Screamnastics

Of course cast and crew are going to talk about the campaign, and plenty such campaigns have gotten billboards. It's what reach the campaign has outside of that that determines whether it's a "huge deal," and that simply hasn't occurred. It's not been talked about all over social media. This is an extreme exaggeration. As is the notion it still had "millions" of fans, plural. It had millions of fans at one point but a huge portion of them dropped the show mid-series. That's not something to dismiss, either. Hell, just look at the trajectory of activity on this forum. And it was like that most places where you can't just follow individual people or have suggested content or trends tailored to a person's activity. Everything being auctioned off can't possibly meaning "nothing." It means there is zero going on behind the scenes to keep the show going or wrap it up. Cast members working elsewhere obviously means less about backstage goings-on because we knew their contracts would be up, but it does mean some actors' schedules might make things difficult to do anything any time soon. The point is, as of now, the show is done and WBD have no desire to do anything with it, and to pretend appearances on the remaining shows would gum up the works of a campaign that would somehow otherwise be successful is just plum in denial of reality. The show has been on the bubble and barely scraping by since at least S4 if not earlier and they knew, network sale or not, it could be axed. And if Keto is now saying they had no inkling, that contradicts what she and others said earlier: http://twitter.com/ketomizu/status/1520392686535987201 And the network doesn't tell actors anything, and the EPs certainly don't keep their actors in the loop at all times, but longtime cast members have said they've been surprised by past renewals, so it's nonsensical to think everyone was expecting it to be a lock for a S8. Lots of people think they're going to have a job and then don't. If anyone thought it was guaranteed, they don't pay enough attention or were fed a load of bull. It wasn't just the Nexstar deal that made cancellation more of a possibility, but also the potential Discovery/WB merger which was known of well before that. No, not every fan hears what they want to hear at cons, but I've experienced more misreporting than not, so I don't take anything but direct quotes and preferably audio/video. Sorry. IDEK if you're talking about something you've seen/heard firsthand or if you're referring to second, thirdhand information. But again, Caity's thoughts don't dictate what I think, especially when she plays to whatever crowd is in front of her. I've watched her be badgered into giving people the answers they want. The original post wasn't even talking about Caity or other cast members. It was clear from your initial response you hate The Flash. I'm not even a fan, per se. I was just offering my point of view because you were trying to deny that anyone would want a Flash appearance (despite, again, responding to someone else who also does). Not going to board-on-boards by linking it but just earlier I saw multiple people on one of the most Flash-hating LOT forums saying they'd have loved a wrap-up on the Flash. You're calling me dismissive but I'm not full-on denying certain people and content exist. You're getting defensive about Ava and Avalance when I said nothing about the overall fan response to them, just my own individual thoughts. I disagree with you about their popularity but the topic is completely irrelevant. It simply boils down to this: LOT is over, and regardless of whatever possibility there is for something in the future, there were plenty of people who wanted at least some characters to appear on The Flash, and Beebo-obsessed, Westallen-hating, clickbait-"journalist" Burlingame neither speaks for the whole fandom nor has ever demonstrated he cares to be tuned into the general consensus on anything Legends-related. Edit: Also, FWIW, Batwoman also finished filming in December 2021 and they intentionally wrote a finale that could work as a series finale. LOT EPs had no excuse.

Define "huge deal." It doesn't seem to be on the same level as a lot of similar campaigns, most of which were unsuccessful themselves. And the only acknowledgement I've seen from someone not associated with the show was James Gunn trying to very diplomatically tell people to stop spamming him because it's not going to happen. Multiple cast members have moved on. Props have been auctioned off. It's over. Its cancellation was a possibility the writers were warned about and yet they chose, unlike every single other show at the CW at the time, to end on a cliffhanger, because they didn't care about wrapping up anyone's story. It is entirely their own fault fans didn't get closure. As for The Flash, I haven't watched it in years, but I could say the same about the quality of Legends of Tomorrow in its later seasons. At least Wallace respected the viewers enough to provide a season finale that would have worked as a series finale. I personally feel Sara as a character had been shown more respect on The Flash than she had on her own show for more than half its seasons, and would have loved to see her make an appearance in The Flash's final season, and I know quite a few people who felt the same way, though I have no desire to see her shackled to her wife or being forcibly pregnant while doing so. I actually never want any of the LOT writers sans a few who left prior to S4 to ever touch my favorites again. Mileages vary. It's ridiculous to suggest "no one" wants it when you're clearly responding to someone who would and the only reason we've had so much, "Egads, not The Flash!!!!" over the past year is because the more fanatical elements were responding to people suggesting it. I haven't seen a single convo about it where not one person wanted it to happen, unless you're talking strictly insulated echo chambers populated only by that specific segment of the viewers. If you truly think the consistent anti-Flash sentiment has not been a response to people asking for an appearance, then the fans responsible for the former would have to have been creating their own opportunities to be outraged about the Flash based on nothing, which would track with the loudest proponents of the later seasons of LOT being more fixated on the shows and characters they hate than anything the show they supposedly love is actually doing, but it should be obvious to anyone looking that that isn't the case here. While I love Caity, and I don't know why she's even being brought up, she says different things depending on where she is and who she's talking to, for starters. And LBR, the Venn diagram of people who don't want Sara on The Flash and those who never wanted her on Arrow while it was still running or even to acknowledge her Arrow roots on LOT except perhaps for her parents to worship Ava is basically a circle and yet Caity adamantly wanting more Arrow crossovers, acknowledgement, etc., was always ignored by them. She was also frequently saying she wanted to appear on The Flash until LOT was cancelled. Meanwhile, if we're going to bring up things she's made snipes about, boy would that say how little she truly liked 90% of her material since mid-S3. She recently said, according to a fan at a con, that Sara died for real in S6. Yet no one who's insisted that wasn't the case all this time is caring what she reportedly said about it. And my last issue with bringing her into the discussion: with all due respect, I do not trust the way fans at these cons relate what is said and how it's said based on a pattern of taking things out of context, misremembering, leaving out comments that don't suit their agenda, misinterpreting either accidentally or willfully, and not relaying or understanding tone. Of course she's going to support LOT getting a wrap-up of its own over a guest appearance on another show if it's one or the other. Which is, rather disingenuously, how the save-the-show campaigners position things despite that not being the only possibilities. That says nothing about whether or not she would want to make a cameo in general.

So is it just that those who tweeted stuff from the panel don't care enough about Caity/Sara to post any non-ship info about her or was the panel itself Jes/Ava Propping Hour like the show had become? If you'd told me right after that mess of a Lance family panel at HVFF years ago that we'd eventually get more from Caity out of panels with Katie than ones with a castmate on the show Sara was supposed to be headlining, I would have never believed it.

Ugh. I really wanted to be able to watch this episode to see familiar faces that I love but I was afraid it would just be an opportunity to gives us more revisionist Sara trashing to convince us she was an utter monster before she found love and to minimize or erase completely her trauma, and between those script pages and the commentary that went along with them, it looks like that's exactly what they did. I wasn't expecting literally every line in a preview scene to be totally OOC garbage, though. Quite the feat. Threatening to break Ray's arm, even as a joke? (Then again, this wouldn't be the first time Gideon's view of Sara was uncharacteristically hyperviolent toward her teammates, see her ridiculous portrayal in the simulations in "Here We Go Again.") Leonard, who took every opening to insult Ray and advocate leaving him for dead, etc., having to tell Sara, who always defended Ray to him, to go easy on the guy? Smiling at being reminded of what she went through in Nanda Parbat? Not seeing why Rip picked this team when she was supportive of everybody on it from the start? I guess destroying her for a few years and killing her off wasn't enough, they have to go back to when she was written well and try to destroy that retroactively, too. What gets me is that for all the telling us that she's matured and is more open now, she's acting in this scene exactly like she's been acting since S3, not how she acted before that. I'd like to see Jax and Ray again, but no thanks. Will have to watch the Flash team-up for some Ray, I guess. Edit: Forgot the part where Sara says to let them fight, which is, again, the total opposite of the level-headed, compassionate mediator they showed her to be from the very beginning and it was that immediate backseat-captaining that made it obvious why she should replace Rip as leader. I get this is within the first couple of days of the team since Carter is around, but retconning it so that Sara had to learn from an A.I. that has done all sorts of awful things to the crew over the years and had an incredibly bad sense of morality before being exposed to people outside the Time Masters serves no purpose other than to try to push Sara down even lower than they have already.

Souls have been a big plot point both for Sara on Arrow and for Legends in general. It's not as simple as copying her memories, though I'd argue even if souls were never brought up in these shows merely copying someone's mind into another body doesn't make that new body the same person. Unless they verify this Sara has the real Sara's soul or there's a twist, the Sara we've been watching for nine years is dead. And given the complete silence from the producers and Caity through all of this, I'm doubtful we're getting either, especially the former, because it's easy to just say, "Relax, keep watching," if there's more to it. I'd be more bothered by this if the show wasn't regularly super casual about consent issues, particularly where Sara's concerned. The Avalance relationship, for example, has been littered with consent issues from the start but we weren't supposed to care because it was Sara's autonomy being ignored. I don't know why it's suddenly a big sticking point because it's Ava's this time.

But that would mean either the Avas have no souls or Sara's forced her clone's soul out of that body.

It's already been my headcanon for years that the Sara that disappeared in the S2 finale is the real Sara and she's been having adventures through time off-screen while the one from the new timeline is just a hollow copy. On a different note, I really hope Behrad and company want to save Sara because they want her back and not just so Ava can stop melting down.

It's not "putting" Sara's Arrow death on the Legends writers. It's a part of Sara's history, one that Legends loves to exploit whenever they want to call Sara broken or an animal, so they know it happened. You can't just willy nilly bring a person back from the dead with tech in this universe. It comes at a cost. This is well established. Tech can't transfer a soul, or retrieve it. Sara is dead, but the writers want us to think merely copying her consciousness into a cloned body is enough. Sara has died before on LOT. More than the others, and in ways that weren't all "undone" via time travel. Usually more painfully, more graphically, more traumatically and more meaninglessly. This final time was particularly meaningless. She's also had her mind and body violated so many times now I've lost count but it's probably more than all the other characters combined and if it's ever acknowledged on this show, it's for jokes. John losing his magic isn't remotely comparable. Zari Tomaz isn't exactly dead, per se, but I have issues with the way she was treated, as well. And the fact she's treated as a separate entity from Zari Tarazi just reinforces why the suggestion this clone is Sara doesn't work. Edit: On a side note, have there been any post-episode interviews? This is a huge revelation and there's been zero comment on Sara's side of "Sara's story" from producers this entire time and Caity was allowed to answer one (1) very basic question last week but you'd think now that the information is known we'd get something. The silence on Sara all season long has been defeaning.

Yes. But we know that it's more complicated than that. Sara is the reason we know this. So, not only is the real Sara dead as far as I'm concerned, but they want us to believe everything she went through with the Lazarus Pit was pointless. They weren't content with killing her, they've had to systematically tear down, give away to Ava, erase or contradict every part of her life, too. Frankly, even if they do undo it, I'm just so tired of the Sara torture porn season after season, especially because the writers and the group of fans they listen to act as though she's being allowed to be happy. I've watched shows where characters are put through hell, but no one pretends otherwise. It's been made a joke, but how many times do I have to watch Sara be killed? And it's never quick or painless or even heroic and meaningful. How much does she have to be made to suffer on this supposedly fun and wacky, light-hearted show? And to constantly see PK say, "We don't want fans to worry, we wouldn't torture [Ava and] Sara," through all of it. I hate to think of what he considers torture if nothing's qualified so far.

I really didn't think they'd be stupid/awful enough to go that far. Well, the show's officially dead to me now.

They wouldn't even be equals if the writers do this, because they keep telling us Ava is so special and unlike all the others, and Sara would be easily replaced by a clone with her memories. I would be pissed off if the real Sara is killed off but at the same time at least she'd be away from Ava and be able to hang out again with a number of people who actually love and respect her like Oliver and Stein. I think it's more likely Bishop merged himself with Sara somehow, though. We'll find out soon enough either way. Whatever he did is a clear violation, so it's honestly disturbing to me that Phil Klemmer has sold that, "He didn't kidnap her to victimize her" line, even to the press. Christina Radish parroted it in that Collider interview with Caity posted above and I think it speaks to how checked out Caity is that she didn't even challenge that framing of the situation. Same with PK saying there's no reason to be concerned for Sara because she'll be back with Ava soon. Sara's being put through trauma after trauma, and it's clearly going to continue once she's back with the team, and the writers seem to think her only problem is not being with Ava. I can't imagine them downplaying it if it were Ava going through any of this. They villified the hell out of Rip just for using Avas and compared him to a demon. But Sara's captor and tormenter who's done God know what to her now Totally Isn't Victimizing Her?

For a couple of years, the PR line was, "Skip to Season 2," but now that they've gone into overdrive trying to make Co-Captain Fetch happen, the new PR line of course says to skip to when Ava showed up. Notice the only times a character is mentioned in any of those episode recommendations, it's about Ava, with Adam even ignoring that Sara was part of the fight scene in, "I, Ava." Considering everyone was still enthusiastic about S2 until last season and what actors have complained about or said they've wanted in less network-controlled environments suggest they have more issues with later seasons than the earlier ones, I don't buy the idea to start at S3 is genuine coming from certain people. As for what to expect in S6, interviews like this one tell me it'll just be more of the same BS as last season, if not cranked up to 11.

While a Legends appearance is possible, he's been in and out of Vancouver since S3 because his children are there, and he's also worked on other Vancouver productions.

It depends on the actor, but they did spend multiple interviews last season talking about how excited they were to write Tala and Jes's friendship into the show more. Caity's been pretty close to a few castmates over the years and the more she asked to have scenes with them, the more distance the writers put between Sara and their characters. Hell, she was actually living with Keiynan when he joined Legends, and Sara and Wally had, what, a single conversation? That lasted for fifteen seconds? All the regulars and so many guest stars have mentioned how welcoming Caity is and that she's a leader on set, so if the writers do want to mimic real-life dynamics, they seem to have a very large blindspot. Well, nearly all the regulars have.

I think one of the first interviews to talk about Sara's abduction (briefly) made it out like the only problem on Sara's end would be being away from Ava (just Ava, no one else) and not, you know, generally being held captive by B-movie aliens, like Ava took a job elsewhere and it's just the struggles of a long-distance relationship for Sara or something (then it shifted the focus onto Ava and how she's going to cope as leader and Ava, Ava, Ava, Nate), so I expect something like that, unfortunately. I mean if the aliens are more Mars Attacks than the types we've seen in the Arrowverse before, I can't see how we're truly going to see much of Sara's "adventure" or who she'd be interacting with. You can't get much meaningful material out of that. If we'd heard anything about fellow abductees or someone else she could really bounce off of, that would be one thing, but shooting starts soon and there's been nothing, so anyone there with her can't be significant or be considered a priority by the producers. Pulling her away from the team already seems bad enough, but if it's Sara just fighting a bunch of monstrous CGI baddies and having Ava visions after fans begged for Sara to interact with other characters more last season and we know the writers heard it, I won't be able to conclude this is anything other than a very, very deliberate f***-you.

If the only way we would have heard Sara acknowledge Quentin is alive was in the middle of a scene where Sara once again makes her pain about how hard it was for Ava, apologize to her and say she should have been there for Ava more, I'm actually very glad they cut it. The fact it was written and filmed in the first place, though... Sara has issues, Sara prioritizes Ava's feelings while Ava blows Sara's off, and Sara apologizes. Ava has issues that have nothing to do with Sara, Ava takes it out on Sara every time while Sara drops everything again and again to baby her, and... Sara is the one who apologizes. Thanks, show, I hate it.

Caity has experience with comedy. She had more, in fact, than Jes did coming into Legends, so the question becomes why they thought to give more to Jes in the first place instead of utilizing their most popular actress. Caity can do comedic bits if they want her to, but for the most part they just. Don't. Some throwaway things here and there, but not whole showcases for it except for the Shatner impression. Which was well received by fans and critics and Shatner himself. As for being in a relationship with a subordinate, not only is that a common feature in the Arrowverse, but it's a common thing across television. I find the idea of Sara being with another (non-Ava) team member to be a much more balanced power dynamic theoretically just based on her relationships with people and how she leads than what we've had with Sara and Ava from the start, first with Ava pursuing the Legends so doggedly that Sara had to drag Nate, Stein and Gideon into a semi-suicidal run at the Time Bureau ship just to complete a mission at one point, then with the Legends being treated as defacto subordinates of Ava's in S4 and not being paid despite doing all the heavy lifting for her even as she derails missions with her personal crap, and Sara being expected to act in service of protecting Ava's job 100% of the time or pay both professional and personal consequences until Sara begs for forgiveness. That's been pretty icky to me. If Ava can't handle following Sara's orders, that just further exposes the flaws in their relationship. Though even if we accept it's problematic to have someone leading a team their girlfriend is on for the sake of argument, the obvious way to avoid this entirely would be to have never added Ava to the team at all. If an idea you come up with as writers only works if one of your star characters suffers and you have to undo something that was near universally considered to be one of the best decisions the show made in its attempts to find its footing, the smart thing to do is admit the idea is a bad one and drop it.

The other disconcerting thing is Keto phrasing it as though being abducted is an adventure for Sara. That in combination with earlier comments that boiled Sara's problem with the abduction down to being separated from Ava makes it seem like this is going to be yet another instance of Sara only being treated like a human being with actual emotions and negative reactions to negative situations jussssst long enough to present Ava as her entire reason for being. Especially given how the aliens were described as monsters, this should be harrowing for Sara, but it's an "adventure." I'm tired of Sara being put through hell and it either being ignored or played off as a fairly light-hearted escapade for her. They did the same thing with her blindness and fifty other things over the years.

It would be highly unusual for a billing change like that to happen at this point. But then again, the full interview Klemmer gave extolling the wonders of Jes and thanking God for her existence that was done back when she was first promoted to regular, and an official announcement of her contract renewal being released were both also highly unusual, the former being so much so I'd categorize it as surreal, so at this point I would not be surprised.

I haven't watched it yet. Caity doesn't even get the courtesy of being introduced separately now despite being their top-billed cast member? TBH, I'd much rather see KC on the show and Sara interacting with BS than what we're likely to get. They're far from my favorite actress/character, but KC at least put in the time, and Sara focusing on a Laurel doppelganger makes more sense than rolling over for Ava.

Without looking at the rest of that TV Guide list, I am truly embarrassed for whoever made those selections.

Meh. That doesn't sound encouraging to me at all, really. Sounds like they're going to double down on the issues I had with this season and her non-existent disability story. She's isolated from anyone who cares about her, again, while Ava's able to solidify ties with veteran characters and possibly create bonds with new characters Sara doesn't get to interact with, again, and instead of giving her a POV and emotions it's more of the Strong Female Character badass chick schtick they used as an excuse not to write her like a human being when she went blind and had overwhelming future sight. Not to mention that as incredibly rarely as Phil can ever be bothered to acknowledge she exists at all, he'll lie about/oversell as far as Sara's part in a future story, like his saying Sara and Ava would be like two CEOs of different companies juggling a relationship before S4 only to give us Sara functionally being an (unpaid) employee of Ava's and not allowed to put her own job ahead of Ava's without being shamed into submission afterwards if she doesn't want to be dumped. I might feel differently if they mentioned any potential allies for Sara to connect with while abducted, or if he got into her feelings at all, like he and Keto do with other characters, or he actually seemed enthusiastic rather than giving short, pretty matter-of-fact statements, or the other interviews from this round didn't see him either deliberately ignore her existence entirely when discussing what should be her story or point-blank saying Ava and the Legends' reactions are more important, or if he and the other writers had given any indication they'd taken concerns about Sara in S5 to heart instead of ignoring them 99 times out of 100 and publicly deriding fans the other 1% of the time, or if he didn't have a history of treating Sara badly, but none of those things are true.

I don't know if this is the appropriate place for it (perhaps it's time for a bitterness thread?) but I wanted to mention the "best co-captain!" post isn't even the first time in recent weeks the show's social media accounts have promoted Ava at the expense of others. They've been posting character cards here and there and while some get matter-of-fact captions like, "She's a shapeshifter," Ava's was calling her the best new addition to the team. It's bad enough to shove a character down our throats but repeatedly phrasing things in a way that tells us everyone else is considered somehow lesser than her is a really weird PR choice. It would be weird even if she was some beloved break-out star a la Felicity, but Felicity she ain't.

Considering both the response to the "co-captains" thing in the press release and Stephen and Caity talking about her struggles for recognition (with Stephen repeatedly stressing he views her as the lead) happened just days ago, it's hard not to feel this is a deliberate flipping of the bird.