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Why You Should Watch Lucifer

Lucifer is a tv series about Lucifer Morningstar, the Devil, who decided to leave Hell and take up residence on Earth in Los Angeles, defying his father in the process. He’s a nightclub owner who’s constantly drinking, doing drugs, and hooking up with people. But when a friend of his is shot and killed in front of him, he decides to get involved in the LAPD investigation of the friend’s death, which is met with resistance by Detective Chloe Decker. Lucifer never lies about who he is, which causes people to think he’s delusional. Chloe’s lifestyle is the exact opposite of Lucifer’s: she’s a single mother who hardly has time for anything outside of work besides taking care of her daughter. To put the show in relative terms, it’s part procedural crime drama, part Supernatural angels-and-demons storyline. Lucifer has the annoying charm of Sherlock Holmes and Lucifer and Chloe, aka Deckerstar, have the slow-burn romance of Booth and Bones from Bones (which is actually referenced in the show!). Here are some reasons you should watch the show:

1. Lucifer’s Charisma

2. Badass Mazikeen (lady, demon, friend, and protector of the Devil)

3. The Lucifer-Chloe relationship. Spoiler alert: Lucifer is immortal as an angel/the Devil, but being around Chloe Decker makes him mortal. And it’s a great opposites-attract relationship that results in personal growth for both parties to get out of their comfort zone. You’re just dying for them to get together and you’ll stay up late watching the next episode because you think maybe the next one will be the one where they finally kiss and make it happen.  

4. It’s apparently canon in the DC universe after the crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earth! 

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5 Reasons You Should Watch Merlin

Some of you might not be aware of the amazing fantasy/adventure/medieval period drama that is the tv series called Merlin. As you may have guessed from the title, the show follows some years in the life of a young sorcerer Merlin, the one of Arthurian legend. It is the story of how Prince Arthur came to be King Arthur and how Merlin helped him navigate all kinds of assassination attempts, battles, and quests, as well as a lot of family drama. There’s sword fighting (also jousting), dragons, various mythical beasts, witches, and warlocks. But there’s also plenty of heart and comedy in the show. The show came out in 2008 so the CGI/special effects are not the best, but the plot sure makes up for it. 

Here are 5 reasons you should give Merlin a try:

1. The Merlin-Arthur friendship. 

Merlin and Prince Arthur start out disliking each other but end up with an immensely strong bond. They would never say how they feel about each other to the other’s face but instead they constantly jokingly insult each other. They quarrel all day long but they’d give their life for the other in an instant. Merlin is the servant so he pretty much always ends up losing all arguments by getting more chores. But Arthur would be lost without him and he knows it. 

2. Romances Done Right

There are no sex scenes in Merlin, and there is no nudity. Some of the knights go shirtless, and Arthur is a lot because he’s awoken in the middle of the night frequently. In Merlin, Arthur falls in love with Guinevere, who is a servant, which is a source of conflict. Arthur is great because he values her opinions and advice. She is kidnapped and has to be rescued at some point in time but she also aids in Arthur’s rescue at other points in time. Their relationship did not come about because of the tendency of film to give the hero a woman to rescue, it is a balanced one. 

3. Great period wear and settings 

Everyone in the show has great period appropriate clothing, and the ladies are not wearing dresses that expose half their cleavage, as some period dramas do. The royal ladies have exquisite dresses and the knights always look dashing in their chain mail, armor, and capes. 

A significant part of the story takes place at the castle in Camelot. For the outside shots of the castle, the gorgeous Chateau de Pierrefonds is used.  

4. Swordfighting 

If you’re into swordfighting like that of what’s in The Witcher, then this show might be a good fit for you. There’s the clashing of swords in every episode! If you’re not a huge fan of violence, the knights of Camelot only aim to wound their opponent unless they have to kill them.

5. Magic 

There are no wands in Merlin, but there are some staffs and plenty of incantations. It is original enough to be totally different from the magic in Harry Potter. There are spell books and some spells helped by potions, but the spells are in a language even more far removed than the Latin-derived spells of Harry Potter. The fights in Merlin are always elevated by the addition of magic and raise the stakes.

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Stranger Things Season 3 Thoughts

I watched all of season 3 of Stranger Things in one day so everything should be fresh in my mind.

El gained a friend in Max, which she desperately needed from spending all her time with controlling adults and middle school boys. El missed out on so many experiences as a child but I’m glad she has a friend to encourage her to express herself through clothing and to remind her that she can have fun without hanging out with Mike. I’m glad the El stuck up for herself and gave Mike consequences for his actions when he lied to her. Eleven has always been my favorite because she has never given in or given up in any situation and she has been a total badass with her powers. She never comes across as thinking she’s better than anyone even though she has powers others could only dream of. Eleven lost her father, Hopper, at the end of the season, and then she had to move away from her friends, which sucks. I think Joyce will be a good mother for El and that Will will be a good friend.  but I worry for her happiness. She was trapped in Hopper’s cabin for almost a year without being able to see Mike or the others and that was hard on her. For now, we’re not sure if she’s going to get her powers back, so she can’t even visit them in her mind space. I appreciate how Mike looked out for Eleven’s well being and worried whether she was pushing her limits by staying in her mind space for hours. But I was a bit confused when Mike and Eleven professed their love for each other. I can believe they love each other as a friend but middle schoolers don’t usually know what romantic love is. I know that Mike and Eleven have matured in some ways more than their fellow middle schoolers because of the trauma of the onslaught of creatures from the Upside Down. But I’m not sure if it’s the kind of maturing that lends itself to caring about another person in the complex way that love is.

Eleven might be my favorite but I was very proud of Steve Harrington this season. Steve, once the most popular boy at school, isn’t ashamed to be seen hanging out with middle schoolers. Steve sacrificed himself to the Russian soldiers to let Erica and Dustin go free. Steve did his best to move on when the girl he loved, Nancy, left him for someone else. In the 80s, which wasn’t known for sexual orientation tolerance, Steve is cool being friends with a girl who isn’t straight and a girl who turned down his advances. Steve, who has had no combat training, won in a fight against a Russian soldier. Steve Harrington should be more a ringleader next season.

Speaking of popular boys in high school, Billy. Billy was very easy to dislike with his terrible attitude and behavior, but it was a product of his upbringing, and I’m glad he got to have a redemption moment at the end when he fought back against the Mind-Flayer in the finale. No one else fought the Mind-Flayer with their bare hands. I understand it was the 80s and long-haired rock stars were a thing, but I still don’t see how everyone including the moms in the show thought he was so hot. The long hair just laid there limp! It looked half-washed. That might not seem important, but it’s important to me.

Another thing that’s not necessarily important. Did y’all catch those references to other popular movies? When Max and El went out on a bike in the rain at night, Max was wearing a yellow raincoat that reminded one of the movie It. I also thought when they were at the pool and trying to lure Billy into the sauna using a tape recorded message it sounded similar to Pennywise. How about the Terminator-style lone wolf that Larry Kline himself called Arnold Schwarzenegger jokingly? I nicknamed him “Swarnold” and I’m sticking by it.

But I’m very mad at Swarnold for killing Alexei. “Smirnoff”, as he was called by Hopper, was so adorable! He was clearly a good guy only doing what the Russian government told him to do because he had to survive. He wanted to become an American citizen, he liked cartoons, and he loved slushies. I just keep picturing in my head when he was sitting in the back of the Todfather convertible smiling and sipping an Icee. He was taken from us too soon. He could have been a real help against future evils.

This season we lost Hopper, Alexei, Billy, Heather the lifeguard, Tom from the Hawkins Post, Doris Driscoll, and several others from Hawkins. When will the people of Hawkins finally be safe? We’re still not sure if Eleven will get her powers back. This season proved that the team could somewhat stop the Mind Flayer without Eleven, but she had already done a lot of heavy lifting. I don’t think the Mind Flayer could be stopped without her powers so I’m very worried what will happen in the next season if she doesn’t have them. I was kind of hoping that Kali might appear in the finale to help Eleven out when she was struggling, but alas it did not happen. I don’t think they introduced for Kali for two episodes only, so she should come back next season I think. Did everyone catch the part-of-the-way-through-the-credits scene? The Duffer Brothers are trying to be the Russo Brothers! Who’s the American the Russians have locked up? Murray perhaps? And how did the Russians get a full grown Demogorgon? If only we knew when season four was coming to give us some relief, but we don’t. We’ll just have to wait and see!

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The 100 Season 6 Finale Thoughts

Something that you might not have thought hard about considering the other events happening is that Russell Prime mentioned that there were other teams, presumably other explorers like Josephine’s family was when they first came to Planet Alpha and established Sanctum. He also ticked down a list of other planets: Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. We do not know if all of these other planets are survivable but there are more communities of people somewhere. The only problem is that these other teams have mind drives too and could be a problem like the Primes of Sanctum. Because the mind drives are trackable, Wonkru might be able to find the location of these other people.

I know that we have to suspend our disbelief to watch this show but sometimes I really wish they would explain how some things work. I am saying this because of the part where Raven ran the code on the Flame to destroy it and yet somehow Sheidheda somehow still survived and uploaded himself somewhere on the computer network of the Eligius ship. I’m sure they will explain it better in the beginning of season 7 but for now I’m confused. Towards the end of this season, the show has taken a turn from mostly sci fi to now a bit fantasy with the whole Anomaly situation. The Anomaly interrupts radio waves and it also apparently can cause people to travel in time and space. Everything that happened so far has been explainable under the umbrella of the terrible effects of radiation or futuristic technology. The Anomaly cannot be explained at this point.

What are the people of Wonkru supposed to do without their primary doctor Abby? Abby has been their saving grace in countless situations and now their only doctor is Clarke. And Clarke is so busy with more pressing matters she’s hardly ever able to take herself out of the fight long enough to do surgery. But there are some things to be happy about. Octavia has discovered herself again, her good self. She has asked for forgiveness for her past sins and been redeemed in the eyes of Bellamy. The people from Earth tried their very best to avoid killing as a part of their goal to be better as a people, and I think they did do better. They didn’t kill if they didn’t have to, and there were no huge losses. No big battles with thousands of lives lost. The people of Sanctum killed more people than the people of Earth did.

So now we have questions. What will become of Sanctum now that the Primes are gone? Will the people of Sanctum be able to accept the truth later on or will the people of Earth have to flee elsewhere? I feel like the people of Earth won’t come to rest anywhere permanently until the end of the final season. There might be some more fighting before they take off into space again. Where does one go in the Anomaly? What do the tattoos function as? Who is the “he” that has Diyoza captive? Why did Hope kill Octavia, and why did Octavia disappear? What causes the Anomaly? Perhaps the Anomaly acts as a gateway that connects to other planets where time moves differently and that’s why Hope is much older. Who’s mind drive was Jordan holding at the end of the episode? Was it Priya’s? He expressed his disappointment that they had disturbed the lives of the people of Sanctum and that Bellamy had taken part in causing Priya’s death. Perhaps Jordan will make trouble in trying to bring Priya back because it’s his only connection to Delilah.

At least in the knowledge that season 7 will be the last season we know that the people of Earth will presumably find their happy ending soon.  

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Agents of Shield Season Six Ending Thoughts

The sixth season finale of Agents of Shield started with Flint being possessed by Izel and reconstructing the Monoliths. Flint was created in the previous episode as a manifestation of Mac and Yoyo’s fears by the Monoliths. That detail confuses me. Mac and Yoyo weren’t scared of Flint, they wanted him to come back with them when they used the Monolith to return to the time they left. I think perhaps the situation was that they were scared of Izel recreating the Monoliths and they knew the only person who could do that was Flint. Thus Flint was created to make their fear come true. There’s a continuing debate going on amongst the agents whether beings created by the Monoliths are real, in the sense that they are the original person just pulled through time or reborn and not some kind of soulless clone. There is no good way to determine whether someone is their actual self or a copy, as evidenced by all the deliberation over whether Sarge was Coulson or not. Sarge displayed traits of Coulson’s personality by calling Daisy “Skye” or trying to sacrifice himself. He felt conflicted by this pain he was feeling, which May told him was his love for the team. It’s like the consciousnesses of the inner being of Izel’s race and the fabricated Coulson were meshed together but the more damage the vessel endured, the less Coulson was left. And when it came down to it, when Sarge’s inner being was destroyed, there was nothing left of him. The other being created by the Monolith, Benson’s loved one, was killed by Izel. So the only living being created by the Monolith is Flint. Assuming that he is not possessed by anything else, it will be interesting to see the final decision as to whether Flint is “real.” The Monoliths have essentially unlimited power if they can remake an exact person. Who knows what else they are capable of.

Amazingly, only a couple major supporting characters in Shield died this season, Davis and Keller. Many more nameless agents lost their lives, but we were spared the emotional trauma of losing one of our favorite agents at the last minute a few times. With the end of Agents of Shield looming, it seemed possible we might actually lose May, Yoyo, Fitz and Simmons, but I’m glad they live to fight another day. I thought it was interesting how when Fitz and Simmons were preparing to sacrifice themselves via blowing up the Framework equipment, Fitz stopped Simmons from launching into what would have been a message of how much she loved him. One would think that if they thought they were going to die, Fitz would want to say “I love you” one last time.

Now onto the ending of the finale. As May is dying, Simmons appears with helpers to put May in a stasis pod and to take a part of the White Monolith with them. Simmons says she doesn’t know where Fitz is and can’t know where he is. It seems they can never be together for very long and when they are, they’re in danger. It sucks because this Fitz still hasn’t been able to marry Simmons yet. Simmons says that Chronicoms have been using their knowledge of Shield to attack them and that they needed someone with extensive Shield knowledge to help them. Somehow they had created an enhanced life model decoy of Coulson using Chronicom technology and Coulson’s mental engram recorded from the Framework. They are also able to time travel and have travelled back to the 1930s. There are so many questions. How did they manage to figure out time travel? This season doesn’t seem to line up with the rest of the current MCU. There was no mention of any of the events of Infinity War or Endgame so that time travel hasn’t been invented. Does time travel follow the same rules as it did in Endgame? As in, does changing the past create new timelines or does it alter the future? Why did they go back to 1930? That would be prior to any events that take place in Captain America: The First Avenger, which takes place in 1942. Shield didn’t even exist until after World War II as far as we know. They may visit Peggy Carter, who was one of the founders. After Ada, making an LMD seems problematic. But maybe the Chronicom technology negates any potential danger with the Framework. Where did Piper and Flint end up? We didn’t see what happened to them after they left the temple. Maybe Fitz, Simmons, and Enoch picked them up at some other point.

The whole world is under threat of the Chronicoms but all I can say is thank goodness, Coulson is back and everyone on the team is alive.

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Venom Movie Thoughts

I know I’m a little late to the game on this movie, but hey, I have other things to do with my time, like watch other movies and tv shows. I’m glad that even though the movie was produced by Sony there was still a Stan Lee cameo. My overall opinion of the movie is that the path of Venom was predictable but it was still entertaining and funny nonetheless. The stakes were high, with an impending invasion of an alien species that would eat the entire population, but it never got close enough to the invasion for the audience to worry. It was no great emotional rollercoaster ride like Infinity War or Endgame. All other Marvel movies must suffer being compared to those unfortunately.

I was glad that they didn’t make Anne, the love interest, totally helpless in the face of the symbiotes. She kept a cool head and fought back against Riot with sound waves, even though she had no physical strength to put into the fight. I was also glad that Dan, Anne’s new boyfriend, wasn’t threatened by Eddie and tried his best to help Eddie. Venom showed both strong women and men who don’t have fragile masculinity or big egos, which is something to be happy about in superhero movies.

There are some interesting questions that arise from the movie. Why is it that Venom had an easier time inhabiting human hosts than the others of his species? We saw people die within minutes of merging with one of the symbiotes, like Isaac and Dr. Skirth, and yet Venom inhabited Eddie, Anne, and the dog at the hospital without any consequences. Why did Venom take on a feminine form when he merged with Anne? It seemed a bit unnecessary to make that distinction. The movie also never explained how the humans and the symbiotes can understand each other’s languages even though they had never made contact before.

Venom is a part of the Spider-Man universe in the comics, so where was the reference to Spider-Man? In fact, Venom’s first host was Spider-Man and the second was Eddie Brock in the comics. So the writers have decided to make Venom a sort of anti-hero like Deadpool. That means all bets are off as to what will happen in the sequel if Venom is no longer an enemy of Spider-Man. The mid-credits scene showed Eddie meeting Cletus Kasady, the human host of the symbiote known as Carnage. It seemed that all the symbiotes were dead except for Venom at the end of the movie, so this means we could have no idea what other symbiotes are still around on Earth. In the comics, Carnage is the offspring of Venom. Eddie Brock and Cletus Kasady were cellmates in prison in the comics and that’s how Carnage bonded with Cletus Kasady. But as for the Venom sequel, this doesn’t seem a likely turn of events. Carnage also makes an appearance in the Deadpool comics so it is possible that Venom could run into Deadpool in the movies.

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Spiderman: Far From Home Thoughts (Spoilers)

Going into this movie, I knew that Mysterio was a villain in the comic books but the beginning part of the movie actually made me second guess whether Marvel had made him a villain or not. In the comics, Quentin Beck, known as Mysterio, was a special effects artist, not someone who worked for Tony Stark. But I think Marvel made a great decision to use that character and update it with illusion technology tied into Tony Stark. Beck did not have a lot of development so I didn’t strongly empathize with him or detest him either. We know that he’s a very gifted and brilliant man but was fired by Tony for being unstable. Beck was upset with Tony because he was fired, because Tony supposedly disgraced his life’s work with a laughable acronym, and because he didn’t like Tony as a boss. After Thanos, Mysterio is hard to hate, especially because there were no visible casualties. Is Mysterio actually dead? It’s hard to say when he has those illusions but EDITH did say that there were no illusion drones functioning. Mysterio may be dead but I think it might be safe to assume that his friends won’t give up. When Mysterio was on the ropes, William, the man at the computer running the illusion programs, left with a flash drive. He was probably the person who gave the video portraying Spiderman in a negative light to J. Jonah Jameson at the Daily Bugle.

If you’re like me, you’ve been operating under the delusion that Iron Man isn’t dead because you don’t want him to be and you go rewatch all the movies he’s in. But this movie makes you confront that fact head on. The worst thing Mysterio did was probably saying “He might still be alive if you had been better” and shows Peter a zombie Iron Man rising from the grave. Threatening lives so you can come to the rescue like Syndrome in The Incredibles is one thing, but traumatizing someone with the illusion of their dead father figure is another. What’s great is that even though Tony is dead, he’s just so prevalent. Is there anything so classically Tony as naming the tactical system attached to the glasses EDITH: Even Dead I’m the Hero? His work really is the gift that keeps on giving even after he’s gone. We have to give props to Jon Favreau (Happy) for portraying that look so well of bittersweet nostalgia when Peter is designing his new suit in the back of plane. I was also glad that they made the Peter-MJ romance correctly on the high school level. They were cute and awkward and it wasn’t sexual in the slightest.

The final after-credits scene was a kicker. It’s revealed that Talos and his wife Soren, two of the Skrulls in the Captain Marvel movie, had been using their shapeshifting ability to pose as Nick Fury and Maria Hill. But it’s all above board: Fury ordered them to take the EDITH glasses to Peter. We see Fury on a Skrull spaceship somewhere in outer space, with no explanation as to why. It does raise questions as to who else the Skrull could be impersonating besides Hill and Fury. Although Captain Marvel ends with the Skrull species as friends to humans, in the comics the Skrull have not always been so friendly. In the Secret Invasion series, Skrulls impersonate and replace several superheroes before invading the Earth. No superheroes were seen in this Spiderman movie, so it is possible that they were quiet because they have already been replaced by Skrulls. Fury, actually Talos presumably, at one point is talking on the phone and mentions Kree sleeper cells. Perhaps Fury has agreed to help the Skrull in their fight against the Kree, but that seems a bit unlikely when Fury is so passionate about protecting the Earth.

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Basil and Josephine by F. Scott Fitzgerald Book Review

I’m not sure if Basil and Josephine is a geek book to read but I’m reading it and I could definitely be labelled a geek or a nerd so we’re going to call it one. This review does contain some spoilers.

When I bought this book I expected that Basil and Josephine would meet considering their names were grouped together and the cover featured a couple, who were presumably representing Basil and Josephine. But the book is split in two sections, one about Basil Duke Lee and an entirely separate section on Josephine Perry. They live in entirely different parts of the country and experience life very differently. The only thing they really have in common is that they both come from a good amount of money, they attended many parties and dances, and they are both teenagers attending schools away from home.

For the modern reader, their activities can be quite unrelatable but that doesn’t mean they aren’t desirable. There are hardly any boys-only or girls-only schools that aren’t colleges in the Midwest, which are what Basil and Josephine attend. They also get invited to a multitude of dances, growing up taking dance classes at school. Hardly any teenagers know formal dances such as the waltz unless they have taken extracurricular classes or joined a club specifically to learn. Everyone knew how to dance back then, the book would make it seem at least. As a fan of big band music as well as the 1920s aesthetic, I would be very much in favor of everyone my age learning how to dance and attending dances with friends. Both characters were always enthused about an upcoming dance to see their crush and I can imagine it would have been exhilarating since you couldn’t text your crush back then, you could only write them letters or see them at social events.

I think many people would also find their romantic behavior and thinking to be unusual as well, but I might be wrong about that. The book starts out with Basil at a young age of 11 and the romantic thoughts he is having about girls he finds attractive seems to be out of place, too mature for his age. To him these girls are perfectly glowing, sultry, angelic creatures that he speaks of as if he’s already in love even though he has not gotten to know them that well at all and has not emotionally matured. He thinks about these girls much the same way from ages 11 to 17, and I find it hard to believe that one could feel such intense romantic feelings for each beautiful girl before one has even made it out of high school. But for romantics out there, Fitzgerald’s prose fills your heart with longing for a hot summer evening in the city with someone special. I would sometimes come across a sentence and sit there thinking about the romantic meaning of it, harkening back to the times when I felt the rush of the mystery of what was in store for me and the boy I was on a date with. The golden hours when you’re wondering whether they like you as much as you like them and you’re thinking about how they are exactly and all that you want. Fitzgerald makes you wish you could go back and relive those days again with his beautiful turns of phrase, such as “she wore her very sins like stars” and “whose face was cousin to a damp fresh rose.”

It was also difficult to relate to Josephine’s romantic entanglements, but that might be just because I’m not as attractive as the book describes her to be. She was apparently gorgeous and could smile at any boy within a couple years of her age and get them to follow her around all night trying to dance with her. She was a heartbreaker through and through, fascinated by a new boy she met, making them fall in love with her, and then leaving when she was bored of them. To those without her charms and skills, you want to know how she does it, how she can just lose interest in people fawning over her so quickly and then attract someone new within the time span of a party. She makes them feel like she only has eyes for them but all the while she’s thinking about an older boy she just saw across the room that she wants to get a chance to talk to. In the end she kind of gets her just rewards for playing with people’s hearts when she finally gets a chance to be intimate with the older French officer she wants to be with and says she can’t feel anything for him, that something must be wrong with her, and that he must help her, but he ends up leaving her.

If you’ve read anything about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life, you can make some theories about whether parts of the story were taken directly from his own life. Basil Duke Lee and John Bailey, a man that Josephine briefly is attracted to, both write plays and aspire to be a playwright at some point. Basil lives or stays in places that Fitzgerald himself had lived, such as St. Paul, Minnesota. Fitzgerald also attended Princeton, frequently mentioned in the story, and he tried out for the football team just like Basil did. Fitzgerald was taken with Ginevra King, a Chicago socialite, when he was a young man, which would seem to be inspiration for Josephine, who also lives in Chicago. John Bailey had marital issues and at one point his wife tried to kill herself, which might have been inspired from Fitzgerald’s unhappy marriage and a point in time when Zelda Fitzgerald took too many sleeping pills. Zelda also at one point apparently threw herself down the stairs when Fitzgerald was ignoring her.

Although at times the teenagers in the book might be hard to relate to, if you’d like to learn more about life in the early 1900s or just enjoy reading romantic books/poetry, this book would be a good read for you, if you can handle the fact that none of the romances last and that neither of the characters really get a happy ending.

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Arrow Season 6

If you haven’t finished Arrow Season 6, spoilers ahead!

First, we have to talk about the death we weren’t expecting, that of Quentin Lance. This man had to deal with losing his daughter Laurel, battling alcoholism as a result of her death, took on major responsibilities as the deputy mayor and eventual mayor, and worked to put Laurel from another Earth on a different path to goodness. It just seems unfair that he wouldn’t live to see if Laurel changed completely for the better, to enjoy life again with his doppelganger daughter. This death is going to affect everyone. Poor Oliver, alone in prison, will have no one to lean on to deal with his death.

Speaking of putting Laurel on the path to goodness, it’s been kind of up in the air as to whether Laurel will be on the side of the heroes or not. I think it could go either way. With Quentin gone, she won’t have his guidance to help her choose her actions. She could be driven to anger and rage in pursuit of revenge for his death and fall back into her old habits of killing. Or she could be influenced by Quentin’s death to take up his legacy of protecting people. I think the show seemed to hint at her turning good by her many moments of hesitation and looks of disagreement over violence, but she may have to go bad for a while before she finally goes good. Everybody is going to want her to be exactly like the Laurel on this Earth and I imagine that will get annoying to her very fast. It may be frustrating enough to tempt her to act the very opposite.

Another thing that is frustrating is that Ricardo Diaz isn’t dead yet. I expected him to be dead by the end of the last episode of the sixth season because it seems like Oliver being in prison is a large enough problem but alas he was not granted any kindnesses. If Diaz isn’t dead by 5th episode of season 7, we should all riot. He deserves to have been taken down by now. All the team members risked so much to stop him, and all they got was his list of people on the payroll in city hall and the police department. One question I’ve been asking myself is who is going to be the new mayor? It might not be an important point in the coming season but the mayor can have a lot of influence on what the police department targets if he/she so chooses to take an interest. They’re going to have to hold another election because both the mayor and deputy mayor-turned-mayor are gone. Hopefully no one bad will be put in the mayor’s office.

That brings up the mention of the Longbow Hunters. Ricardo Diaz says he requested their assistance. These people will surely be the main villains besides Diaz for those outside prison, but Oliver will have to deal with people he helped put in prison while living there. The season 7 comic con trailer showed Oliver having to face Ben Turner (Bronze Tiger), Derek Sampson (the man who can’t feel pain), and Danny “Brick” Brickwell. When one looks up who the Longbow Hunters are, it turns out they were originally from a miniseries in the 80s, so don’t beat yourself up about not knowing who they are. The Longbow Hunters are comprised of Red Dart, Kodiak, and Silencer. The names can give us a hint as to what they are like. Red Dart is supposedly merciless and exact, Kodiak is a bit of a brute, and Silencer can be quite surreptitious. There was also a thread about the Longbow Hunters in a series in 2014 which had Diaz establishing and leading the group to fight the Green Arrow. The others in that group included Count Vertigo, Clock King, Brick, Red Dart, and Killer Moth. Since the show writers like to take ideas from the comics and mix them up, I predict what they end up being will be a bit of both.

Something I’m hoping for next season is that we see more of what’s happening from William’s perspective. We haven’t seen much from him this past season other than being very quiet, upset that his dad is putting his life on line, accepting that his dad is the Green Arrow, and being very scared about what’s happening. I think William deserves more development in what his wants, needs, and feelings are rather than just being a plot device. We also haven’t had an update on what’s happening with Roy Harper and Thea since they left to deal with the map. It wasn’t even brought up in the season 7 trailer, so hopefully they won’t leave us in the dark about what transpires for too long. Oliver needs to lean on Thea for support and we don’t even know if she knows whether Quentin is dead or if Oliver is in prison yet. One thing I am glad about is that the two teams seem to be on good terms again from the last few episodes and they will likely come back together sometime in the future. It was just heartbreaking to see all these people walk away from Oliver. It is unclear whether John Diggle will put on the hood while Oliver is away in prison or continue as Spartan or keep working with Lyla at A.R.G.U.S. Lyla and John make an incredible team in the field, so I don’t really know which one would be better. Felicity has been doing an amazing job taking on her role as stepmother so quickly and I think we all want to see more of her as a mother. I certainly hope that Curtis’s newfound relationship with Nick Anastas is a long-term thing, it would be terrible if his heart was broken again so soon. The show hasn’t given that relationship much of the spotlight so far, but that might change if Nick decides to help the team.

Arrow returns this October!