Best actors dont work if they are used for the wrong role.
You can like her and blame the writers, in my opinion she is the wrong person to play this character.

Dude look at the video she would have been a perfect Black Canary however the writing said otherwise to turn her into an emotional drug addict.

https://youtu.be/nrJj-H13qJo

Its clear from the video she would have been an perfect Black Canary if written correctly. I dont see what you are even arguing.

 

[Mani-Man]

Dude look at the video she would have been a perfect Black Canary however the writing said otherwise to turn her into an emotional drug addict.

https://youtu.be/nrJj-H13qJo

Its clear from the video she would have been an perfect Black Canary if written correctly. I dont see what you are even arguing.

1. I dont argue at all...i simply say that IN MY OPINION she is misscasted.
Every time she is on screen...i roll my eyes because i find her boring and pale.

2. I dont see any resemblence to Black Canary in this clip...where do i see this Black Canary anywhere in the comics, animated movies, shows etc?

If anybody else thinks she is perfect, so be it...doesnt change that i dont like her.

 

[fire117]

1. I dont argue at all...i simply say that IN MY OPINION she is misscasted.
Every time she is on screen...i roll my eyes because i find her boring and pale.

2. I dont see any resemblence to Black Canary in this clip...where do i see this Black Canary anywhere in the comics, animated movies, shows etc?

If anybody else thinks she is perfect, so be it...doesnt change that i dont like her.

I have to agree. Not a big fan of Laurel to be honest. I didn't like her much in season 1 or 2 and nothing changed in regards to 3. Overall just not a big Laurel fan.

 

[Vincanws]

I think part of the Laurel hate was she served little or no purpose to the show other than being a figurative emotional punch bag. And boy did she keep getting served up... and then came the moment where she started to serve a purpose, and it was stupid.