Last week on Arrow we
saw the reveal of Sara Lance as the famed Black Canary, one of two new female additions
to the cast of characters in Starling City along with the wily and suspicious Isabel
Rochev. The addition of Black Canary is exciting not only because she’s a
heroine of comic book lore, but because it serves to enhance an already strong
and nuanced cast of female characters. Unfortunately, it also has me asking an
important question: Does Arrow have a
problem with female agency?
Here’s why I bring it up: In the build-up to the unmasking
of Black Canary it was established that Sara is running from something or
someone and that means that she isn’t on equal footing with the Arrow, or
Oliver Queen, her male counterpart. Rather, Sara lacks some amount of agency
afforded to Oliver. She dons a mask not only out of choice but, to a certain
extent, out of necessity. As long as she’s hiding, she can’t have the same
amount of freedom or choice as Oliver and that’s disappointing on a show that
already struggles with giving its female characters a whole lot of agency.
Of course, you may argue that Arrow has lots of strong, independent female characters. And it
does, but those characters don’t have a whole lot of control over their
destiny. We can start with the classic example of Moira Queen who spent almost
all of Season 1 under the thumb of the devious Malcolm Merlyn and only escaped
in the last episode of the season which resulted in her imprisonment and a
continued lack of agency for Mrs. Queen, though, this time as a prisoner of her
judicial fate.
Now we can move to some seemingly more “in control” ladies.
We’ve got a few to talk about. Of course, first and foremost there is the
formidable Laurel Lance, a relentless attorney with an eye for seeing the real
bad guy. Then, there’s the sassy and too-grown-up-for-her-own-good Thea Queen,
Oliver’s little sister who has a remarkable amount of responsibility for her
purported age of eighteen. Finishing out the trio is the incomparable Felicity
Smoak, Oliver’s apparent Gal Friday and tech extraordinaire. All of these women
seem to be pretty in control of their own fate and to a great extent they are.
The problem lies in the writing for these women. All three have been subjected
to a pretty high amount of damsel in distress syndrome, or DIDS as I like to
call it. Now, that’s bound to happen a little in a superhero drama, but you don’t
see the male characters being rescued nearly as much as you see the female
characters being saved by the dashing Oliver and let’s be real DIDS is a little
old. There are a lot more interesting stories to be told than Oliver once again
dashing in and saving Laurel or Felicity at the last minute.
Now, I know what you’re going to say: But it’s a drama and everything’s
not supposed to be coming up roses for all the characters. And you’re right. It
is a drama, but the last time I checked giving female characters more agency
over their own fate didn’t mean everything was suddenly happy go lucky for them. In fact, many of the most interesting female
characters on TV have loads of agency and aren’t all that happy. To name a few,
there’s Mellie Grant on Scandal,
Christina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy, and
Regina on Once Upon a Time. I don’t
think anyone would say that these women have easy lives or that they lack
agency. In fact, the high amount of agency these characters have often serves
to make their stories more interesting and dramatic.
Stop. I know what you’re going to say now, too: But it’s a
show that’s about a man and it’s hard
to give the female characters more agency without taking away from his story. Well,
it is a story about a man, but as in the above examples giving the supporting
characters more agency doesn’t take away from the main character’s story.
Mellie’s story doesn’t detract from Liv’s, Christina’s doesn’t detract from
Meredith’s, and Regina’s doesn’t detract from Emma’s so why should we have any
reason to believe that giving Oliver’s supporting women more agency would make his
story less interesting.
Okay. By now you’re probably wondering who Oliver is going
to rescue if we try to cure the ladies of Arrow
of DIDS. And the answer is everyone. Oliver can go on rescuing Laurel,
Thea, and Felicity, but maybe he should be rescuing Quentin Lance, Roy Harper, and John Diggle just
as much, and to make things really interesting maybe every once in a while
Felicity or Laurel or Thea should rescue Oliver. Now, that’s an episode I’d
definitely tune in for.
It goes without saying that Arrow already does a better than average job of providing us with a
large cast of nuanced female characters, something many shows still struggle
with, but that’s doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. Giving the
female characters more agency only makes them and the show more interesting. I
have a lot of faith in this show and I’m excited to see more of Isabel Rochev
and Sara Lance. I really believe Arrow
can and will do them justice. Now, it’s time for Arrow to do justice for all of its characters.
