apinknightmare

Why do these people insist on toying with my emotions?

Yeah, but her comic book self IS Black Canary, so I don't know that there's any other way to take it. If they wanted to be vague, they'd say she's taking another step toward becoming a 'hero' or something.

And that she's taking steps toward becoming her comic-book self, which is the one thing I really didn't want to hear.

Caity Lotz returns for at least three more episodes as Laurel's sister Sara, starting with the premiere. Last seen giving Laurel her black leather jacket in the finale as a handing of the baton to the next presumed Black Canary, Kreisberg was mum about the context of her appearance: "She's come back to Starling City with a very specific mission." Laurel, he maintains, has a long road ahead to becoming her comic-book alter ego. "She's an attorney with a nice, sweet jacket," Kreisberg says with a laugh. "We're going to see Laurel take a few big steps towards her comic-book self this season. Let's just say that Katie Cassidy is pumping iron." No thank you.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that she's gone looking for him, and it also wouldn't surprise me if she never has. She seems like someone who has a lot of self-respect, and I wonder the sheer fact that her father ran out on her and her mother would make her completely write him off.

If they just let Laurel be an actively shady, shitty person, she could become so much more interesting to me.

Plus it's a series of flashbacks - I know there's more than one flashback per episode, but maybe these flashbacks span multiple eps to coincide with the current storyline (meaning her mom or dad are probably involved in some kind of current mess, I would imagine).

I wonder why Felicity's going to CC in ep four, and after the "spoiler" that one of the crossovers would be love triangle-y, I really hope she doesn't try to get with Barry and get rebuffed. She already knows about Iris, and hopefully the show doesn't go there. At least Oliver's not turning her down because he wants someone else, I guess. If there's going to be an upside to it, I mean.

See, I'm of a different mind - I don't want her to have any kind of back story connected to anything that keeps recurring. I want to learn about where she came from, but I don't need a whole continuing arc dedicated to it, and I don't want either of her parents to be big bads (or criminals at all). I suppose I'd be okay if her mother got caught up in something nefarious on a low-level basis, but I'd much rather know about her life outside of Oliver NOW. If they can write her mother into something like that (maybe being involved in a gambling ring or something, I don't know). Flashbacks I, personally, could do without.

But no one has a current story that isn't tied to Oliver. Ra's and the LoA are coming for Oliver this season (if the rumors are true), so Sara (and to some extent, Malcolm)'s ties bring them into the fold. Diggle has is ties with ARGUS and the Suicide Squad to be able to bring them into the Starling City fold. Thea is being trained by Malcolm (story-wise) specifically to provide angst for Oliver. So, either Felicity has a normal, unrelated past that can be covered in one episode (which is my hope), or she's got some contrived, f-ed up backstory that will, again, somehow tie in to Oliver. No one on this show is ever going to be allowed to have any kind of story on-screen that doesn't relate back to him.

"The secret origin of Felicity Smoak" sounds ominous. I'm glad we're getting to know more about her - here's hoping they give us a dinner with friends or a movie night at her apartment sans anyone from Team Arrow here in the present.

Caity's status really doesn't mean anything to me one way or another. As @Velocity23 wrote above, they could kill her off whenever regardless of whether she's a regular or recurring. IMO, the show's already shown us its intent with the jacket hand off (although what was the freaking point when Sara comes back in the very next episode?), so more Sara is just icing on the cake for me (and it feeds my foolish hopes that the producers are still keeping doors open for the future with regards to her and her alter ego).

IF she is the EA and works for Ray, the only way I fear the sleeping with the boss thing would come up is if Oliver mentioned it to discourage her from dating him. Then she'd reply with something like, "It never bothered you when people thought that about us." I would bet actual money on it happening just like that.

Haha, I clicked on a link that was posted on a site - it's loooooong since been removed.

That whole episode was a mess. Everyone was so OOC - you cannot tell me that Oliver and Sara, who hurt Laurel so badly in the past would've ever gone to that dinner together. Sara NEVER would've asked, and Oliver NEVER would've gone. Yeah, Oliver's a selfish a-hole at times, but even he isn't that stupid. It was all contrived so that "Emmy-worthy" (LOL) scene could take place in the hallway. And it's sad, because there were so many other believable ways they could've gotten there. This show kills me sometimes. Oliver needs to detangle himself from the Lance sisters romantically. And they need to stop going back to that, damn.

I don't know if they don't have confidence, but having watched The Flash's pilot, it's very light and doesn't have that dark, gritty feel DC loves so much. They might be confident in the quality (which is high, I enjoyed it), but given the other products they've put out, maybe they're just not sure their typical target audience will tune in and enjoy.

Plus, the EPs said the Oliver/Felicity thing would be a season-long arc, and if he legit loves her and is off having relationships with other women, I'll want to knee that idiot in the balls even more than I do now. Even though I know he can compartmentalize, I won't really even be able to accept him running off and sleeping with some meaningless one-night stand, because the man has got to grow emotionally at some point. He's 30 - he should probably start now.

I think they changed her path because the general consensus was that a large part of the audience didn't like her. So now she's all over the place while the writers try to find something that 'sticks'. Bringing Sara in was the absolute worst thing they could've done to her though. Ugh.

I really hope it's just Felicity. Oliver cannot give her another reason for them to not be together and then go off and be with someone else. I said previously that kind of flip-floppy crap would make me stop watching, and I really am not ready to stop watching yet.

I think they've set Laurel up to go three possible ways: she can become BC, she can go dark, and she can become Manhunter/some other DC heroine. I think they've set her up for any one of those roads, only they haven't figured out which one she's going to take yet (seriously, what was with the "once you let the darkness inside" blackmail speech? She was already in recovery at that point). I think that's why sometimes her writing is so inconsistent - they're keeping too many paths open for her and having her act certain ways so they can say, "See? We intended for her to go here!" when she finally goes down one of them.

Wouldn't Felicity be Oliver's new love interest?

Yeah, I'm not really sure there's much difference between people thinking Felicity got a promotion because she slept with the boss and people thinking she was just plain sleeping with him. There would be gossip regardless - what she gets out of it hardly matters. I mean, if she stayed in IT and Oliver dragged her away for clandestine meetings, there would be rumors that she was getting something out of it anyway. Not to mention, she couldn't have gotten a promotion in that scenario - her coworkers would've attributed that to her relationship with Oliver, too. There's no winning for her either way. Given the spoilers/BTS pics I've seen, I'm not confident they're going to address this or course correct in S3, but here's hoping they're going a different route.

I think Oliver's a jackass and he is selfish, and he never should've made any personnel moves with regards to Felicity's job without consulting her first. And while he COULD have commandeered her time regardless of where she was working within QC, that would've been one of the stupidest things he could've done. If the rumors were bad when Felicity was "promoted," just think of how awful they would've been if Oliver randomly dragged her off whenever he needed her (presumably to somewhere private, since, if he had an EA, his office would've been off-limits). To arouse the least suspicion, he needed her close. I wouldn't have minded her being his EA if he had asked her first and she agreed. That's my whole issue with it. While I'm sure she did a lot of QC work in her post as an EA, she spent a great deal of her time working on Arrow business (she did interrupt Oliver several times during the day with case "updates"). A part of me that wants to believe something good of Oliver hopes that another reason he moved her was partially so she'd get compensated for her work "outside" of QC as well. None of this really matters at this point though, I doubt she'll ever work for him again. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there is an instance (or more) of Oliver needing something during the day and contacting either Felicity or Diggle, with them having to tell him no, they can't help him right now.

If it's Ted Grant, they'd probably wait to announce it at SDCC. If not, then maybe the guy doesn't show up for a while.

I don't think anyone's questioning WHY they're at the same con and/or on the same panel, just commenting on how interesting it will be to see the two of them on a stage together when there's bound to be (potentially awkward) BC questions asked.