1: Losing Katie Cassidy As This Character
This is a little more personal, but I’m sure that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Back when Arrow was first announced in 2012 and we started getting casting announcements of who was playing who, I was barely familiar with most of the people they recruited. I was however familiar with Katie Cassidy as she won me over as the great anti-hero Juliet Sharp on Gossip Girl and knowing what a strong actress she is, I was stoked to see Cassidy take on one of the most iconic DC heroines of all time. I had a huge problem with Season 3 of this show as I felt there were barely any good aspects to it, but one of the few things that I was in love was Laurel’s transformation into the Black Canary. I know I have said it before, but it really hurts that she was underutilized the way she was. Even some of the material she got to work with, I was mixed on, but she made it work whenever she could. Despite that I had issues with how they dealt with her rushed death last week: she delivered an amazing performance, hence why the death hurts the way it does.
If you follow her on social media and have been seeing her physical training over the past two years, she gave it her all and wasn’t messing around, which is greatly appreciating for me as a fan because it’s always to see when someone cares deeply about their craft. Again, as I said before, a creative team that is working on a show based on something like comics isn’t obligated to follow everything that happens in the mythology, I get that. But if you are planning to kill off someone as big as the Black Canary, then give them a proper send-off after having been given some good stories throughout the season. However, as I mentioned in previous pages: her death didn’t feel like a respectful one after being side-lined for most parts of the season and nothing about her character arc felt completed. While we know Cassidy will be seen soon again in the DC TV world (more on that on the next page), Arrow lost another great female character who was also a heroine and her presence on the show will be deeply missed.
