#like is it a general tv thing or is the cw particularly tough?

[lands-of-fantasy]

I’m still bitter we never found out - *why* “Black Lightning” ended - apart from a rumor that Cress didn’t want to play the role full-time anymore.

I didn't know about that rumour! That would actually be a valid reason, IF true... I think it might have been ratings? I suspect they put BL in the Arrowverse during Crisis in a tentative to attract more viewers. But I'm just conjecturing, of course. Maybe they just wanted to crossover characters, Idk.

Like I said, I don't even know when exactly the writers knew season 4 was going to be the last one.

I found this article on Deadline, but it's not very clear: https://deadline.com/2021/05/black-lightning-series-finale-salim-akil-interview-spoilers-painkiller-future-1234763226/

[filthyjanuary]

I've never seen an episode of supernatural all I see is what's on your blog and each and every day I become more confused about the writing of the show and why people enjoy it :l

okay well first off i am SO sorry you have to see me like this jknbuvgyuhjn i cannot believe im spnblogging in 2020 like im 15 again but things happen i guess.

second of all, the thing to know about supernatural is.... i think, for general audiences, it is an average-to-good show. it's not Bad. It's not Beloved and/or Acclaimed. objectively, i think is also probably the most balanced view of the show and is also probably what the cw and/or people who worked on the show see it as. it lasted 15 years because it consistently pulled in reliable numbers for the cw and grabbed a lot of demographics. like i know the tumblr bubble skews perceptions but, people of all ages, genders, sexualities watched and enjoyed supernatural, yes even to the very end. most people are also not looking at supernatural with the hyperfocused lens that tumblr is and that’s like... okay. those fans aren’t any less relevant or important. if only tumblr was watching supernatural, i promise it would’ve been cancelled like at least 7 years ago.

the spn *fandom* is interesting because like one, no one is watching the same fucking show. like we all watched the same episodes but like this fandom cant even agree on like...basic facets of canon, let alone digging into complex meta. people’s views of characters actions and motivations skew wildly. things one side of the fandom considers nearly canon are like essentially viewed as ooc on other sides of the fandom. you love and hate all the characters and everyone is always about to start swinging on everyone else. you have to simultaneously juggle the ideas that the writers — and for the record this show has had four showrunners and like a billion individual writers who all see and interpret it slightly differently — are brilliant and the writers legitimately are both stupid and bad at their jobs. you have to turn your brain off in terms of continuity because they retcon their own lore every 15 seconds. this isn’t even getting into the ship wars, the boundary crossing, the weird invasiveness , etc., etc., etc. supernatural’s writing is sometimes incredible, sometimes terrible, but generally pretty average, but it had a charm (ESPECIALLY IN SEASONS 1-3) that reeled you in, even if you hated the genre.

when a show is on this long, i think the fans (rightly so) will look back and dig in and get nitpicky on things they wish were covered with more care. things that the show obviously did not decide to write with the intention of addressing/grappling with later on. case in point: dean’s drinking habits. with the exception of like... season 7 where they DO address it, dean drinks a lot as a feature of his character with little to no consequence. he doesn’t get drunk. he’s always driving. it might as well be water. the writers don’t intend for that to be more than just a facet of what makes him a rough and tough action hero even though logically, he should be drunk all the time. even w/ interviews w/ the cast/crew, it’s clear the writers don’t think the fans will care and/or notice a lot of things. they do, because well, they’re invested. the fandom extrapolates because that’s what fandom does, but i really don’t think the writers connect those dots because dean’s drinking /isn’t/ a problem until they need it to be. because spn has gone on so long, it has more instances of things like this than other shows, and our cultural contexts have also evolved a lot along the way from 2005 to 2020. so again, there’s a lot to work with. i don’t really think that’s so much a reflection of the quality of the show than it is a reflection of how long it’s been on and the way society has changed since then. dean not knowing what myspace is is funny for two completely different reasons in 2005 and in 2020, for example.

my own personal opinion is, there’s a lot to enjoy about supernatural. seasons 1-5 are legitimately good tv. for all their flaws, they have a very clear aesthetic and tell a story that is well-structured and relatively coherent in terms of themes and continuity. they set up complex characters and relationships and everyone’s motivations make sense and that arc wraps on a tragic but ultimately narratively consistent and thus fulfilling point. of course, there’s stuff i personally like and dislike but separating my emotions from it, it’s very good. i think if anything, i would recommend anyone watch those five seasons and then decide whether they want to continue or not. if you don’t, you’ll end on a note that feels complete. it’s what i’m doing w/ my friend elaine, currently, actually. if she decides she wants to continue after 5, we’ll do that, but for now we’re just vibing in season 1. after that point, i think if you decide you care enough about the characters to push through wildly inconsistent writing, there’s stuff to enjoy in seasons 6-15, but the quality and particularly the consistency dips and this is also where the retconning really starts to...intensify. it’s also where the mythos of supernatural grows bigger than the show itself, which i think was always supernatural’s downfall. the crew started caring more about the whims of the fandom and frankly the fandom became more of the story than the show, and that’s how you get people piecing together what supernatural is based on out of context gifsets that skew perceptions wildly and get Supernatural Fandom™ which... frankly, in my opinion, changed fandom culture as a whole for the worse, like yes it’s a huge, powerful and often memeable behemoth but also... the way it changed creator-fan interactions is something we’re going to be unpacking for a long time. i think had the writers tuned out fandom wars and internet yelling and strived to tell a story that made sense and was well constructed to /them/, we wouldn’t be here and seasons 6-15 could’ve found a way to be as beloved as the first third of the show. i’m personally of the opinion that being a fan of something, for better or for worse, does not entitle you to part of it’s creative process. it doesn’t become a collaboration, and the door is always there if you get to the point where you want to leave. i think supernatural getting too caught up in its own fandom and balancing all these conflicting interests is ultimately what made the last 10 seasons, and particularly the back third of the show oftentimes flounder. the finale chaos, in my opinion, happened because they tried to please everyone by keeping too many things vague so people would have room to play in their own sandboxes and round out the story the way they wanted to see it and thus ultimately, a lot of things were left in the air and so for many people, the closure they were hoping for just wasn’t there.

i dont know how this became a long and scattered collection of thoughts but tldr, people enjoy supernatural because at the end of the day, it’s an enjoyable show and i think the more you stew in a fandom bubble, there’s more to get worked up about. which is fine. i like that fandom engages in complex conversations that the show won’t grapple with, but that’s not for everyone and i don’t think the fact that we have these conversations is necessarily an indictment of the show’s overall quality.

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Supernatural 15x20, Carry On -- Review

Alright, we’re at last here. I can’t believe it. And what a waste of time that episode was! It seems “the finale” did indeed keep to task with the rest of the season, in a season of “meh” episodes, the finale continued to be a “meh” episode. Actually, I can’t even really call this a finale. Last week’s episode was the finale, this episode was the epilogue, a very subpar fanfiction-esque epilogue. And I make the fanfiction comment with a very heavy heart. I love fan fiction, I love that we can continue the stories we love through fan fiction and sometimes, a lot of fanfiction can be better than its source material. But also, sometimes, fanfiction has a tendency to be one-note. Fanfictions have a tendency to focus and hone in on one aspect of the story and tell just THAT story and the epilogues in these fanfics usually reflect that. Very one-note, only give regard to the main thing they honed in on the story. And there’s nothing really wrong with that but the weight of the story does feel less and kind of empty, the story doesn’t feel fleshed out and so in the epilogue, you don’t really feel a sense of closure and that’s what this episode felt like...and the series finale for a legacy show like this shouldn’t feel like that. 

But let’s cease with the rambling and get on with this. There will probably be spoilers, So definitely if you haven’t seen the episode yet and you don’t want to be spoiled, skip this post. Although granted, I don’t know how you’re online reading this and also have somehow managed to avoid spoilers. Teach me your ways, please!

As I’m sure most of you are aware, the finale isn’t great. It’s not even really a particularly strong episode. I felt things watching it and even cried a couple of times but that’s because my sensitive ass will cry at anything even slightly tear-jerky. I definitely understand why a lot of the fandom doesn’t like this episode. But also unfortunately, I’m not too surprised that the episode turned out like this. Disappointed but not surprised. When you think about how networks operate, it makes sense. Though our fandom is big and vocal, all that matters to the CW execs is that people come back to the CW. Now granted, some of us may be forever turned off to the CW because of this incident but those numbers aren’t going to mean anything to the CW. Because as large as we are as a fandom, the general audience is much larger and that’s who the CW execs are trying to keep. The general audience, a lot of them aren’t going to be paying attention to the finer story beats, to the subtext, to the meta, to the foreshadowing. No, the general audience just wants something that’s mildly entertaining they can turn the tv onto while they cook dinner or wash the dishes or whatever. It hurts but this finale was not meant for the fandom. It was for the general audience. And if I take my fandom goggles off, I can see how this finale might be satisfying to the general audience who don’t really have too big of an investment. 

But also looking at this episode from a critical standpoint, I can also tell this episode  is empty, its lacking in emotion. And I say this as the girl that cried mid-way through this episode. Because while I was crying and I was sad for Sam but then I was also happy for Sam, even though I was crying through these moments, I also wasn’t feelaing anything beyond the base emotion of happiness for a character or sadness for a character. When a story makes me get emotional I’m crying because of all sorts of conflicting emotions and I’ll forever go back to those tear-jerker moments whenever I feel like I need a good cry -- Tommy’s death on Arrow, Jenna’s death in TVD, Fred’s death in Angel, the Season 2 finale of The 100. All of those things not only made me cry because I felt things for the characters but also because there was a story element that reverberated inside of me, something about it made me feel alive and glad to be alive so I could experience it. So while I was crying for Sam’s loss of Dean, while I was crying tears of happiness when Sam was finally living the life he always wanted, the story felt empty to me and I couldn’t truly be happy with what I was feeling. And when it comes right down to it, while this finale meets all the basic standards it needs to in order to be a finale, that’s all it does. There isn’t anything special about it. It makes callbacks to how it began, it has just enough nostalgia to get by and it creates an ending for the characters. But that’s all it does. It meets the bare minimum to be a finale and I”m disappointed in that. I haven’t been loving this show for a few seasons, really since season 12, but I still kept on hoping the show would pull itself together long enough for at least a memorable season finale. As bad as they were, I will still always remember the finales for Game of Thrones or How I Met Your Mother. Supernatural’s finale was so uninspired, I don’t even really care to remember it. 

But let’s talk about what happened in this finale. First, some good points. I liked that we did see Sam openly mourning Cas and Jack. My Sastiel heart lived for that. And I’m also very happy Sam was able to live the life he wanted. I’m also very happy that Cas is not still stuck in the Empty, however, I do admit that if he was broken out so easily, it really kind of detracts from the initial sacrifice he made for Jack and for Dean and Sam. 

Things that I did not like, that essentially things were just kind of the same as in Season 1. You know, Sam gets his apple pie life but I kind of wish there was a little more of spark to that kind of life. Like this was something we talked about my blog a long time ago about a possible endgame for Sam but let’s say the Winchesters did kind of open like an organization for hunting monsters. Like, Sam could handle the legal aspects of something like that. He could go to law school and he could represent victims that were put in tough situations because their bodies were possessed or their on the line for a crime they didn’t commit because no one believes that a monster killed their loved one. So I just kind of wish we had gotten kind of a catch to Sam living his apple pie life. Living that life, doing what he always wanted to do, but also still helping people the way that Sam feels he needs to help people. So I wish we’d kind of gotten something more along those lines. I also don’t like that it takes Dean actually dying for Sam to feel like he has Dean’s permission to finally live that life. At first, I was going to feel sorry for Dean for dying in such a dumb way, but screw that. Dean put all of his self-hatred and baggage and dragged Sam down with him and made Sam feel like crap for even dreaming about something different. So Dean, you and that rusty nail deserve each other. I don’t even want to ship you with Crowley anymore. The ship you deserve is with Rusty Nail. 

So uh, let’s talk about Dean now and the return of Jenny the Vampire. I  completely forgot she existed. But yeah, she was a thing but she’s so loosely connected to Dean and Dean’s character arc, it’s like, there’s a lot of other monsters that would make more sense for Dean to die at the hands of. Like in Season 7 I believe, when Dean killed Sam’s friend in front of her son and he told the son that when he gets older, feel free to come after Dean. That would make more sense and have a kind of literary weight to it. Dean’s death would’ve been the result of his own actions and decisions years prior when he killed that woman on a whim. Dean and Sam could’ve come back from the vampire nest, after dropping the boys off, maybe they stopped at gas station to get some food and as Dean is walking around the corner to a bathroom, that’s when the now grown kid pops up in front of him and as Dean has a flashback to the kid and what he did to that kid, the kid stabs him in the heart like Dean did to his mother. 

Now the two brothers ending up in heaven together and presumably spending eternity together, while this may be a wincest or bibros wet dream, to me, I don’t know, it kind of feels pathetic. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love my brothers and I absolutely would go to the ends of the earth for them and I will mourn their deaths, but I also don’t want to be defined by them. I don’t want to feel like they’re so intrinsically a part of me that I need them in order to be truly happy or completed. While it might be nice to see them when I go to heaven, I would hope that I had grown to a point that there are also other things to me that are important that I would like to experience in heaver, you know? Plus, this whole ending feels like a slap in the face for what the show is most well-known for: found family and “family don’t end in blood”. The finale basically says, yes, family does end in blood, my blood is my soulmate basically. And I don’t really like that. 

Let’s talk about Cas and I don’t even have to be a Destiel shipper to be angry about how Cas was treated. I understand what they did in 15x18, and it does make a certain amount of literary sense, but considering there was no sense of closure to the act and it really kind of falls flat. And it makes you think, “so if what Cas needed in order to be truly happy was to admit that he loved his family” well, didn’t he already do that back in season 12? So it just kind of makes 15x18 feel kind of pointless. Yes, 15x18 was something that needed to happen for Cas and it made literary sense but that was only the first part of what his ending needed to be. The second part of his ending was hearing it back. Not necessarily a love confession from Dean (you all know Destiel is a thing of the past for me, I don’t ship them anymore) but what Cas needed to hear back was that his family loved him. We know they loved him but his own insecurities stopped him from truly feeling and believing it. And that’s the part the show missed and that’s what makes 15x18 fall flat and it makes Cas’s character arc feel incomplete. 

And also, it’s really sad to think that Sam never got to say goodbye to Cas. That’s something that Sam must feel very unresolved about and why he just lets the guilt eat up at him about it. My Sastiel heart needs one more final SamCas heart to heart. 

But I think that’s all I got for this episode. What grade would I give this episode. A big solid F-...I ‘m just kidding. It wasn’t that bad but nor was it anything great either. As I mentioned, the finale did what it needed to in order tom meet the bare minimum requirements for a finale, so honestly, I’d probably give this episode a D+. It meets the standards but it also doesn’t execute them very well so I don’t feel comfortable giving it a C. 

[jensenscomedyelbows]

SUPERNATUAL 21 QUESTIONS

(THE INCREDIBLE HEATHER, AKA @sammichgirl, did this and tagged me as one of her favorite blogs, so I’m giving it a go. Thanks, doll.)

1. When did you start watching Supernatural? 

On September 19, 2012. I was recovering from surgery and had binged all there was to binge on Netflix at that point, and I asked my BFF James what I should watch. He immediately said “Supernatural!” I was skeptical, and I asked him exactly what it was about. He told me brothers, Sam and Dean, who were “slayers,” probably because he knew I loved BtVS and that would interest me. I thought hmmm, maybe. That same day my other BFF, Angel, called to check on me, so I asked her if she had any recommendations—and she said the same thing! She, like James, had watched every episode live since day one. So I watched the pilot, and was immediately struck by the twin images of Mary and Jessica burning on the ceiling. I HAD TO KNOW WHY. Three weeks later, I finished season 6, just in time for Netflix to add season 7, and not long after I finished that, season 8 began airing live, with me right in front of my TV every Tuesday night, dying to see what would happen next. AND I’M STILL HERE (and have been to THREE conventions, lord have mercy!)

2. Who is your favorite in TFW?

Like Heather, I never really thought that was a thing. It was a line put in for a laugh in one episode that got blown up into a big deal, but I never felt invested in the concept. But if you’re asking me which character is my favorite among Sam, Dean, and Castiel, my favorite will always be Dean. You can’t love him without loving Sam too, however, and there are episodes in which my sympathies are more with Sam, and episodes in which I identify/sympathize more with Dean. I rarely sympathize with Castiel because he’s not human.

3. Who is your least favorite in TFW?

Castiel. I haven’t much liked his character since season 5, but I do recognize that’s entirely the writers’ fault.

4. Tag your top 5 Supernatural blogs.

The ones I turn to again and again for gifs (and which have been particularly useful in illustrating my 2019 rewatch) have been: @sensitivehandsomeactionman @secretsandgreeneyes @saucynewf @demondetoxmanual and @spn-idjits-guide-to-hunting. I also love @lipglosskaz @sammichgirl @lemondropsonice @whiskeycherrypie and @misswhizzy. I am a thousand percent sure I’m leaving out at least fifty I love and adore 🥰, and it will drive me nuts thinking about it!

5. Who is your favorite character (not including TFW)?

Bobby Singer, no contest, hands down.

6. Who is your favorite woman in Supernatural?

Ellen Harvelle. A calm, steadying presence with the knowledge and skill to back up her formidable courage. Tough when she needed to be, loving when the people she cared about were in trouble. Heroic.

7. John or Mary?

Neither or both. If you erase the Dabb era resurrection of Mary, then both. Both John and Mary had profound impacts on Sam and Dean’s personalities and views of the world—John’s by his presence and Mary’s by her absence. They made our boys who they are. But if you count Mary’s resurrection and terrible new character arc, then John of course.

8. What were your first opinions of Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack?

I thought it was commendable for Sam to want to go to law school, and tragic what happened to Jessica and his plans for the future. I loved how open he was with Dean (early days!), how much trust he had in him, and how easily victims responded to him. Also: book smarts are a turn-on of mine.

I fell in love with Dean’s beauty by Wendigo, and his everything else by Home. The brave face, the stiff upper lip hiding the vulnerability and insecurity from his little brother because he feels he has to be strong for him—all that just made me love him more. Also: a wicked sense of humor is a huge turn-on of mine.

Castiel has a great character entrance. Emotionless. He burned out Pamela’s eyes. I thought that was unnecessary. He and Uriel were alien beings whose motives were the opposite of pure, so I feared his power and questioned his interaction with Sam and Dean.

Jack: Oh, I get it—the CW needs to compete with Riverdale and its other shows featuring teenagers, so they invented Lucifer’s son to boost ratings. *shrug*

9. What’s your favorite season?

2, 4, and 5–there are just too many good ones to have just one favorite. I also love 1 and 3. LOL.

10. What’s your least favorite season?

Season 12 just about broke me. Let me count the ways: Lucifer possessing the President of the United States (oh please, I watch this show to ESCAPE real life, tyvm), Sam and Dean MURDERING him in yet another failed attempt to kill Lucifer, being sent to “Supermax” which, again, PLEASE, do you even know what would happen to the assassins responsible for killing the POTUS? Not even Sam and Dean would be able to bust out of that lockup—no effing way—yet they did. And how did they do it? By murdering a shitload of HUMAN BEINGS just doing their jobs, running around with AK-47s while yelling how they’re the guys who saved the world 🙄 I can’t see either Sam or Dean EVER bragging about that, and since then, they have, many times, and it always sets my teeth on edge. SEASON TWELVE DOESN’T EXIST TO ME.

11. What’s your opinion on Destiel?

It’s a fan ship that is popular among the younger, less experienced viewers of our show (many of whom haven’t even seen any seasons/episodes without Castiel in them), so my opinion isn’t very high. It’s like Dean and Cas are two dolls, and the Destiel fandom’s chief delight is mashing them together any way they can. And forcing the rest of us to hear them lecture us on how it’s “real,” how it’s “going to be canon,” and generally alienating everyone who doesn’t ship those two characters. I ignore anything to do with it.

12. Do you believe Supernatural queerbaits?

I’m not queer, so bearing in mind that I wouldn’t necessarily see it if it did, I’ve tried to look at it as impartially and dispassionately as possible, and I believe that Misha has been guilty of it, on occasion. (Sure, it’s all in good fun, he’s only kidding, he’s having a laugh, etc.) Ben Edlund has as well. Robbie Thompson was perhaps guilty of it a time or two. But this is all supposing that it is impossible for A TRUE PLATONIC LOVING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO MEN to be portrayed on television. I mean, Dean/Castiel is the only “baiting” I’ve ever heard people yell about, so I’m sticking to this one possible pairing as the one responsible for this question. I personally have no trouble accepting a platonic same-sex relationship...but queer fandom seems to have a lot of trouble with this concept?

13. Seasons 1-7 or 8-14?

Hahahaha, obviously 1-7. KEEP 12 AWAY FROM ME.

14. Who’s your favorite villain?

CROWLEY. He was so awful before his redemptive stuff at the end. Never forget that as of the end of season 8, he was murdering all the innocent people Sam and Dean had saved (including Sarah Blake!), then in season 9, he was the one responsible for getting Gadreel out of Sam. After that, he wasn’t really a villain anymore. But he was so irredeemably evil for four seasons!

15. Do you think they should end the Lucifer plot line?

THEY HAVE!  Now they just need to end the NICK plot line.

16. Who do you think has been through more trauma—Sam, Dean or Cas?

Sam and Dean have been through the SAME traumas, almost exactly, so I call theirs dead even. I wouldn’t want to measure or quantify “trauma” in any case. Castiel isn’t human, so I never thought of him as undergoing any trauma.

17. What’s your favorite Supernatural episode?

Mystery Spot, 3x11. It’s the one I would show someone new to the show. It’s the one I watch when I’m down. I LOVE stories with the time-loop trope ❤️ The acting is phenomenal. It’s funny, it’s tragic, it’s everything.

18. Do you like the case episodes?

All of season 1 is comprised of “case” episodes. Looking for John and Sam’s connection to “the demon” are secondary in that season, and I loved it enough to fall in love with the entire series, so YES. I’m a horror/mystery buff at heart.

19. Who do you relate most to in TFW?

It will come as no surprise to anyone reading this that my answer is Dean.

20. Why do you like Supernatural?

Honestly, it’s the only place I can see the Winchesters do their thing—make their choices, fight their battles, and live their lives. They DO lead eventful lives!

21. If you could bring back one character and kill another off, who would they be?

I’m gonna interpret “bring back” as “never killed off” and go with Bobby—the Bobby we knew and loved, the Bobby who had the boys’ backs and was always there, dispensing wisdom and advice. “Bring back” means an entirely different thing now that there’s an AU—they can (and have) brought back EVERYBODY in an effort to appease fans and boost ratings. I think it’s a failure of imagination, personally, and I’ll give that version of bringing back a hard pass.

I would definitely kill Castiel off, or send him to Heaven for good. And then I don’t want to hear another word about Heaven or Hell again, the end. He hasn’t done anything but give pep talks and occasionally perform a miraculous task when the writers need him to. His character has already been killed, and it was a slow death by a thousand cuts. Very sad.

OKAY. I’m not tagging anybody either, but here’s your chance to get your opinions out there and on the record, so do it! (if you do it, please tag me!)

[aion-rsa]

Legends of Tomorrow: Zari Tarazi’s Journey to Find Her Best Self

https://ift.tt/3uTxXpi

Legends of Tomorrow is hands down the weirdest, most bonkers show in The CW’s Arrowverse. It’s also one of the bravest, grounding its zaniest plotlines in rich character work and fearlessly trusting its audience to come along for the ride. Few superhero shows would have ever attempted the full-scale transformation that turned flannel-loving hacker Zari Tomaz into stylish social media maven Zari Tarazi, jettisoning a character that fans had known for years and replacing her with a version that was not just a stranger, but who initially seemed to be the antithesis of everything that had made the previous incarnation so appealing.

Yet, Legends ultimately pulled off the switch in style, using this second iteration to explore central truths about who Zari is through a very different lens. And according to actress Tala Ashe, the heart of Zari’s journey hasn’t actually changed that much just because this incarnation of the character loves stilettos and juice cleanses.

“I think sometimes people forget, [Zari 2.0] is the same person,” Ashe tells Den of Geek. “This is a being of the same soul. Understandably, what sometimes gets a little lost [because] they are, especially aesthetically, very different. But they come from the same place.

“And for me, as an actor, it’s been really an interesting meditation on nature versus nurture. Their nature is the same in spite of [the fact that] they have very different circumstances.”

Those different circumstances are on full display in season 6 episode 3, “The Ex-Factor,” an hour that sees Zari harness her social media influencer cred to compete against an alien warrior on a futuristic reality singing competition called Da Throne. (There are truly days where trying to describe this show feels like a fever dream.)

But, of course, the story isn’t really about Zari’s singing chops — though she does take to the stage in full glittery pop star regalia – it’s centered on the question of what kind of person she wants to become.

“Where we find Zari at the beginning of the season, in general, is in that kind of awkward, somewhat painful place of growth that I think a lot of us experience where she is not quite secure in her authentic self,” Ashe says. “This episode challenges [her] – is this, the old world of 2045, the one that I fit in and belong in? Or am I growing towards [becoming] this other person?

“I don’t think she’s particularly happy inside of [that influencer persona], but it’s the devil she knows. She knows how to play that part and be who people expect her to be.”

“The Ex-Factor” shows us just how far this incarnation of Zari has come since her early days on the Waverider by literally forcing her to confront the life she left behind. From her manipulative DJ ex to the superficial BFF/assistant that he cheated on her with, Zari’s life in 2045 is full of reminders of a person she no longer feels that she is – or wants to be.

“What we get to see in this episode is the discomfort of her stepping back into this life that she’s in some ways outgrown,” Ashe said. “She’s evolved and [is] evolving.”

A big part of that evolution is thanks to her romance with fellow Legend John Constantine, a relationship that Ashe herself laughingly admits “doesn’t really make sense on paper.”

“Yet, kind of against all logical odds, what we get to see and what I think Zari has an inkling about in this episode, and even more as the season goes on, is that actually, he’s someone that she can be herself with,” she says. “And that is everything to someone who has been playing a part so intensely for most of her life.”

Truthfully, it’s hard to imagine a better match for Zari than a man who will not only willingly humiliate himself for her in public but set her ex’s head on fire at the same time. The pair finally make their relationship CatChat official this week, after John joins her onstage on Da Throne for a rocking anthem that celebrates loving someone you always thought you shouldn’t.

“Being able to go head-to-head with each other is attractive to both of them,” Ashe says. “There’s many classic tales of these kinds of couples coming together. But it’s interesting to think about how different [this relationship] is from Zari 1.0 and Nate. [This] Zari kind of needs someone that gives her a little bit of fight. And I think John does as well.”

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The Flash: The Long Slow Decline of Harrison Wells

By Lacy Baugher

But just because these two crazy kids have admitted that they care about each other beyond a part-time fling doesn’t mean that things will be easy for them from here on out. Life on the Waverider is never simple, as evidenced by the fact that Legends’ marquee couple, Sara Lance and Ava Sharpe, are currently facing an extended separation thanks to one of them (Sara) having been kidnapped by aliens. But it sounds as though, at least for the moment, Hellstar (cutest ship name ever, btw) will face more everyday sorts of problems.

“I think neither of these people knows how to be in a relationship, really,” Ashe explains. “We’re going to get to see them move beyond [their] obvious physical attraction. They really care about each other. [But], when things get complicated on the Waverider – as they always do! – then things [between them] get complicated, especially with John’s story. [What happens] inherently pushes them to a more serious place in their relationship, with the stakes of what’s going on.

“And I think, by the end, these are two people who are, for better or for worse, in a real, complicated relationship and it gets very, very tricky.”

Yet, to hear Ashe tell it, Zari’s journey toward her true self is still in its early stages. “As with Zari 1.0, it’s a journey of trying to step into vulnerability when that’s [a] really scary [thing to do]. It’s scary to both Zaris. Fundamentally, both of them are guarded in lots of ways.”

This is particularly true for the current incarnation of Zari, who has had to carve out a life for herself in the shadow of a predecessor she never knew, but that all her colleagues – including her current boyfriend – remember.

“Zari 2.0 is very much grappling with this season where she kind of feels like the lesser Zari, the less cool, chill, tough Zari. And she knows there are people on the ship that would prefer in some ways for Zari 1.0 to be there,” Ashe says. “That kind of comes out in [her and] Behrad[‘s] relationship too – [he’s] a constant reminder is that she’s there because 1.0 sacrificed herself. I don’t know if impostor syndrome is the right word but [she’s] trying to feel like she deserves to be there.”

Even though season 6 just wrapped filming last week, Ashe is already looking forward to exploring more aspects of what makes Zari – in all her incarnations tick – as the series goes on.

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“I was emailing with our showrunner this week about what we’re cooking up for season 7 because I think we can push that even further with where Zari 2.0 goes and what the facets of Zari – of umbrella Zari – are that we haven’t seen yet. And that’s very exciting to me.”

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