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I was pretty much meh about William because up to this point his purpose has been plot device not character. He existed to throw a wrench into Oliver and Felicity’s relationship or to be a target of the villain of the show. But, this is where I am with him now, he didn’t annoy me this week. Oliver and Felicity co-parenting created some really nice scenes with William, which I never thought I’d say. I chalk it up to the power of Olicity. But, that being said, I don’t know that I particularly want him there until the show ends either. Unless they have a time jump and age him up what are they going to do with him? They haven’t been able to think of new stories to play for Quentin and Thea, and they’re adults, so I don’t hold out much hope of what they can write for a child.

Wendy’s early comment that Cayden was a villain for both Oliver and Felicity was misleading at best (I’m trying to be kind). Once it was revealed his villain arc was driven by a MYSON plot, he was all Oliver’s. I think the Cayden/Felicity scene at Helix HQ from 604 will be the one and only one we get. What a disappointing waste of a storyline for Felicity. I’m really hoping the amount of Dinah and Dinah/BS facing off it sounds like they’re setting up doesn’t translate to an overwhelming amount of screen time.

I honestly can’t remember what Anatoly has done up to this point. The cabal of villains has been a little underwhelming and I’m not even sure why they all decided to band together. I feel like I’ve missed some important plot points somewhere along the way.

Turns out he was someone we didn’t know and didn’t really care about...and then they linked him to Dinah. If BS kills Vigilante do you think that lowers the chances of her getting any sort of redemption arc?

If it’s Talia then I will be disappointed that it’s another League of Assassins adjacent plot. We’ve been there, we’ve done that...multiple times. Plus, instead of being an Oliver killed my son revenge plot, it becomes an Oliver killed my father revenge plot, which was done in S5. I’m really hoping that the “hard right turn” MG talked about is actually surprising and that the villain is someone we aren’t expecting and something we haven’t seen before.

The information about creative contracts is really interesting because, as a fan, I didn’t know that promotional consideration was something that could be set up. With regard to JH in particular, just before she made her debut the EP’s started talking about how you couldn’t do a Green Arrow show without a Black Canary and Stephen also talked about how important BC was in the comic world of Green Arrow. That, coupled with the intensive push in promo for her and the weird way they wrote Oliver/Felicity in 5A, definitely made me wonder if they were going to take another opportunity to set up a GA/BC pairing. The other factor is that I think I’m canaried out after three attempts at the character in five years. I sometimes wonder if I would have been more receptive if they’d introduced her as something other than another version of Black Canary because they do need more women on the show.

If he’s as much of an ass to her/about her as Rene has been then I will absolutley believe they are writing NoTA to be completely and irredeemably unlikeable to me.

I do think there is a level of incompetence at play in the way the CW market and promote their shows, but I think there comes a point where you do have to wonder if something more is going on. Completely ignoring Stephen’s tweet about Emily’s performance was kind of blatant, which is why people started to question it. It’s not possible that they didn’t see it based on the number of people I saw tweeting the show and writer accounts asking why they were ignoring it, it had to have been popping up a lot. The overload of promo for JH, RG, EK and KC is having the reverse effect on me from what they probably intend because the more they are pushed on me, the more annoyed I become with their characters. ?‍♀️

I will never understand the levels to which some reviewers dismiss or hate Felicity as a part of the story. It some cases the criticism she gets is outlandishly large when matched to the inconsequential things she supposedly does that “irritate” them (i.e. behave like someone with human emotions would).

I thought that scene was a bit jarring because it felt like the writers were trying to hard to make NoTA the funny, new, “cool” kids on the playground. My reaction was “let’s get this over with so we can all move on”.

OMG, this is me! It was so annoying that I think it’s when I really began wanting Curtis off the show.

If she is back then I’m guessing we can expect a wagon load of “husband” jokes. Sigh. I really hope they take the opportunity to wrap up that lingering plot point. It’s been three years, I feel like it’s time to let it go and move on.

It was much easier to fast forward through Laurel because she was kind of inconsequential. Dinah, as has been pointed out, is everywhere which makes it much harder (but not impossible!) to fast forward and still make sense of the story. My preference would be no canaries, but I know we’re going to end up having to keep one of them. ?

I love that Emily is exactly as delightful as I’ve always thought she was. I’m more convinced than ever that Arrow PR is asleep at the wheel with how little they promote her.

I think his fighting skills have stayed at a standstill or, in some cases, been made a little bit weaker over 6 years to accommodate team members who had lesser skill sets but still needed to appear equally competent by comparison.

This is why I’m having trouble with the writers using his daughter as the primary justification for why he turned Oliver over to the FBI. He spent part of S5 dodging even having to see her and multiple people had to push him into stepping up and taking responsibility for her again. Is it a writing fail, is it a case of them hoping the audience isn’t paying attention to the details, is it just tone deaf? Who knows ??‍♀️.

Do you think the writers / Echo have actually forgotten that Curtis did this in S5? I think Curtis putting tracking nanites in Felicity’s food is more invasive and a much greater breach of privacy than what Felicity did in tracking him via GPS and satellite, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it. Their story continuity isn’t always the best but you’d think they would remember something that was an actual plot point. They were also referenced in 520 when they were going to use them to trace Felicity but couldn’t because they’d been destroyed by the EMP burst.

It’s hard to believe that they would deliberately write the newbies to a place where the audience actively hates them and wants them to leave, because how would they hope to ever come back from that? I’m assuming that we were supposed to feel some empathy for Rene in having to choose to turn Oliver in for the sake of his daughter, but it doesn’t work because in order to save his daughter he sacrifices Oliver’s son. If they hadn’t found out about the betrayal, it seems like Rene would have happily continued to work in the team right up until Oliver’s trial, when he testified against him. I think they’ve overestimated how attached the audience are to the newbies and how shaky their grievances are in the greater scheme of things.

In S4 he was a recurring character that we only got in small doses. From S5 onwards he was there all the time in the lair and in the field and a little bit of Curtis goes a looong way. It didn’t help that they had to take away from Felicity’s skill set in order to give him something to do.

It will forever make me laugh that Stephen tried to sell how much he liked the Susan/Oliver dynamic, but on screen it looked like Oliver couldn’t escape from her fast enough.

I try to never think about that storyline...?

I feel really awful saying this but I probably still won’t care about her. ?

If they didn’t expect or want the reaction they got then something is seriously wrong with their script writing. I don’t see how they could’ve possibly thought fans would seriously struggle to choose between OTA and NoTA.

Rick Gonzalez has been responding to fans on Twitter.

I’m torn trying to decide if they are deliberately writing Curtis, Rene and Dinah to be so unbearably unlikeable that the audience do indeed hate them or if it’s an unintentional outcome of terrible writing. If it’s a deliberate writing choice then I have no idea how they will redeem them enough for me to be okay having them back on the team. Rene still betrayed Oliver and turned him in to the FBI to get something he wants, Dinah has lied repeatedly about more than one thing and Curtis is just annoying. But based on the previous history of the show it won’t surprise me to learn they didn’t mean for them to be so unlikeable, and will probably be “shocked” at the backlash and not be able to understand why the audience can’t see the newbies point of view. I’m just baffled about what they are going for with this whole storyline.