Carrie Ann

Jarvis is her sidekick for now; that seems like enough. He serves the same purpose Diggle did at the beginning of S1, so we could get rid of Oliver's voiceovers. Jarvis is the only person who is in on her real mission; he's there so she has someone to play off of in those scenes, and confide in, and provide assistance when it would be impractical for Peggy to be everywhere at once. I loved Jarvis. I loved Sousa too, but that might just be due to my undying love for Enver Gjokaj.

Right, sorry, I was just trying to describe the various ~money magic~ surrounding Oliver, pre-S3. I don't think Oliver got any money from Walter or the investors personally, and it was implied that he was pretty tapped out personally because he was using most of the insurance money for Arrow stuff.

His mom had life insurance, for one thing, and Walter got the backers together for his bid for QC.

This summary of a podcast discussion with one of the writers, Aaron Ginsburg, is kind of irritating. I mean, is JR a teenager himself? What a baby. You know, it is an option to just ignore the fans or not participate on Twitter or whatever. You choose the level of interaction, and responding to fans if you're going to be a dick is pretty sad.

Yeah, this issue especially was full of things I would rather watch than...a lot of things from S3. Walter helping Oliver, sniff. Roy getting his suit. Roy and Oliver on a mission to save Felicity. Diggle going to Kandaq with the Suicide Squad! I want to see that so badly.

To your first point about Laurel's suit--it's going to be extra awkward if they don't address where it came from after showing Oliver getting his upgraded by Cisco in 308, and the Arrow 2.5 comic that came out today showed Oliver giving Roy his suit too. I mean, yeah, we don't ever see them ordering the parts, but we know they do this. So who gave Laurel the contact for her suit? Who came up with the specs? I really don't want that to be Felicity, for about a million reasons, but seriously who else is there? I guess she could just take Sara's bloody suit to some random person and be like, "Hmm, like this, only I hate these pants...let's add more buckles!!!" To your second point--now I kind of want Team Arrow to become Thea's family, the way they have become Oliver's. That's the kind of new member integration that makes sense for me, on a character level and a plot level. Not automatically, but over time, it would be nice to see her find her place with them.

Yeah, just one possibility. But I think it's equally possible/likely that you're right, and 310 will take place immediately after Oliver's death. It would make some narrative sense for 310 to be the episode where the team is just totally flummoxed by his loss, and they take it on the chin from Brick. And then there's a time jump before 311 or 12, and they (I mean, Laurel, let's be real about the purpose of this arc) ultimately defeat him. Seriously no idea how they're going to handle it. And why the Laurel we saw in 309 would just special-order her brand new suit and black lipstick a week later, I have no clue. It's not believable, but nothing in her story is, so I don't use that as marker anymore. Back to how I want Felicity to be full of rage: I would also love it if she refused to help Laurel because Oliver didn't want her to go down this road, but more importantly because of Quentin. As we've all pointed out, if Laurel truly cared about his health and happiness, she wouldn't follow in her sister's footsteps. It would be great if Felicity was like, "Do this, and I'll go directly to your father and tell him that Sara's dead and you're SWF-ing her. Actually, forget it, I'm gonna do that anyway." It won't happen, but it would be so, so sweet.

I would sort of love it if Thea is still in the dark about the Arrow stuff, and Felicity finds out she's still seeing Malcolm (or sees them together or something), and just loses it on her and that's how Thea finds out the truth. And after time to recover, I'd love it if she went to Felicity to find out more about Oliver and they forged a friendship that way. I'm just very curious to see how Felicity handles all of this. I want it to be dramatic, but just being sad isn't that interesting to me. She's spent half of 3A in tears already; enough of that. I mean, some tears, yes. But righteous anger would be really satisfying to me. I'd also like it if she went a little cold for awhile. Like, willing to help Ray in a work capacity and even on his suit, but not letting him in personally. Like, shutting Laurel down when she wants Superhero Support.

Well, one way the timey-wimey stuff could go down is if they could make the time jump mid-episode 10, or if we join TA in medias res, with BC suited up and getting her ass kicked in the field with Roy and Dig, and then they use flashbacks to show the team finding out about Oliver. Also, the time jump could cover two months, at least, if the BC Trilogy only covers a short span of time. Given that 310-312 all share one villain, a compressed timeframe seems like a possibility.The show *generally* follows real-time, but not exactly. Some episodes take place within a day of each other, and others make it clear that weeks have passed between them. Last season's final three episodes all took place in like three days, IIRC. So I think they have some room for flexibility--it doesn't have to be exactly six weeks since he "died." And any reference on The Flash can just be sort of vague, until Oliver's alive again. We know there haven't been any crossovers filmed or confirmed yet for the rest of the season, and I'd guess we won't see any until May sweeps if at all, so I don't think fudging a few weeks or even a month would be a problem between the shows.

Yeah, Felicity and Thea can only really share scenes if they center around Oliver being gone, right? And I would think that she would want to protect Thea, because that's what Oliver died for, and also take whatever she could from Malcolm. I guess there's no way to do that without telling her about the Arrow. I really need to stop reading any EP interviews between now and whenever Oliver is back, because they just make me mad. Don't call your episodes without your lead character some of the best you've ever done. Please. Stop making me question whether you're still interested in the central premise of the show.

IIRC, EBR's fighting for the ponytail/glasses look was because she felt like that was Felicity's "uniform" for Arrow work. It wasn't that she felt that Felicity would always want to rock that look. Felicity continued to wear her hair down for some scenes at QC. And, um, I'll be the naysayer here to say that I found the constant ponytail in the latter half of S2 boring. Shrug. I like it better when they mix it up a little, and I loved her straight hair + glasses look in the first few eps of S2.

Oh man, sweet sweet vindication.

Yeah, I love that site, I just never bothered to look at the timeline info in my latest rewatch. Maybe in the initial airing, I did understand the timing (at least of Lilly's murder and Shelley's party), but in the intervening years, I lost track of those details.

Yes, and this is key to why the idea that we should just wait and see whether there's a greater plan for Katrina (or anything this season, really) falls flat for me. IF they were planning for Katrina to be working her own shady agenda, or IF they intend to kill her off at the end of this season, or whatever the possible plan is--in the meantime, the show needs to remain entertaining. It needs to remain engaging. It needs to take advantage of its assets, and deploy them in such a way that it balances out the less appealing elements. It's a tightrope. But what kills me is that Goffman didn't even bother trying to stay on it. He just walked the show right off the platform and assumed everyone was interested in watching 17 episodes of fumbling around in the netting before the big recovery in the finale. (If any sort of payoff even happens then, which I don't really believe at this point.) It doesn't matter what their plan is, or what the payoff is, if the setup isn't good TV. And it hasn't been. It barely matters how they pull out of this tailspin, because this season is a failure. The best they can hope for is to end on a less-horrible note, and maybe recover for Season 3, but they'll never recover the ratings/viewers they lost.

I can't recall if they spell it out here or in a future episode, but Veronica sealed the deal on not getting the Kane scholarship when she walked out of that final in S2E21 to go to court for Aaron's verdict.

OMG, I have always had this timeline wrong. This blows my mind. Definitely thought that party was in June or thereabouts. Thought Lily was killed in May. I guess I haven't given it much thought since S1 aired, and I live in MN, so the tiny sundresses and shorts say Summer to me, not Fall/Winter. My brain just filled in the blanks.

Kol was resurrected by his mother into the body of another person; so the answer is sort of both--he was resurrected, and the role was kind of recast. The character is played by Daniel Sharman (formerly of Teen Wolf) now, but Nate Buzolic still plays Kol in flashbacks. I think it's possible the role will revert at some point to NB, based on his availability.

I am at a total loss to speculate about anything for the rest of the season, because it seems like so many things hinge on how much time passes between 309 and Oliver's return. On the other hand, the writers have made me doubt that they still care about writing toward organic development and conflict, so maybe it doesn't matter at all whether six weeks or six months have passed. The characters will behave however the plot requires them to, whether or not it feels right or believable. So what I'm trying to do now is figure out what the point of any of this is, and then work backward. Why did they need Oliver to die? Obviously to prop up other people, but what about for Oliver himself? What's the endgame for him? To me, the season has to end with him embracing both sides of himself. Since we'll only have about 10 episodes to get to that point, he's either going to go through a mini-arc of what he's already done in the last 2.5 seasons (if he "comes back wrong," and has to relearn how to be a human/hero), or he's going to come back dedicated to reclaiming his life and committed to his humanity. That second option is more appealing and makes more sense to me based on 3A, so I'm just going to talk about that general direction. Where do other people need to be when he comes back? If Team Arrow plus BC plus maybe Ray are floundering without him, and he needs to swoop back in to save the day, then what's really changed before/after his death? He comes back to the same life he left. But if they've figured some things out and are doing relatively okay, then he could find that the place he used to occupy in Starling is gone, and he has to adjust to this new reality, the way they all did when he died. By the same token, this is why it seems to me like Felicity has to either move on with Ray, or decide that she just can't be with Oliver because she feels like it's only a matter of time until he dies again. Again, the second option is the one that I find more believable (I mean, I actually don't believe she'd be able to keep herself from him after losing him once), but the show doesn't seem to have the patience for more subtle stuff this season. And it seems unlikely to me that they would spend this time on the Ray/Felicity dynamic if they weren't going to go anywhere with it. But, maybe they will go with option #2, and Ray will still just exist as a foil for Oliver and object of jealousy because of Felicity's role in PT and ATOM stuff. And again, this is why I do think it's possible they're going the Insta-Hero route, regardless of what the EPs say. Laurel may struggle through her three-episode crucible, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's the final gauntlet and then she's just the BC. I hear what some of you are saying about being okay with that because you just want it over with, and I wish I felt that way, but I don't. I think the truth is that I'm just never going to be happy with this storyline, and that's that. The only way I end up happy about it is if she leaves to find her own city to defend at the end of S3, or if she does this and decides it's not the life she wants.

That synopsis sounds like the televisual equivalent of a root canal, so yeah, it's official. I'm not watching until people I trust (i.e., you guys) tell me the situation has improved. I have little hope that will happen until maybe the last three episodes of the season, or whenever they were writing/filming when the serious backlash began with critics and fans.

We don't know the details of KW's contract. Those details are guessed at, and assumed, but the general public does not know what they are. More importantly, Orlando Jones proves that TV contracts don't mean what you're claiming they do. Regular cast members are axed from TV shows all the time. Sometimes, the contracts themselves allow for outs like this, other times, the studio has to buy them out somehow. OJ has indicated that he doesn't believe he has a future on SH as a regular, so what you're implying here--that Irving isn't really dead, and that OJ will be back as a regular on the series soon enough--does not seem to be true. So the viewers here and elsewhere crying out to get rid of Katrina are doing so because it is well within Mark Goffman's purview to write her off the show. He just did it with another regular cast member, but he made a decision to kill off a popular character; to get rid of a popular actor. It's crazy-making.

Yeah, that's the scene I'm talking about--he's gone and back in a second. And my point is that if you, even with superspeed, try to get your phone to work as quickly as that, it won't. As a non-comics reader, it led me to ask questions like: is he manipulating time? Is that how his speed really works? And normally, I'm totally cool with handwaving stuff in sci-fi, especially fictional science/technological advances, or weapons, etc. But if you're using real-world devices that I know and understand, it's harder for me to put my blinders on and pretend I don't know how things work. I have let it go at this point, but I actually think it'd be more interesting if they dealt with the limitations of being super fast sometimes. Like, right now, Barry seems pretty invincible, but the fact that he can move this fast but nothing and no one else can should cause problems. It seems like if this type of thing was established--that he is limited by how the rest of the world works--it would make things feel more grounded and allow for natural roadblocks.

This bugs me too. I think the first time I had that "wait a minute..." reaction was in the Felicity crossover, when he supersped around to take that photo. I was like, look, your phone doesn't work that fast.

Paul is still dating Phoebe Tonkin, and yeah he and Daniel Gillies seem to have a nice bromance. But I don't think there's any way he'd go over to TO as more than a guest star. I think he's pretty done with being a vampire. He's done a few indie movies this year and I think that's the direction he wants to go. But I don't think it would really matter in terms of the triangle, even if Paul left tomorrow, because Stelena is done. I honestly don't remember the last time JP or CD said anything about Stelena or the triangle. Maybe last season when they were hammering the last nails into the Stelena coffin? Regardless, I think we're on endgame track now because I don't think there's a chance the show goes past next season. Not with the current cast anyway.

Your whole post was so satisfying; I feel like I need a cigarette. Pulling out a few key points, your first and last can never be stated enough. I've gone into them enough here in the past two months that I don't want to restate all the ways and reasons I agree, but yeah. This has been really disappointing. So to some of your other points: first, Thea. The fact that she was drugged and her agency removed, and forced to kill her friend is horrible on its face. Obviously, we all know that. But the thing that is sticking in my craw is the way she told Oliver, "Don't make me choose between my brother and my father." He shouldn't have to. There should be no choice to make. Leaving aside the ways they have both lied to her, and the fact that she's not aware of the extent of Malcolm's abuse of her--Oliver is the brother she grew up with. The person who has loved her since her birth. The person who did not willfully kill 500 innocent people (including her real father), while trying to kill many more. If she had said, "Oliver, if you ask me to choose, I will choose you every time, but I wish you wouldn't ask." That would be preferable. Still gross, and she is still on the hook for some of her actions because she is knowingly building a relationship with Satan himself. But it's just...equating her relationships with Oliver and Malcolm is making me like her less, and that's a bummer. Next, Malcolm himself. I agree with you 100% that this story would be infinitely more interesting if Moira were here to do battle with Malcolm. The show itself was a richer, deeper, more complex place with Moira around. Killing her off was short-sighted and stupid. But YES, Walter would have made an excellent, interesting stand-in. He was effectively Thea's father figure for five years, and they had a sweet, believable relationship. Giving her an alternative to Malcolm's type of parenting would help her see that she doesn't need him. And in a season where we're getting a lot of parent-child and mentor-mentee relationships, it would have been wonderful to see Walter step in to mentor Oliver, to turn him into the once and future CEO of Queen Consolidated. And Quentin, well, he can't really do anything as long as he's being treated like an invalid, so add him to the list of characters sacrificed at the altar of the One True BC.

Yes, and these things are worlds apart, but I see this pattern as the same, from the writers' perspective. Raven didn't ask him to set up this space walk for her, and when it went wrong, he wanted to take the blame. Okay, good, he should. It was at least half his fault, and obviously a few months in jail is better than her death. But the show presents it like he took the blame FOR Raven, and like he's so selfless and we've all blamed him for this thing he didn't do, don't you feel bad now? Not exactly. And then with Clarke, again. Yes, he was looking for her, but he was looking in the wrong place to begin with, and she would never ever have wanted him to use the tactics he did to find her anyway. And by the time he started killing the Grounders, that had nothing to do with finding her. He had simply lost it at that point. All of that is on him and no one else. But because he initially went out to find her, the writers are laying this at her feet. The same way they treated what happened with the space walk as though it was really Raven's fault, but Finn selflessly took the hit for it. Nope, on both counts. And I totally get both Clarke and Raven internalizing feelings of guilt or responsibility--that, I would be okay with. It's just that no one on the 100/Arc side of things really took the correct position w/r/t Finn. No one said, "This guy murdered these people and I am not cool with him anymore. I think he needs to be in prison." Not until the Grounders held their feet to the fire did they suggest that. No, he apparently passed his little Inquisition with flying colors and they just let him back out into the world. The message the show has sent is that he's basically a good guy who made a little oopsie, but he did it because he just FEELS things so HARD, and they've all done bad things because they're in a war, so the nuances no longer matter apparently. So anyway, that's why I was at least glad to see JR say that they knew they were going to have him do something so heinous that he really couldn't be allowed to live afterward. I appreciate that outside of the text, they believe that. But on the show, they've spent a lot of time having our heroes justify and excuse and forgive. And this was the part of JR's comments that irked me--where he said that the divide between reactions to what happened with Finn since the massacre took place along shipping lines. I like the idea of Clarke/Bellamy, but there just hasn't been enough there for me yet to say that I really ship it. And I was sort of predisposed to it, because I'd seen so many references to Bellarke prior to watching. But I was surprised to find that I am way more into Lincoln/Octavia, and am in wait-and-see mode for Bellarke. And I'm not totally crazy about Bellamy either. I like him, but I don't feel like I know or understand him as well as I do the female 100 characters. So JR's assertion that if you hate Finn and found his murder of 18 innocent people unforgivable, then you must be a Bellamy/Bellarke fan was insulting and condescending crap. Like...did you consider that you just didn't write a very good character? Or that you maybe mishandled this story a bit? No? Must just be a bunch of crazy shippers out there?