10 TV Shows That Shot Themselves In The Foot
4. Olicity & Killing Laurel - Arrow
Arrow was a trendsetter when it came to modern day superhero television, reinvigorating the genre in a way that it hadn't seen in some time, with its dark retelling of the Green Arrow's origins drawing comparisons to Christopher Nolan's universally adored Dark Knight Trilogy. Unfortunately, that popularity worked against it as the writers took one of its popular supporting characters, Felicity Smoak, and rammed her to the forefront of the show, moving further away from the source material as they did so - a decision that snowballed into a series of bad decisions.
As the fourth season focused primarily on Oliver and Felicity's non-canon romance, it began to highlight the sheer toxicity of it and, to make matters worse, the writers thought it would be a good idea to kill off one of the few comic book characters left on the show - the Green Arrow's actual love interest: the Black Canary.
Yes, the death of Laurel Lance robbed Arrow of its leading lady just as she was beginning to reach her ultimate goal, robbing the fans of the comic-accurate show they had been promised and sentencing them to a watered down comic book series that prioritised melodramatic romances over its own foundations.
The fans' distaste showed in the rapidly declining ratings, and even though a ton of damage control was done post-Season 4 through a new better villain, an Olicity break-up and the arrival of Black Siren (Laurel's Earth-2 doppelganger), the show's ratings never recovered and it never managed to fully redeem itself.