#the arrowverse continues to eat my brain

[bisexualmadney]

[mrs-bartowski]

My dudes. My guys. My pals.

I’m about 10 seconds away from going feral.

So, I’m the kind of unfortunate chump whose brain requires continuity. Meaning, when I started thirst watching Supergirl during its mid-season-2 hiatus and came across the realization that it had crossovers with all the other arrowverse shows, my brain tasked me with watching them all. I won’t put you through a recount of this arduous feat, but it does leave me with the certain advantage of having immediate and full-contextual access to any parallels between supercorp and canon CW DCEU couples.

Normally, this is a good thing, because it’s just another crumb to obsess over. But I just finished watching Legends 6x02 and...I. AM. FUMING.

I literally don’t even know where to start, but know that if you’ve made it this far you’re in for a long ride because my entire being is in Scream mode right now and I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop typing until it passes.

OKAY. So.

Meet Sara Lance (lol jk y’all thirsty gays know who she is I mean look at this flawless human)

Next, meet her ******* Ava Sharpe (who is literally the definition of white European beauty standards-based perfection because she’s a clone from the future)

And finally, meet Gary Green. He’s...well, he’s Gary.

Sara started out on Arrow and is now the captain of the Legends. Ava was the director of the Time Bureau and Gary was an agent, and now they are also members of the Legends. Sara has been there (and been the show’s effective lead) since season 1. Ava and Gary both came in at the beginning of season 3. 

Gary is (as pictured) an absolute fool, but he is also kind of regarded as the one the Legends Must Protecc. The whole team is considered a family, and, while they are not necessarily labeled as best friends, Gary has been Ava’s longest and most loyal companion, and Sara has a way of adopting him because she’s the best equipped to keep him out of trouble.

So, why is all of this relevant to why I want to go feral? Because it sounds a bit familiar, yes? Member of the team that is somewhat a black sheep, doesn’t get included fully or all the time but often comes in with save-the day type shit (even though with Gary it’s more of a distraction than a save because he’s a mess of a man). Close friend to one of our two main heroes and, subsequently, that hero’s closest companion puts them at the top of their Protecc list. Has little faith in his relationships with the team so he is constantly going out of his way to help in whatever way he can to prove his usefulness. And so on and so forth.

Well, 6x01 marks exactly 3 years since Gary’s first appearance, and what did we find out in that episode? That Gary is an alien. And not just any alien - an alien who was sent (by the woman he was traded to) to get close to Sara because she has been labeled as one of the world’s most dangerous creatures. Not to mention, his species of alien feeds on humans (not him of course, he’s reformed, but nonetheless not a friendly species). And we find out all of this because he and his master abduct her.

Sara finds out in person while Ava and the rest of the Legends solve the mystery on their own. Now, I’ve drawn a lot of comparisons between Lena and Gary to make a point about the time frame and nature of their relationships, but let’s take a look at Sara, shall we? For starters, she’s been “dead” either literally or supposedly about...what, 15 times now? If you think that’s an exaggeration, here’s the link to her fan wiki which says she’s been presumed dead 10 times and actually dead 5. The sg writers tried to sell season 5 as “the fight for Lena’s soul” but Sara LITERALLY LOST HER SOUL when she got resurrected in the Lazarus pit. 90% of Sara’s character development has been based on her certainty that she is too close to death and evil and destruction (getting possessed by a demon, perhaps, had something to do with this?). She was an actual literal assassin and she has left civilization out of anger and pain to go back to that life once before.

She has always believed that she is too dangerous to have real love or relationships or friends. And now she has found and built and led this family through time and space and she’s done so with this goofball by her side that is endearingly attached to the love of her life. So, how does she react when she finds out Gary is an alien? Well, clearly, she goes down a dark path, right? She cries and screams and talks about betrayal because she’s had such a hard time with feeling like she only ever puts the people she loves in danger and now here she is finding out there’s been a human-eating alien in her family for three years that was tasked with observing her and keeping her in check because she is exactly that dangerous?

Yeah...try again. This is how Sara reacts:

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And then there's another scene that apparently no one even bothered to put on YouTube where you can see the pain in Sara's eyes when she asks him “why me?” You can see how hurt she is that after 3 years she’s just finding out that their friendships is based on lies and that she has trouble keeping her faith in it. But in both of these instances where are the “crocodile tears?” Where are the fearful, shaky confessions from Gary about his fear of losing the only people who have ever really loved or cared about him and desperate justifications about how he just wanted to protect them and keep them in the dark so his master didn’t come after them? Where is the outrage from Sara about how everything Gary has reassured her about over the past three years when she was scared to let the damaged-soul assassin inside of her out was a lie and he doesn’t get to tell her who or what she is again? Where is the determination from Ava to make Gary pay for not only lying for three years but for ABDUCTING THE LOVE OF HER LIFE TO HAND OVER TO A FLESH-EATING ALIEN??????

Nowhere. Those things...they’re nowhere. There’s anger. There’s pain. There’s doubt and heartbreak and fury. There’s betrayal and helplessness and desperation. But there is no scene with Sara standing on a balcony and Gary looking up at her longingly because he wants to talk to her about the secret and he knows it will change everything between them. There is no scene with Sara and Ava lamenting over what this means for Gary and the team and the world because he’s no longer the person they knew. There are no romantically-scored scenes of them looking teary-eyed at the pictures they took together or reassurances that the others’ intentions are good and trustworthy now that the truth is out in the open. There is nothing to imply that the last several years of friendship are now entirely suspect (damaged, frayed, clouded, maybe, but definitely not voided) because Gary kept this secret to protect them. And Gary isn’t made to feel obscenely guilty or shameful because his intentions were good and he only did what he felt he had to. But most of all, the world doesn’t feel like it’s going to end.

And I’m not talking about we’re now scared Gary will take his master’s side or Sara will suddenly decide that she never wants an alien to fool her or hurt her again so she’s going to make sure he doesn’t have the choice. I’m just talking about the way they address each other. There are no sobbing tears or laments over the biggest mistakes of their lives - even though it’s quite possible Gary could see this as his. There are no screaming matches over betrayal and mistrust and years of doubt and confusion. There will be no episode dedicated to going back and seeing what could have happened - what kind of danger they could have avoided from the alien(s) controlling Gary - had he told them the truth sooner because that’s the only way to save him and the world. There will be no episode where he has to single-handedly save them multiple times as some example of redemption. There will be no adamant looks and declarations about how the team knows his intentions were good and they forgive him. There won’t be any of that. Because Sara is not in love with Gary. And Ava is not in love with Gary. And Gary is not in love with either Sara or Ava. They’re just close friends. Family. Loved ones who mean a lot to each other but whose betrayal and seeds of doubt don’t bring on emotions whose force and ferocity could be acceptable for finding out the apocalypse is nigh.

I have many, many more feelings about this but right now I’m going to go write things that will make me feel better and not things that make me want to gather every writer from every CW show in a line and run down the line smacking them all in the face while the Legends writers watch and cheer. But I’m fuming. THIS is what it looks like when a years-long, heavily weighted lie is revealed between close friends/family. So, in conclusion, Supercorp endgame or die.