Arrow: Three Ghosts, Fridging, and Writing Traps

No new episode of Arrow tonight, alas, so instead you get my very belated musings on last week's episode, "Three Ghosts."


If you're unfamiliar with the concept of "fridging," it's basically a word for the very frequent times in films, comic books, television and other entertainment where a woman is tortured or violently killed in order to provide the villain with Motivation and Character Development. The term, coined by Gail Simone, refers back to an issue in Green Lantern which involved an actual refrigerator, and has since become a convenient way to refer to this sort of thing, which happens a lot – especially but not just in James Bond movies.

Quick note: not all deaths of women count as fridging – one of the more infamous comic book deaths, of Phoenix aka Jean Grey of the Many Many Deaths and Resurrections – was not done to motivate anyone in particular, but was rather an editorial decision noting that no, characters could not in fact just hop over to other solar systems and wipe out an entire planet of vegetable people without facing some consequences. But it's still something that happens a lot, especially in genre entertainment.

Arrow fell right into the fridging from the very first episode, when then bit part character Sara Lance Tragically Drowned causing trauma and pain for its protagonist Oliver Queen and initial love interest Laurel Lance. As it turned out, way too much trauma and pain: one of the main reasons viewers failed to respond to the Oliver/Laurel pairing was that Oliver had been sorta responsible for the death of her sister, which is the sort of thing that couples kinda struggle to come back with.

As it turned out, Sara wasn't really dead dead, just undergoing her own profound trauma and transformation into a deadly assassin, allowing the show to back away from the fridging just a bit. Even before that, the first season, starting with the pilot, made it clear that Oliver's many issues came not so much from Sara's death, but from everything that happened after Sara's death. Also at the end of the first season, Arrow decided to play with the fridging just a bit: deciding to kill off Oliver's best friend, a guy, somewhat soothing the death by giving Tommy a great and heroic death scene.

That last was not exactly a popular decision. Many applauded the decision not to fridge the increasingly unpopular Laurel character, but just as many were, at that point, convinced that Laurel Lance was the main love interest so weren't particularly worried about her safety anyway, and several objected that Tommy had been killed instead of Laurel, and moreover, had been killed saving Laurel. In any case, the decision did nothing to increase Laurel's not really high popularity. Fan backlash on this, and other points, was probably one of the main factors behind the show's decision to bring in a new Black Canary – and bring Sara back.

So, fridging not exactly avoided, but at least regendered, somewhat.

Until the most recent episode, "Three Ghosts," which killed off Oliver's mentor/lover Shado.

Shado died a violent death at the hands of the bad guy, for no apparent reason except "hey, if I'm going to be a supervillain, I might as well do supervillainy things like force Oliver to choose which girl I should shoot, Shado or Sara," which as reasons go lack something. It was shocking, and worse, it happened to a character who, I felt, still had more story ahead of her.

Not helping: the two reoccurring characters who died in that episode were both people of color – Shado and a cop who happens to be a black guy. Meanwhile, three white guys ended the episode by becoming heroes, though, to be fair, one of those heroic moments came about because the episode was also trying to jump start another superhero show based on the Flash, so, hi Flash.

So, classic fridging.

Except for a few slight twists:

One, Shado's death isn't being used to motivate the hero at all or develop his character. In fact, arguably, Shado's death caused Oliver to regress – Shado while living was training him to be a hero, and now, well, obviously isn't, and Shado's ghost in the present time urged him to stop being a hero altogether. The show also strongly suggested that Shado's death, not lingering feelings for anyone else, is why Oliver and Felicity aren't together -- yet, and although this is more than a bit of a retcon, it could be used as another explanation beyond "bad casting" for why Oliver could never really connect with Laurel last season.

(Though I stick with "bad casting" and "bad writing" for the last one.)

Two, Shado's death is being used to motivate the villain, not the hero, with the added twist that the villain is blaming the wrong person.

Three, Slado's death is also being used to motivate the girl -- a side girl, sure, but the character who has been Green Arrow's partner in several comics: Sara, aka Black Canary.

So I was left with mixed feelings: yes, fridging, but also, excellent setup and motivation for the rest of the season and probably beyond (I am assuming that the villain in question will be around for several more seasons, or at least until the CW creates the hinted at upcoming Teen Titans show, and I am hoping that the showrunners will have the sense not to kill Sara off.) Also, way to show that the island really is a horrible, horrible place and that Dr. Ivo is even scummier than we thought.

And also, this same episode did something wonderful: it once again presented the opportunity for Sin and Thea to become romantic rivals for Roy setting up one of those infamous CW love triangles.

Instead, Sin and Thea banded together to FIGHT CRIME.

It was awesome and great and a highlight of the episode.

But this still left the show with a problem – the same problem of last season: What the hell to do with Laurel.

Kill Laurel, thus killing off two major protagonist women in one season, without (presumably) killing off any of the protagonist men. (Unless they kill off Quentin; the three other remaining male leads are all safe until the CW makes a decision about a Teen Titan spinoff.)

OR

Don't kill Laurel, and keep the show burdened with a character who no longer has a purpose in the show and keeps feeling increasingly redundant.

By redundant, I mean Laurel's character has been absent for two of the nine episodes this season. In the majority of the episodes Laurel has been in, she has either felt extremely unconnected to the main plot or given something to do that really should have been done by another character. For instance, of the lead characters, only Laurel, Thea and Moira Queen did not meet Sara, and Moira was in jail at the time. Laurel went after the vigilante just as all of the other characters, and I am including the bad guys in this, decided that the vigilante was actually a hero – and just as Oliver was starting to really become a hero. And so on. The trial scene she was in could have been done by any generic lawyer, as could the "hunt down the vigilante with a SWAT team," really. Her roles as love interest/eventual Black Canary have been given to two other characters. Worse, Laurel is also the only character in the show, including the bad guys, who hasn't been allowed to accomplish anything this season.

I mean, in this last episode, she didn't even get to finish her Christmas shopping.

(Though to be fair, she wasn't the only character to Fail At Finishing Christmas shopping. The entire episode was kinda the anti-Christmas Christmas episode and Oliver didn't even get to learn the True Meaning Of Christmas unless that meaning is "masks are better concealers than green eye makeup" which I don't recall from Bible reading.)

Long term, this is not sustainable for a popular character. It can almost work in books, which allow for a greater sprawl. But television, Game of Thrones aside, and even in some ways counting Game of Thrones rarely has time for extraneous or extra characters. It's why that one guy so often ends up reappearing in the end; why it's usually so much easier to guess the murderer on television or on film than in a book.

Which is why I'd assumed, until Shado's death, that Laurel was about to get killed off.

Post Shado's death, I think things got a bit trickier.

Perhaps a "temporary" leave of absence is the other solution.

Meanwhile, note to all writers out there: be careful when you kill off your women characters these days. It might make it a touch trickier to kill off the characters you really need to kill off later.