20 Most Hated Characters In TV History

In adapting DC Comics’ vigilante archer Green Arrow for television, The CW has given us a very CW version of the character. Instead of a womanising loudmouth playboy with a pirate beard and ecowarrior pretensions, we’ve got a very pretty Batman in Robin Hood cosplay.

And that’s fine - after all, there doesn’t actually appear to be a Batman in this version of the DC Universe, so why not? But there are certain touchstones for the character and his story that didn’t need to be messed with, and his relationship with the Black Canary is one of those things.

For DC fans, the Oliver Queen/Dinah Lance relationship is one of the most iconic in the history of superhero comics. Oliver Queen may be a player when he’s single, but when he’s not single he’s with the Black Canary: the two are Bonnie and Clyde, Bert and Ernie, mac and cheese.

Sadly, Arrow screwed up every last chance to translate this important relationship to the story they’ve been telling on television. You can tell a revamped Green Arrow story without the Black Canary - of course you can. But they haven’t: she’s a character on the show - two characters, technically, given that both Lance sisters have taken on the Canary mantle. Both have been romantically involved with Queen.

As Oliver’s childhood sweetheart, this version of Dinah Laurel Lance wasn’t the Black Canary: far from a leatherclad asskicking machine, she was a lawyer with no interest in vigilante activities besides prosecuting them. Worse, she was written to be a spoiler, a supporting character that exists to challenge and antagonise the protagonist without actually being an antagonist.

Some spoilers become breakout characters (look at Niles Crane in Frasier), but Katie Cassidy was horribly miscast, and had no chemistry with lead actor Stephen Amell whatsoever… and the fans really let her know it. Rarely has the adaptation of a much loved character been so comprehensively sh*t on.

By the time she began to take on aspects of the Black Canary in taking over the role from her dead sister, Laurel was toast. She’d been the angry-faced grit in the show’s boots for well over two years. With Cassidy barely registering as three-dimensional on screen, let alone multi-faceted, the writing was on the wall.

The fans loathed Laurel. When she was unceremoniously offed in season four, the massive outcry wasn’t in support of Cassidy’s interpretation of the character, but in final indignation at the way the show had handled the Black Canary from the very beginning. The producers confessed: they'd picked Laurel to be the fall guy because she was the least important character in the main cast. Well, whose fault is that?

Ironically, the Canary that made way for her, Caity Lotz’ Sara Lance, was ten times the superhero that Laurel ever was. Cassidy looked awkward in the costume, and clumsy in action scenes: Lotz, a martial artist and dancer, looked born to it, and she and Amell had the kind of chemistry that makes weapons of mass destruction jealous.