An Open Letter to the Executive Producers and Writers of Arrow:

“She was my sister. I couldn't be angry because she was dead. I couldn't grieve because I was so angry.” - Dinah Laurel Lance, 1x01

There is no better way to describe how countless viewers felt as they finished watching Arrow’s season three premiere, “The Calm.” That’s what happens when the writers of your favorite show quietly murder their canonically bisexual female hero.

We find it hard to believe that when you all sat down to decide the direction this season would go, that you imagined how the fans would take you murdering Sara Lance. If you had paused to consider it, we doubt we would be writing this letter.

In explaining the background of her famous list, “Women in Refrigerators,” Gail Simone writes, “in mainstream comics, being a girl superhero meant inevitably being killed, maimed or depowered.” When Sara “the Canary” Lance returned from the dead in Arrow’s second season, many of us thought the show planned to subvert the age old trope of depowering female heroes. After all, how could you fridge a hero whose story was “so much” like Oliver “the Arrow” Queen’s?

In fact, quite a few of us spent the hiatus battling against the prevalent idea that Sara needed to die for Laurel to become the Black Canary. We fought against this terrifying concept that one woman needed to die in order to create space for another one to develop. (Unfortunately, so few fans seem to know that Dinah Drake was still alive when Dinah Laurel Lance took the reins as Black Canary.)

The saddest part was that most of the fans we argued with did not even want Sara dead -  they like her! - but they just could not imagine that Laurel’s rise to heroism could be achieved any other way. Because if we have been taught anything by comics, movies and television, it is that there is only ever room for one woman.

Women are pitted against each other for everything in the media - jobs, men, worthwhile storylines. And while some consumers have become complacent about it, a lot of us have become the opposite. We have begun to speak up, to call out problematic writing, to fight for what we believe we deserve.

The casual way in which television shows continue to kill off female characters is blatantly terrifying. It makes us feel like our lives are worth less in the grand scheme of things. It makes us feel like we do not deserve to be seen or treated with respect. It makes us feel unsafe.

Then Sara Lance showed up on Arrow, bo staff twirling as she punished “misogynist criminals” and “would be rapists” -  the kind of villains women encounter in their day-to-day lives. “No woman should ever suffer at the hands of men,” she said. We were in love. Finally we had our own hero! Arrow brought us a hero who was fighting specifically for us. You brought us a hero who had been through horrors on the Amazo and on Lian Yu, a woman who underwent training for the League of Assassins, and came out the other end stronger, and determined to fight for those women who could not fight for themselves.

You brought us a heroine.

We were given the pleasure of watching her develop over the course of the season -  watching her come to believe in herself and accept that she too was a hero. That she was good, and beloved, and wanted. We saw her interact in positive ways with other female characters, never in competition with them. She befriended Felicity, took Sin under her wing, and, almost most importantly, mended her relationship with Laurel. Finally the sisters were able to put their arguments over men behind them so they could love and support each other.

Sara positively embodied the ideals of feminism, and if that was not enough to allow us to fall in love with her so quickly, she was also bisexual.

Queer representation in media is always lacking. But proper bisexual representation? It pretty much doesn’t exist.

In “Heir to the Demon,” we discovered that Sara was in love with Nyssa, the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul. Much to our joy, their relationship was not oversexualized or demeaning - it was simple, it was beautiful, and it was real.

It was love.

No one on the show questioned why Sara had been with Oliver (and was with him again later on) and was in love with a woman; it was accepted as completely normal. And when Quentin Lance told her he was just happy she’d had someone who loved her, an entire generation of queer viewers were moved to tears because so many had not received that same consideration from their own parents. It was empowering and so, so important.

In an article on representation, “Saving the Life That is Your Own,” Alice Walker argues that representation in any type of artwork is important, because it allows viewers and readers to identify with characters. This sense of identification can lead to personal connections that can actually save lives. Similarly, Sarah C. Gomillion and Traci A. Giuliano conducted two studies on the influence of gay, lesbian, and bisexual portrayals in the media. The first study concluded that proper media representation of gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters actually influence the number of people who feel comfortable coming out, because these characters serve as role models. The second study reported similar results: representative characters in the media provide a sense of pride, comfort, and inspiration among viewers.

And that is exactly what Sara Lance is for so many of us.

Sara became a symbol for women and the queer community alike. She was a character many of us could see ourselves in. And the effect she had carried over into real life. Many of us held ourselves straighter, taller, stood up for ourselves a little bit more.

To us, Sara’s character development reached its highest point in episode twenty-two of season two, “Streets of Fire,” in that beautiful scene between Laurel and Sara. When Sara attempts to discredit herself, something we saw her do all season, it is Laurel who finally gets through to her - makes her believe that she is a hero. Unlike Oliver, who spent so much of the season believing that he could “save” Sara and failed, Laurel succeeded. In a rare moment, women everywhere witnessed that a woman - a sister - could save a woman in a way that a man - a hero - never could. To top it all off, this beautiful scene was followed by a scene of Sara carrying a little girl out of a burning building as Laurel watched on with pride. Then, ultimately, it was not a man but a woman - a policewoman of color! - who served as the civilian voice to confirm what both the audience and Laurel already knew: the Canary is a hero.

The symbolism was unmistakable: Sara was the hero little girls would be able to strive to become. Sara was a woman with enough love in her to love anybody, to stand up for anybody. Sara was a woman who embodied the importance of family and sisterhood. Sara was a woman all women could connect to. In a world where little girls have so few heroes they can look up to, Sara Lance was a shining beacon.

On September 1st, 2014, Caity Lotz posted this picture on Facebook.

On October 14th, 2014, she retweeted this picture on Twitter.

In a medium so filled with straight men concerned with their own problems and suffering, Sara Lance appeared as a superhero for girls and women alike. It was only natural that little girls would rejoice at the idea of having a superhero they could look up to and aspire to be. Above, there is a picture of two little girls, Canary sisters, who looked up to the Canary as their hero - little girls who believe that they can stand up for themselves and others and be strong without a man.

Now imagine how those little girls must have felt when “The Calm” aired and they had to watch their superhero - their Canary sister - die at the hands of a faceless villain. Because if the Canary, who symbolized the strength and protection of women, could fall so easily and so quickly, what hope do these little girls have now? If our heroine can be murdered in five seconds, what does that mean for the rest of us? Last week, a generation of little girls who idolized Sara Lance and everything she represented watched their heroine, and their dreams of becoming her, die.

On the other end of the fan spectrum, after “The Calm” aired, tumblr user telaryn shared the importance of Arrow’s portrayal of Sara Lance as the Canary:

"I met Caity Lotz at Dragoncon this year. You know what I told her, with tears in my eyes? “I am a forty-six year old bisexual who has loved the character of Black Canary for as long as I can remember. I tell you this so that you understand what it means when I say I have been waiting forty years for your interpretation of the character.”

She was gracious and clearly moved, but it wasn’t until I left that I realized she signed my photo ‘To my Black Canary Sister…’  

You don’t understand what it meant to have one of my heroes canonically share my sexual orientation."

Representation is important, and this was what Sara had become for us. She was the representation so many of us had been starving for.

Furthermore, the representation of Sara’s bisexuality was especially important given the history behind the Black Canary’s sexuality. In issue #97 of Birds of Prey, despite years of people questioning her sexuality, Dinah was shown saying that she is “heterosexual to the bone.” And a million fans were heartbroken. A few years later, Gail Simone came forward explaining that it was a misprint and that the actual line was “75% heterosexual.” The remaining 25% implied that the Black Canary was bisexual. Although this eased a few fans’ minds, the canon still pointed to a heterosexual superhero, once again reducing any chance of bisexual representation in comics.

And then Arrow came along and finally gave so many fans what they had been craving for years: a bisexual Black Canary.

A bisexual Black Canary who fans believed belonged with Nyssa al Ghul, a woman of color, rather than Oliver Queen, the male protagonist. Sara Lance was actual proof that people will not only accept queer superheroes, they will embrace them. They will cherish them and hold them dear and close to their hearts.

We saw how Sara fought for everything she had, with everything she had, and we loved her. After the Queen’s Gambit sank, Sara fought to stay alive. After Anthony Ivo manipulated her for an entire year, she fought to get away from him and his path. After Slade Wilson was injected with the Mirakuru and driven insane, Sara fought to go home to her family. After she joined and escaped the League of Assassins, Sara fought to protect not only the lives of herself and her family, but women all around her. How could we not love her when we witnessed how hard she battled for the things she believed in? How could we not love her, knowing she would fight just as hard for us?

Sara Lance - the bisexual, feminist superhero - was a fighter. She never gave up.

It was the show’s dedication to keeping her alive and fighting that made us truly believe that Sara would be safe. After all, why else would the show build up a character so much? Invest so much time and plot, and make her so important to so many people, only to kill her off? We were sure that, despite the people that claimed Sara had to die solely for Laurel to succeed, the show would not go there because it was just as invested in Sara “the Canary” Lance surviving as we were. That the producers and writers loved her as much as the fans.

We were wrong.

You gave us an entire season of a hero’s journey for a bisexual, feminist superhero -  a journey that the protagonist himself compared to his own journey. Yet you killed Sara “I’m Not That Easy to Kill” Lance off after five minutes of screen time in season three. And worst of all, she wasn’t even given the courtesy of a hero’s death.

Sara “Be Mindful of Your Surroundings” Lance apparently missed the fact that her killer was lying in wait.

It does not matter whether we loved or hated the rest of the episode because that moment destroyed the premiere and left us all reeling. She was shot in the stomach three times before she fell off a building and hit a dumpster, already dead when her sister found her in a dirty alleyway. Even the A.V. Club, a website that normally praises Arrow, thought that the scene was “a particularly cheap way to finish [Sara’s] journey,” because her death was tacked on as nothing more than an afterthought to the episode.

Thus, the response to Sara’s death has understandably been one of outrage and hurt. Considering many of us identified with Sara as both feminist and queer viewers, seeing the way she was treated was extremely painful.

After “The Calm” aired, but before “Sara,” we asked people to share their stories about why Sara “the Canary” Lance mattered to them. We were met with an array of responses, ranging from how people adored the character to how the character helped them on a personal level. They shared stories about how Sara’s relationship with her father gave them the acceptance their own parents would never quite give them. They shared stories about how seeing a heroine like Sara protecting women from rapists helped them with traumas from their past. They shared stories about how Sara surviving death over and over gave them hope that they too could survive depression and self-harm.

They shared their stories because Sara matters.

Tumblr user absentlyabbie writes:

"Do you really think we’d be this furious and hurt if it was “just a story” or “no big deal”? Do you genuinely believe we have no justification?

It’s not just fiction, it’s not just one character.

It’s representation, snatched away.

It’s a woman, an openly, positively portrayed, bisexual female hero, taken from us.

This is a matter of an underrepresented people’s hero (two groups, in fact; women and bisexuals, we don’t ever get enough heroes of our own) being assassinated and taken away, replaced by something more resembling the mainstream status quo."

Sara was a hero for women. She was a feminist, and fought for us in a world where we’re usually left out on our own. She taught us that we could be strong for ourselves and for each other, that we could support each other. And to take a character like Sara and completely strip her of her agency for the shock value of her death, shows us that you never truly understood that about her to begin with. You spent an entire season with Sara subverting tropes, only to pull the oldest trope in the book in her death.

Stuffed Into The Fridge, a term you undoubtedly recognize from Gail Simone’s “Women in Refrigerators,” is a trope where a female character, “is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish.”

While tropes are not always bad, this particular trope “is all too often a hallmark of supremely lazy writing - using a dead woman as “cheap anger” for the male protagonist, and devaluing the life of a woman in the process.”

In an interview with GreenArrowTV, Marc Guggenheim said, “That’s one of the reasons we killed Sara off: the amount of story and richness that we get out of it.” You killed Sara off for the plot. She meant nothing more than what her death could achieve. Her place in the story was never more important than what her corpse could provide in terms of “richness”. This plot move is a two-fold example of “fridging” a woman for “cheap anger.” “Cheap anger” for Oliver, and a cheap and easy origin story for Laurel. As though Laurel actually needed an origin story. Did she not already experience “her island” last season (Katie to CBR TV)? What was the point of the addiction storyline if the strength of character she developed was not enough to set her on any sort of path? She had also already experienced the death of her sister once before. Was it actually necessary to put her through it again?

Furthermore, the sheer violence of Sara’s death scene made most viewers queasy, even if we set the symbolism of killing her with arrows and having her hit a dumpster aside. We were not subjected to seeing Oliver actually stab Slade through the eye, only the aftermath. We did not have to watch Tommy get impaled at CNRI, just Oliver’s reaction to it when he arrived. We do not actually see Merlyn’s “death” as it is hidden by Oliver, and overshadowed by the protagonist’s own act of heroism, of stabbing himself to defeat the villain.

Yet we were forced to watch, in vivid detail, as Sara was shot three times and fell from the roof, hitting the dumpster at a horrifying angle, one that undoubtedly broke her back, and then landing unceremoniously in a dirty alleyway, eyes wide open. And it was not enough to show it the one time. We were forced to watch it on repeat in the second episode, in addition to lingering shots of her body, broken and bloodied, on the table in the foundry. Her body was left there for most of the episode, a morbid centerpiece to the action in the lair, until she was stuffed in a freezer, because they did not know what to do with her body.

You literally put Sara Lance in a refrigerator.

In a letter by Gail Simone, she writes:

"Male characters tend to die differently than female ones. The male characters seem to die nobly, as heroes, most often, whereas it's not uncommon, as in Katma Tui's case, for a male character to just come home and find her butchered in the kitchen. There are exceptions for both sexes, of course, but shock value seems to be a major motivator in the superchick deaths more often than not."

Male deaths on the show are non-sensationalized, respectful, and, moreover, not always final. Malcolm Merlyn came back to life without an explanation. Slade Wilson came back to life after the Amazo sank and lived through the events of “Unthinkable.” Why are male villains entitled to life, but not female heroes?

Not only do male characters get second chances, we are not limited to only one given male character: in Arrow there are two very different versions of Count Vertigo, two characters based on Merlyn, and two male archers in the Foundry. Would it be such a horrifying thing to have two Canaries?

Let us provide you with a better example of how Laurel becomes the Black Canary without killing Sara off, while still maintaining the “richness” you seek: Sara trains Laurel to become her successor in Starling City since she is tied up in Nanda Parbat. After all, Sara essentially passed on the superhero mantle to her sister at the end of season two. This succession allows the two sisters to become even closer as they fight for women who cannot defend themselves, which Laurel already does as a lawyer.

Both sisters living and working together would have not only subverted the “Women in Refrigerators” trope, but also added a variety of richness to Arrow. So then what was the point killing Sara off?

Is it because there’s only ever room for one female superhero?

Even if we ignore the source material, which you should not since it is the basis for your adaptation, the very idea that one woman has to die to create space for another woman is horrifying. It is exactly the opposite of what the Black Canary stands for.

You ended last season by doing the “Unthinkable,” but when you killed Sara off, this season’s premiere became Unforgivable.

You did not get any story richness out of killing Sara - you destroyed the show.

In a response to a fan’s question, Stephen Amell once said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy.” That eliciting an extreme response is always a good thing. He was wrong.

Countless fans decided to drop the show after Sara’s death. (A few examples: 1, 2, 3, 4) She was the one recurring character almost everyone had on their “no kill” list - the character who had to survive, no matter what. She was just too important to too many people. We need her.

We cannot imagine this was the response you wanted to get when you decided to just throw Sara out into the trash. But it is what you got. You went too far.

Strong emotions are great when they have a purpose. When the audience cries because they were moved, that is successful storytelling. When an audience cries because they feel like they have been hurt, victimized, and forgotten, you have a severe problem. Those viewers who have not decided to drop Arrow (yet) have lost all excitement about it. They will not tell their friends to watch it and they will not wait with baited breath each week for a new episode.

Why would we want to share a show with others that has treated us so badly?

This is not good television. This is not shocking and edgy. This was a giant mistake. And there is only one way to fix it:

Bring. Sara. Back.

If you did it for two villains, you can do it for her.

We are not talking flashbacks. We want Sara alive, healthy, and back on the show.

And we absolutely do not mean at the expense of another woman. No more “fridging” women - you have killed off at least five named female characters in less than fifteen episodes. And to make matters worse, one of these women, Shado, actually died so that Sara would live! Now, by killing Sara off, you have killed off any reason for Shado’s death. Enough is enough.

We demand to be heard.

We, as women and as minorities, are done being quiet about the way we have been treated by television, by books - by the world at large. We are taking a page out of Sara Lance’s book and we are standing up and saying - No more. We’re defending ourselves and what we believe in.

We are all the Canary, and Sara was all of us.

And we want her back.

“No woman should ever suffer at the hands of men.”

You wrote that line. Well, we are rising up to protect her now. We will not stand by and let her suffer by your hands. You did something unforgivable.

Now undo it.

 

 

(This letter was a collaboration between Miriam Weiss, Ambreen Hooda, Leah Port and Shamila Karunakaran.)