Over the first two seasons of Arrow, no single character has been so widely disliked as Laurel Lance. Despite looking pretty good on paper and being introduced as the future Black Canary to Oliver's Green Arrow, Laurel has never been somebody with whom many viewers have connected. The unfortunate chemistry vacuum between Katie Cassidy and Stephen Amell combined with the toxic backstory with which the couple was saddled from the very first episodes of the series made her into an undesirable romantic lead. With the assimilation of Sara as Canary into Team Arrow and Felicity's emergence as Oliver's lady love by the end of Season 2, the question arose: what to do with Laurel in Season 3? There were plenty of potential starting points for her. If freed from the constraints of love interest and vigilante-roles occupied by far more popular characters and actresses-Laurel could become a character finally worth rooting for. So what if her first name is actually Dinah? The show could let Laurel settle into an original plot of her own and perhaps start to win over those viewers who tend to glaze over during her scenes. Instead, the producers chose to unceremoniously fling Sara's body onto a dumpster and literally have the Canary mask fall at Laurel's feet. Now, it's not Laurel's fault that Sara died. In-universe, Sara is dead because she fell off of a roof and smashed every important part of her body not riddled with arrows on the way down. Laurel had nothing to do with the fact that it happened or the obscene way in which it played out on screen. Objectively, we viewers know this. But it's going to be hard not to blame Laurel as she seizes on Sara's demise as her excuse to turn vigilante. There is something seriously wrong in a show when even villains not played by John Barrowman are more popular than the female lead, but swapping one character for another in the ugliest way possible should not have been the way to try to fix it, and Laurel will suffer with audiences for it.
Fiction buff and writer. If it's on Netflix, it's probably in my queue. I've bought DVDs for the special features and usually claim that the book is better than the movie or show (and can provide examples). I've never met a TV show that I won't marathon. Follow on Twitter @lah9891 .
