Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Arrow definitely went a bit too far tonight with "Dark Waters" [SPOILER WARNING]

(via Arrowverse Wiki)
So the winter finale of Arrow, "Dark Waters" aired tonight (this seems like the week for winter finales) and while it was a good episode with a cliffhanger ending that left me with a big pile of nopes, there was a part in the plot that was incredibly insensitive. Hit the jump for spoilers.

Still with me? Alright, so in "Dark Waters" there's a point where Damian Darhk kidnaps Felicity, Diggle, and Thea in an apparent ploy to gain leverage over Oliver and use him as a puppet in controlling Star City. It turns out, however, that his real plan is to kill them in order to destroy Ollie emotionally and psychologically. Unfortunately and this is the tasteless part, he plans to kill the trio with a gas chamber. A gas chamber.

I'm with you, Reigns. I'm with you.
Did I mention that Felicity is Jewish? Yeah, the writers decided to put a Jewish character in a gas chamber and at no point did that strike anybody involved in the production of Arrow that that might just be a teeny tiny bit insensitive. Even though all three were rescued by Black Canary and Not Captain Jack Harkness, it still rubs one the wrong way. What's weird is that Darhk mentions the Nazis use of the gas chambers during the Holocaust and even condemned Hitler as being an extreme evil and yet, that doesn't stop him from using the very same thing for the very same purpose. Wow.

I checked the Arrow tag on Tumblr as I usually do when I'm watching the show and boy, to say people were upset and downright pissed off at the showrunners for putting Felicity in a gas chamber would be a pretty accurate statement and I honestly can't blame them.

So, will this permanently wreck Arrow? I doubt it. I would be surprised if the show didn't lose fans because of this and there will probably and should be a backlash from the fandom because of this, but I don't see it having a hugely negative impact.

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