DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 22 of 28)

I actually see both sides of this.  The show is playing with the idea that Nash survived and erased all the other Wells from existance.  They're surviving in him (somehow) but they don't "exist"  And if Nash exists, then Harrison Wells couldn't.  However, we *know* that Harrison Wells did exist on Earth Prime - Pied Piper both recognized him and referred to him by name.

My theory - Nash is Nash's memories in the original Harrison Wells' body.  So Wells was "merged" into one person, but the Nash personality is what survived. 

Alternate theory - Since Earth Prime Harrison Wells was dead, a copy of him (Nash) is able to survive on Earth Prime?  So unlike the Beths, one was already dead so everything is fine.

Yeah, I agree.  I wonder if there's a certain pressure from the writers of the Flash to be the "headlining" series.  It's easy for the Flash to be the fun "junior" series when Arrow has dark and brooding taken care of.  These days, Legends has the fun taken care of.  Maybe the Flash feels the need to be dark and brooding like the show that just ended.

I think the writers are going about things the wrong way.  If I were them, I wouldn't have season-long villains.  Because, you're right, you sorta have to make Barry look weak or dumb whenever he can't defeat a single villain.  I don't think Bloodwork or Cicada were necessarily any stronger than Pied Pier or Weather Wizard or Captain Cold...villains that Barry was able to beat in one episode. 

I like the idea of mini-seasons, but I might even go further than that.  Maybe 2-4 episode "blocs" where villains show up, make life difficult for Barry, and after an episode or two, they defeat them.  And I would use the same "villain of the week" villains.

I also think the problem is that speed isn't fun anymore.  Barry sees the Flash as being his job - not being fun.  Speed is a means to save people, not a rush.  They had some fun when Cisco got powers, when Caitlin got powers, when Ralph got powers.  A new Wells every season isn't enough "newness" to have fun.

It's why I would've killed Barry.  Shake the show up.  It's essentially the same cast from season one with a wacky new sidekick and a wacky new Wells.  I think the show could stand to lose 2/3 of Cisco, Wells, and Caitlin.  It may be time to move on from Joe West.  Not because those character are old or stale, but they've done so much with those characters.  If they'd done TF's idea and killed Barry to replace him with Bart (also played by Gustin), then they could've played with a novice speedster on a team led by someone else (Ralph or Cisco or Frost).  Bart could have fun.  There'd be a new side for whoever the leader is.  There could be a new mentoring aspect.

The Flash needed a shakeup.  Still does.

Some news!

Word is that CW won't debut their normal lineups until 2021.  They're going to try and finish Supernatural to air in the Fall, and they've purchased some things (most notably DC Universe's Swamp Thing) to fill the holes.

Flash, Batwoman, and Superman and Lois will debut in the Winter of 2021.  Supergirl will hold until midseason (with Legends) since Melissa Benoist is pregnant.  Nothing on Green Arrow and the Canaries.

I guess with the pandemic, there's less of a chance that people like Kat McNamara will get picked off by other shows, but the longer they don't lock her and the other actors up, the less of a chance this show happens.

Yeah, I hope so too.  I also like the idea of a series that takes place in the future.  We could see how the rest of the arrowverse developed.  What's the future of Team Flash?  Could we see Bart there?  Could we see Terry McGinnis (or if they wanted, Terri McGinnis).

You know more people in that world than me.  I don't know if she'd jump at the chance for another show (or a movie) if she got the opportunity, or if she'd wait for a show she could star in.  Maybe she would...but would everyone?  That's what I always hear about when shows are cancelled - that the actors scramble to find new work.  There's no new work now, I'd imagine, but once there is, I wonder if she'd get swept up.

SPOILERS for the BATWOMAN FINALE

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Whoa, they did it.  They actually cast Bruce Wayne and had him "appear" - I wonder if they actually are able to use Batman.  This is, by far, the closest they've ever come.  They'll have "Bruce" show up next season.  I wonder...

I've been mildly impressed on how the Arrowverse has been able to work to make their final episodes into season finales.  It's clear that there was going to be more in each season, and these are all going to make for interesting "next seasons".  For example, will the Flash be dealing with the new Mirror Master as a season-long villain?  Or will they wrap her story up quickly and move on to their next story?  Same could be said of Batwoman/Alice/War with Kane and Supergirl/Leviathon/Lex.

I guess it shows that most of these shows end on cliffhangers most of the time.  So in essence, it could've worked with any episode they ended on.  But it's interesting...the Walking Dead chose to delay their season finale until it could be completed.  I wonder if that was an option for Flash or Batwoman (it wasn't an option for Supergirl unless Melissa Benoist could work while pregnant).

Um....so Ruby Rose quit Batwoman.

Now *that* is a cliffhanger.

Still something not seen often at all these days.  Very strange.

Personally, I think CW would be better off lobbying WB hard for a Batman show and just cancel Batwoman.  It’s going to be messy trying to work around Ruby’s departure (if it can even be done).

I'm fascinated to see what they do.  If it were me, I'd do what the Avengers did and not reference it.  Ashley Platz seemed to be the second choice and still seems interested in the job on Twitter.  If they go with her (or, to avoid further controversy, a Jewish lesbian actress), I just wouldn't acknowledge it.  The characters would know it's the same character and it'd be up to us as the audience to just accept it.

I think the easy way out (easy meaning a huge sell to WB) would be to just use the Bruce Wayne actor and do a Batman show, but a) it'd be killing off the lead female LGBT actress and b) replacing her with a straight white dude.  The CW is clearly aiming for representation and that isn't it.  As ireactions said, this level of representation and storytelling is important.

My other favorite idea is to, once again, shake things up.  Take a hero from some other show (Cisco, Caitlin, Sara, heck Ray and Nora, Ralph, Jimmy Olsen, Brainiac, etc) and move them onto the Bat team.  Still involves killing Batwoman, but it might be a good story to have a sidekick given the chance to run a team.  You could also bring in another female LGBT character to lead if you don't want to do that.  Or merge it with Green Arrow and the Canaries.  Have Mia come back in time to save Gotham.

I think it's easier for me and other fans to acclimate to Ruby Rose's departure because Batwoman existed even before Ruby Rose played her. And Batwoman fans will continue to like her even after someone else puts on the wig and mask. I'd love it to be Brianna Hildebrand (although she's too young). I was also deeply heartened by Camrus Johnson (Luke Fox) tweeting that he was sorry everyone was so shaken and hurt by Rose's departure, but that BATWOMAN had been renewed for a Season 2 and that all cast and crew would be devoted to making a show that would be a an action-packed superhero showcase for an LGBTQA audience.

An entertainment reporter in my city with a lot of Vancouver crew member friends reported that Ruby Rose was despised by her castmates and the crew as a "sociopathic narcissist" and there are reports that she was late to set for filming or often a no-show leading to stunt and body doubles picking up the slack and a production that was exasperated. Looking at Rose's social media, she seemed to be in bleak spirits after her back surgery, noting that her insurance didn't cover it, that she was in pain afterwards.

But... it doesn't really matter why she left. She's left. I hope she's okay, but unlike the confused dismay and grief and hurt I felt when John and Sabrina and then Jerry left SLIDERS -- I've accepted that while it doesn't help BATWOMAN to lose its Batwoman, it happened, Ruby Rose resigned, but the show was renewed for Season 2 and the show must go on.

Batwoman was Ruby Rose. Batwoman will always be Ruby Rose. But as Johnson subtly implied and as I will say outright: Batwoman is also every young lesbian girl who needs a hero. She is every woman who needs to believe that she can be her own hero. Every non-traditionally feminine woman who needs to see herself reflected in heroes and leaders onscreen.

And while only Ruby Rose could ever be Ruby Rose, there are many women out there who could be militaristic, aloof, passionate, troubled, ferocious, amused, lithe and with the willingness to shear their hair short, walk like a boxer, wear makeup-based tattoos and fight crime in a red wig. And I am looking forward to meeting whoever that woman will be.

I don't know if it will work out this way, but I choose to have faith because despite my issues with the production and scripts and blocking and direction and realization and visuals of the show, I believe in what it has to say to women and girls. I believe in Batwoman.

The original Batwoman was Kathy Kane, introduced in 1956 as a circus performer and a love interest for Bruce Wayne. Her niece, Bette Kane, became Bat-Girl a love interest for Dick Grayson. But in 1967, DETECTIVE COMICS #359 introduced Barbara Gordon as Batgirl with no reference to Kathy or Bette who were not referred to again until 1977 when Kathy Kane briefly came out of "retirement" in BATMAN FAMILY #10 to help Barbara and was then killed off two years later in DETECTIVE COMICS #485. Barbara Gordon had proven popular. Then CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS wiped Batwoman out of existence (but Kathy and Bette Kane remained alive and well and Bette would later take on the identity of Flamebird).

2006's 52 series introduced Kate Kane as a separate character from Kathy Kane and unlike Kathy, Kate is a blood relative of Bruce Wayne on his mother's side (Martha Wayne was born Martha Kane).

In 2011, BATMAN writer Grant Morrison declared that the 2005 reality-warping events of the INFINITE CRISIS crossover had restored every aspect of Batman's continuity since 1939. BATMAN INC. featured flashbacks to all of Batman's adventures with Kathy Kane as Batwoman but from a modern perspective where Batman and Batwoman form a crimefighting family with Bat-Girl, Ace the Bat Hound and Robin -- only for Batwoman to suddenly dump Batman and tell him she doesn't want to become anyone's wife or mother. She is later killed. However, it's later revealed that Kathy was planted by the spy organization Spyral to infiltrate Batman's life; she fell in love with him but the agency threatened to expose Batman's true identity unless she broke up with him and she later faked her own death so he could move on. Kathy returns in the final issue of BATMAN INC. to save Bruce's life and the character now runs Spyral and assists the Batfamily from afar.

It's also revealed that "Kathy Kane" is an alias, chosen to catch Bruce Wayne's attention by being his mother's name.

I don't think this heterosexual version of Batwoman is suited to taking over from the Ruby Rose incarnation and even if she were, it wouldn't work. I suppose you could have Julia Pennyworth become Batwoman, but that wouldn't work either. The generational approach to superheroes has never worked once a bearer of the mantle has become entrenched in popular culture. Barry Allen was not the first Flash, but he solidfied the mythology of the Flash as a science hero and all efforts to replace him with Wally West and Bart Allen and John Fox were ultimately temporary whether intended so or not. Hal Jordan was not the first Green Lantern, but he solidified the mythos as a space police force and all efforts to replace him with John Stewart (Diggle), Guy Gardener and Kyle Rayner failed as well.

Specifically with BATWOMAN -- it can't be done because Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger where Tommy Elliot will impersonate Bruce Wayne to use his relationship with Kate Kane to steal the Kryptonite from Wayne Tower. Kate Kane has an adversarial relationship with Jacob Kane who has declared war on Batwoman. Kate Kane has a troubled mistrust of ex-lover Julia Pennyworth and a guarded secret from ex-lover Sophie and a burgeoning mentorship with Parker Torres and a working partnership with Luke Fox and another one with Mary, all of which are in a state of flux, none of which could possibly be addressed with killing off Kate Kane because Ruby Rose will not return to perform a death scene and using a distantly filmed body double could not address these arcs satisfyingly.

The only route to address all these plots and relationships, and the route that BATWOMAN has chosen, is to find a new actress to play Kate Kane. I imagine they'll need to take some time to re-establish the foundations and fundamentals of the interactions: Kate's mildly adversarial partnership with Luke, Kate's grudgingly tolerant partnership with Mary, Kate's resignation to Parker's presence, Kate's frustration with her father in and out of costume, Kate's longing for Sophie, Kate's discomfort with Julia, Kate's reverence for Bruce -- and they'll want to do that with the new woman in Kate's costume so as to keep the Kate Kane character moving forward. These relationships are too critical to Batwoman's plots to be disposed of by killing Ruby Rose off camera and bringing in Kathy or replacing Kate with Julia.

I think, to let fans and the new actress get to grips with a new face for Batwoman and to pick up on how Tommy Elliot intends to exploit Kate Kane's love for her cousin Bruce, it might help to have BATWOMAN's Season 2 feature (a) flashbacks to a Kate's childhood with Bruce using the child actress who plays the young Kate and (b) have these flashbacks age into the new performer playing Kate Kane. Or to see Batwoman in costume first and unmasked as the new actress second.

Day would be a pretty good fit.  And Krypton was a pretty good show; it wasn’t perfect, but it’s likely as close as we’ll ever get to a well executed, full-on alien side of live action DC (though I did read that Legends is focusing on aliens next season).

I liked Ashley Platz's audition, but I can see why BATWOMAN went with someone else. Platz's performance indicated that her Kate was fundamentally at ease with being an ostracized outsider whereas Rose's performance of the same dialogue conveyed bitterness, frustration, seething outrage and fury. Platz's Kate was completely confident whereas Rose's Kate is perpetually on edge. That said, Platz could certainly change her interpretation.

I don't know anything about Wallis Day's acting ability having seen her in nothing, but if Temporal Flux approves of her and if the BATWOMAN/KRYPTON fandom think she's good, and if she's worked on WB television productions and if she has an existing relationship with the creators and if she's proven she can handle fight scenes and shooting schedules -- well, the fact that she looks a LOT like Ruby Rose shouldn't be the deciding factor. But it would definitely help visually if Kate in Season 2 looks enough like Kate in Season 1 that the viewer will instantly accept slightly different body language and expressions and a different voice if the face smooths over any discrepancies.

My personal choice is Brianna Hildebrand but she's really young. I have, however, seen her act and I can confirm that she would be good in the role and physically similar to Rose and her performance would be adjacent without being all that different. Hildebrand tends to play confidence as dismissive arrogance (like in DEADPOOL as Negasonic Teenage Warhead) whereas Rose played her confidence as shaky bravado. Hildebrand has also played shy, near-mute and geekily awkward in TRINKETS and she has a lot of range.

And if they go the Ashley Platz route of someone who looks nothing like Rose but will provide a strong Kate Kane performance that won't be anything like Rose's interpretation but hit the same points of character, that's good too -- but TV is a visual medium and while I wouldn't choose a bad performer who looks like a Rose-clone, I wouldn't dismiss it either if the lookalike comes with a superb level of craft, talent and skill.

Robert Floyd talked a lot to me about how he followed Jerry O'Connell where there were specific aspects of the scripts he would single out in "The Unstuck Man," "Applied Physics" and "New Gods for Old" where he would make sure to mimic Jerry O'Connell's vocal presence and expressions and mannerisms.

However, he was careful not to merely imitate Jerry as the whole of his performance; instead, he would add Jerry's traits periodically on top of his own interpretation so that it wasn't a photocopy, but Floyd's own take on the character that was informed by Jerry but not enslaved to empty mimicry. The problem with an actor doing an impression, as I'm sure you're wary of, is that it's so focused on imitating that any part of the impression that's off becomes distracting and an impression isn't creation, just approximation.

Realistically -- if they can get an actress who can mimic some of Ruby Rose's mannerisms to lightly include throughout an episode now and then to create some continuity with the original while giving the newcomer her own space, that'd be great. Whether that's Rose's pursed lips and titled head as she cracks a joke or her vaguely Australian accent or her spaced shoulder bearing or her dancer's gait, I'd leave to the performer, but I'd suggest choosing 2 - 3 elements to maintain. And idealistically, if that person looks as much like Ruby Rose as Wallis Day, the physical resemblance would speed up the viewer's acceptance and jump that hurdle immediately rather than gradually.

Whatever route they choose, I'm sure it'll be great. I believe in Batwoman.

Oh. Oh, right. I totally forgot about that. That feels like it happened years ago. Warren Christie. Yes, I see. He has a good look. I've never seen him in anything.

They've really slipped through a loophole; BATWOMAN still does not have the license to use Bruce Wayne on the show. They can use Hush because nobody else wants to use such a no-hope D-list abortion of a character no matter how well Gabriel Mann plays the role and Caroline Dries scripts it. They can only feature Hush impersonating Bruce Wayne. They received a special dispensation for CRISIS to have Kevin Conroy as an older Wayne, but that has expired. That's why, when Kate asked Luke if Bruce would ever return to Gotham, Luke flat out said that Bruce wouldn't be back.

I wrote two and a half pages of script for how BATWOMAN could introduce a new woman as Kate Kane in Season 2, follow up on the Season 1 cliffhanger and jokingly acknowledge that Kate has the face of a stranger.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1say … OIeFs/edit

Someone said something to me about Ashley Platz’s audition — that she acts like homophobia is amusingly beneath Kate and that she’s laughing at the restaurant manager trying to kick her out — and it gives the impression that Platz has never encountered homophobia and only knows it in the abstract. In contrast, Rose conveys all the grief, disgust and fury of someone who has spent her life belittled, abused and punished for her sexuality and is enraged by the invasive bullying.

Part of this may be due to Ashley Platz being bisexual and able to pass for straight, but it’s also because Platz was performing earlier script pages where Kate was more of an upper class socialite than the punk rocker Rose made her.

Every superhero TV news outlet is reporting that a new character will become Batwoman, basing this on a leaked casting notice for a "Ryan Wilder" who will take over from Kate Kane who will not be recast.

https://www.cbr.com/batwoman-new-charac … ruby-rose/

I'm astonished. And I'm also confused as to the sourcing because the source for this is a Reddit posting (now deleted) with this casting notice -- and casting notices are notoriously deceptive, always altering the details to avoid leakage. However, this casting notice is being taken as correct and accurate in declaring that this Ryan Wilder character will replace Ruby Rose's Kate Kane as Batwoman. There is no other source for this information other than the deleted Reddit post. There is no statement from the studio or creative team. There is only the Reddit posting of a casting notice for a new character who will be the new Batwoman.

Yet, The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Weekly seem to think this is accurate, so maybe they know something I don't?

If this is true -- and I don't know if it is because leaked casting sheets are generally unreliable and meant to obscure actual details -- this doesn't make sense. I know you weren't watching BATWOMAN, but the show is very carefully structured around Kate Kane and her relationships while living in the shadow of Bruce Wayne, her childhood confidante and friend. With the end of the truncated first season, all of Kate's arcs were up in the air: she reveres Bruce Wayne and is trying to live up to him and is about to be exploited by a villain who is impersonating Bruce and plans to exploit Kate's relationship with the real Bruce Wayne. She is engaged in a battle of wills with her twin sister, Alice. She is, in her Batwoman identity, at war with her father, Jacob Kane, the leader of Gotham City's primary law enforcement agency, the Crows, who have declared Batwoman an enemy of Gotham. She is dismayed to learn that her ex-girlfriend, Sophie, has started dating Kate's other ex-girlfriend, Julia. She is struggling to reconcile a schism with Luke Fox, her tech support worker and her main connection to the legacy of an absent Batman. She has welcomed a troubled teenaged girl into the Batcave. She is contending with a mass escape from Arkham Asylum.

If BATWOMAN opens with a new person as Batwoman and Kate Kane just gone, all these arcs are effectively jettisoned. There is no reason to maintain the existing cast as they were on the show due to their relationship with Kate Kane. It makes no sense not to simply recast Kate; by throwing away the character, the show is dismissing the fans they already have and the arcs they spent a whole season building, arcs they could sustain and continue and resolve if they just found themselves another Kate. Ruby Rose is a unique performer, but she is only a performer.

Also, the generational replacement tactic has never worked and wouldn't work here when the show is so defined by Kate's relationships and arcs, all of which ended in a state of flux. There would be no exit story for Kate; she'd have vanished without closure. The villain of Alice, defined by her sisterly bond and enmity with Kate, would have no reason to exist. Sophie and Julia, Kate's exes and allies, would have no reason to be around. The Kate Kane character captured the imagination of the public long before Ruby Rose played her; it is crazy to think that the TV show can just throw some new name and character into the suit and expect that to have the same stature and meaning; it'd be like expecting the Inhumans to replace the X-Men.

I think that this is a huge mistake if it's even true, and I don't know if it's true because it makes no sense to me that the CW would allow this news to be leaked in a casting sheet to be posted on Reddit where the story was first reported. If the story is true, I think it at least has to be incomplete because this is a route where BATWOMAN would effectively alienate its existing audience and seriously overcomplicate its own narrative for no upside whatsoever. Losing Ruby Rose put BATWOMAN in a hole. Refusing to recast her is just digging in deeper.

It's crazy. And because the CW and Greg Berlanti and Caroline Dries and the Arrowverse gang aren't prone to self-sabotaging their own properties, I assume this isn't the whole story.

Well, replacements have been attempted and there are decades worth of lessons from DC smacking us in the face of how it just never works to act like the costume and the codename are all that matter with a superhero. Barry Allen was replaced by Wally West, Oliver Queen by Connor Hawke, Hal Jordan by John Stewart/Guy Gardner/Kyle Rayner, Peter Parker by Ben Reilly -- but over time, it became clear that the identity behind the costume and codename were just as essential because that was where the central elements of the character's mythology took hold.

While Jay Garrick was the first Flash and Alan Scott was the first Green Lantern, it was with their successors that the Flash's mythos of superspeed and Green Lantern's mythos of the Green Lantern Corps fully solidifed and made them cultural icons. Kate Kane is the same; she isn't the first Batwoman, but she was the first to become enduring and immortal due to her military background, sexual orientation and caustic but sensitive characterization. And the replacements/predecessors are still around these days -- but they're the supporting cast. They're the incumbents' predecessors or trainees.

Marvel has had some fun with temporarily replacing Steve Rogers with Bucky and Peter Parker with Miles Morales -- but those were deliberately made temporary, giving the replacements a spotlight before shifting them into new roles and restoring the original. And that isn't an option of BATWOMAN goes the route of having Kate Kane go missing and having the characters search for her; like Wade in Season 4 and Quinn in Season 5, that's a road to nowhere. We all knew Sabrina and Jerry wouldn't be back and we all know Ruby Rose, having walked out on a 5 - 6 year contract, is unlikely to ever return to that set for as long as she lives.

I can see why someone might feel that Ruby Rose is too unique and unusual to be replaced, that finding someone like her or with their own interpretation that can match up is impossible -- but I think it'd be better to try and fail and only then attempt the generational approach than to do it in Season 2 when Season 1 wasn't even properly completed.

I don't know what the CW and WB are trying to pull off with this feint, but if this is all there is too it -- replacing Kate Kane with 'Ryan Wilder' -- well, history indicates that it didn't work for Green Lantern and the Flash and Spider-Man and it especially won't work on TV when we've only had one incomplete season with Kate Kane. I don't know what Dries and Berlanti and the rest are playing at, but I've never seen a fanbase so uniformly aligned in declaring that they would prefer a recast.

The entire creative team are not responding due to only posting #BlackLivesMatter material, so I wonder what tomorrow will bring. Hopefully an announcement about Wallis Day.

Eeeeeeek. Anyway. All this makes me grateful that the casts of THE FLASH and SUPERGIRL and ARROW and LEGENDS ultimately liked each other, enjoyed their work and were willing (if not always ecstastic) to stay on their shows and mostly stick together.

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Here's another question: why would a casting sheet post the information about replacing Kate Kane so plainly without obscuring the details in case someone took a screenshot and shared it on Reddit? Why would the production make this information so readily available and easy to redistribute in advance of an official announcement?

This is why I'm so suspicious of this story and think it, if not inaccurate, then incomplete and a fragment of the full story.

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/bat … runner-cw/

Well, we have an official statement now. Kate Kane won't be in Season 2 with a new performer. It's going to be a new character as BATWOMAN.

*sigh* I hate to dismiss any show without giving it a chance, but after SLIDERS, I'm simply not receptive to shows aborting their unfinished arcs in this fashion and I'm not in favour of a Batwoman who isn't Kate Kane. I don't know if I'll feel this way when BATWOMAN is back on the air, but right now, I'm not inclined to watch the second season.

The impression I got is that if Ruby Rose shows up on the BATWOMAN set again, it's with a flamethrower and a tank of gas. It was an acrimonious departure.

My feeling is that the creators have panicked and overreacted to losing their lead actress. In trying to fill the hole left in their series, they are now burying the park entirely and they have severely misread their audience, thinking that people would consider any new performer as Kate a Ruby Rose impersonator. But in this case, it looks like the fans would accept a Kate Kane who isn't Ruby Rose, but they won't accept a Batwoman who isn't Kate Kane -- much in the same way fans would likely reject a Superman who wasn't Clark Kent or a Batman who wasn't Bruce Wayne after a mere 20 episodes of leading their own show. Fans will accept a new person as (Green) Arrow after eight years of Oliver Queen, but not before that. There has been decades of R&D in comic books to

I don't consider the creators malicious; few modern day showrunners have a David Peckinpah level of contempt for their own properties, but I think they've made a mistake.

They could change their minds; they are months and months and months from starting production on Season 2. Sonic the Hedgehog was redesigned (or un-redesigned) due to fan outcry; the Snyder Cut is being released and like BATWOMAN, these projects depend on a certain level of goodwill from a devoted audience to function. BATWOMAN is currently being flattened under a ceiling of negativity from its devotees that that any show would struggle to overcome; I can't imagine a general audience being keen on BATWOMAN when even the diehards are so adamantly and uniformly against its new direction.

I think the fact that a new character would have no connection with Alice, Jacob, Mary, Sophie, Julia and Luke is precisely why it makes absolutely no sense to remove Kate Kane from the series. It can't work.

The other problem is that the Season 1 cliffhanger left us with Jacob hunting Batwoman, 'Bruce' about to approach Kate, Sophie and Julia pairing up, Parker in the cave and looking to Kate for leadership, Luke at a degree of odds with Kate -- and if next season, Kate is just gone, there is no way the show can possibly pay off any of these arcs. Season 1 will be a pointless build to nothing. Not only are the fans of Season 1 unenthused about Season 2, they won't even want to rewatch Season 1.

I think this is a mistake and I don't doubt that Ruby Rose's sudden departure was a shock given that she was in the original Season 2 press release announcing the storylines for next year, but this is an extreme and destructive solution that will alienate existing viewers and likely repel new ones. It is a convoluted, fragmented path that will damage both the past and future of the show.

It really speaks to how what happened to SLIDERS with the cast attrition is possible with any series. Shows like ARROW, FLASH, SUPERGIRL, BROOKLYN NINE NINE, PARKS AND RECREATION and others are very fortunate to have been able to keep most of their cast together for so many years. The vetting process on those shows to choose performers who would stay seems largely successful.

Stephen Amell, Grant Gustin, Melissa Benoist, Caity Lotz, Andy Samberg and Amy Poehler were/are in it for the long haul. But that system seems to have failed with Ruby Rose and now the show and its creators are badly rattled.

Hartley Sawyer (Ralph Dibney on FLASH) has been fired from THE FLASH due to racist and misogynistic social media posts.
https://tvline.com/2020/06/08/the-flash … ic-tweets/

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Regarding your BATWOMAN pitch: It's not that I dislike your writing or your ideas. I am simply disengaged from any season of BATWOMAN that doesn't feature Kate Kane as Batwoman and I have no enthusiasm for a follow-up on Season 1 that doesn't have Kate Kane confronting Alice, confronting her father and confronting Hush. It's just depressing for me. I just don't need this kind of grief from a TV show. I don't want to engage with a story that can ultimately only be resolved if Sabrina Lloyd / Jerry O'Connell / Ruby Rose returns to the series.

They've decided not to recast Kate Kane and move on from the character, so I'm going to move on from BATWOMAN and find another TV show to love and obsess over. I've made some contributions to the #KateKaneIsBatwoman effort on Twitter to offer a template for how fans could politely make their case to the creators without namecalling and attacks. And now, I need to just step back now lest this become another SLIDERS-level fixation for me. Unless you want to know what I think of something BATWOMAN related (yes, you, only you), I'm not going to even allow myself to think about BATWOMAN anymore unless they issue a press release in the next few months saying that, after some consideration, they feel Kate Kane is too central to the fans and show to remove and they've elected to recast Ashley Platz / Wallis Day / Brianna Hildebrand / whoever. I am just going to block it and forget about it.

I never want any show to fail and I hope it does great because if BATWOMAN succeeds, then SUPERGIRL and SUPERMAN AND LOIS and THE FLASH and LEGENDS and GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES (pending existence) also succeed along with every other superhero production out there. I love superheroes. But I'm not going to make myself watch anything that upsets me to this degree outside of 13 REASONS WHY and that's finally over.

I think Sawyer deleted his account before he was up for his now former job or he was hired during the period when noted sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg was still running the show and noted sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg was fine with ignoring Sawyer's remarks. After the massive scandal surrounding noted sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg, the Arrowverse productions are probably in no position to have any kind of tolerance for this and have no desire to deal with this sort of public relations struggle. They don't want the optics, they don't want the trouble, they don't want to go through another round of Kreisberg antics -- they just don't want to be associated with this sort of behaviour whether years ago or days ago. They wouldn't survive it.

I don't really *know* anything about Hartley Sawyer. Why would someone think it's alright to make homophobic slurs? I can't imagine myself doing that. But as a former sexual harasser of women in college who stalked three classmates and pestered one barmaid, all when I was in university, I have to believe Sawyer's apology is genuine because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to believe in my own capacity for change.

At the same time, it's foolish and always has been to think that social media is not a platform where everything we say will not come back to haunt us, so we should never say things we wouldn't be proud to say an hour later or a year later. We should ask ourselves how it would impact us. Or how a woman or a person of colour or a member of the LGBTQ community or a prospective employer would feel if they found our words. Or if they were reproduced all over Twitter.

I don't anticipate ever being a celebrity, but if I ever became one and you investigated me, you would find creepy messages from me to women that I wrote back when I was in university. You would also find messages to them from a few years ago where I tell them that I am very sorry for stalking and harassing them and that I've befriended a lot of women and been in a lot of psychotherapy and realized how threatening and intrusive and hurtful my behaviour must have been and that I'm very sorry and ashamed. Anyone in the public eye, for their own job security, should look at everything they've put in public and if it is reprehensible, they should out themselves before someone else does it and apologize for it.

In 2013, comic book writer and artist MariNaomi blogged about how she was on a panel at a convention and a writer next to her started flirting with her inappropriately in front of an audience, making oral sex jokes about her microphone, asking her if she orgasmed when eating a mango, etc.. She didn't name him. Not even 24 hours later, prolific comic book writer Scott Lobdell made a statement to the comics press and identified himself as the harasser and apologized. It wasn't a great apology; he apologized for his humour not being understood and directed far too much of his apology to MariNaomi's husband. But he stood for his misdeed and his career survived it because he came forward himself.

Hartley Sawyer probably does not hate women or black people or gay people -- he likely just saw those areas as a place to say shocking, ridiculous things in a similar spirit that a SLIDERS fanfic writer might declare that Maggie Beckett is a wonderfully versatile character or declare that his next SLIDERS story will feature the rock star vampires, the animal human hybrids, the fat craving zombies, the underground predators, the dinosaurs, the dragon, the killer robots and the remote controlled cars that shoot lasers -- a form of humour that is based in absurd overstatement so exaggerated that it is meant to amuse.

The problem is that the subject matter Sawyer chose is treating certain segments of our society as less than human, a real world mentality that harms and even kills people every day. His jokes, however insincerely intended, were threatening and hurtful to the women, people of colour and homosexuals who might watch THE FLASH and THE FLASH desperately does not want any more accusations that could alienate their audience.

What could Sawyer do at this point? Well, his job is definitely gone. He could focus on... he seems to have a love for animal shelters, maybe he could get into that field. But his career might be over. As an actor, you have to be a chameleon; your public persona needs to be positive but also not interfere with disappearing into whatever roles you'd want to perform. Sawyer could teach acting classes. Sawyer could be an acting coach. Sawyer could do PR behind the scenes for actors and let them learn from his social media mistakes and guide them in the opposite direction.

I wish they could have kept Sawyer on the show. Had him come out and apologize, say that he'd changed, that he would atone, that his work on THE FLASH had made him realize the person who'd made those tweets wouldn't be allowed to exist on THE FLASH. I don't wish Sawyer any ill -- but I completely respect THE FLASH's showrunner, Eric Wallace, not wanting to associate himself or his show with Sawyer any further. Wallace had his show to think of and it had already weathered one scandal. It would be foolish to think it could survive another.

Sawyer could have scrubbed his tweets; he had years to do it. He left them there.

If my shameful homophobia in the SMALLVILLE fandom where I raged against Clark/Lex shippers were still online, I'd destroy it. Why leave that there to continue to harm others?

In terms of James Gunn: his jokes were not making light of other people's suffering (although that's how they came off). Gunn was trying to present a joking version of his grief over how his teacher raped him when he was a boy. All of his rape 'jokes' were about how he was assaulted; when he dressed up as a pedophile priest, he was dressing like the man who molested him to try to control the imagery of his nightmares.

With Sawyer -- what sympathetic reasoning can there be for 'joking' about cutting off women's breasts or saying they shouldn't vote? Why good reason could there be for putting that out into the world? Nobody forced Sawyer to communicate those sentiments; I'm not sure anyone is obligated to insulate him from the blowback and consequences of saying what he said -- although I wish they could have found a way to let him pay a price but still keep his job.

If someone could operate on my brain and take away my social awkwardness and the handicaps that prevent me from writing Torme and Weiss/Temporal Flux style SLIDERS stories and the inherent misogyny that I only cast off at age 24 and my racism (I keep dating androgynous looking white women, it's a serious problem), I'd take it.

That's just me, of course.

My initial judgment would be that he hated or hates women. The question is why?  Something led him there unless he is just a charming Ted Bundy style psychopath.  I will admit there is that possibility.

But then you wouldn’t be you.  People are messy; we are the sum of our experiences just as much as we are the vessel of our genetics.   Certainly some need to be removed from society because they act on an impulse to hurt or kill others; but for most, our quirks and backgrounds lead to humanity's evolution as a whole.  Someone saying hurtful things may not be redeemable; but them saying it likely led someone else to think about something differently and change who they were.  It started the conversation.

Anyway, I can’t claim to know you well, and I don’t always agree with you; but I like you for who you are.  If I knew someone was about to cut open your brain and artificially change that forever, I would fight it.  It is like John Donne’s work “No Man is an Island “ - “Any man’s death diminishes me...”.  Such a brain surgery would be the death of you as a personality, and we would all be cheated out of what you may have discovered and shared on your natural journey through life.

I don't know a ton about Hartley Sawyer.  In 2014, he was already a cast member on Young and the Restless so it isn't like he was a guy on twitter who knew all of his followers personally.  I do think, especially before cancel culture really kicked in, people posted things on social media that might've been inside jokes or references that only his friends care about.  I don't know about some of his more angry-sounding tweets, but the "women shouldn't vote" tweet could've just as easily been about a female friend of his who was the deciding vote to get Mexican food when he wanted pizza.  A story he might not even be able to remember now.  I know that happens to me with my facebook "on this date" stuff....I have no idea what I meant sometimes.

I would think that we should judge Sawyer on his current life now.  But unfortunately, he works on the wrong show at the wrong time for that to matter right now.  If he's truly changed, I hope his castmates come to his defense...if not for his career, at least so people don't demonize him.