It's an amazing talent the teams on these shows have. The ability to have female characters go through harrowing experiences or just generally be treated poorly and still manage to engender no sympathy from the audience.It's literally insane that they won't tell Iris, yet they write her character so badly that you still dislike her.
Iris has everyone in her life constantly lying to her. Everyone now including her boyfriend, who is suddenly acting very strange and won't talk to her. Her best friend's love for her means that he frequently shows no respect for her relationship. She's generally treated like an idiot and a child by her friends, family, and co workers. Everyone hates her.
Laurel sinks into a deep depression following the death of her boyfriend (which she is somewhat responsible for) that has her becoming an alcoholic and nearly killing herself. This plotline includes a fun scene where the show's main character, the hero, basically mocks her alcoholism cause she made him angry.
Pulls herself out of that, gets to a good place, only to find her sister dead in an alleyway. Is left to mostly grieve alone because she's locked out of the investigation by Oliver and is afraid to tell her father because of his failing health. So she finds a new outlet in boxing, eventually trains to take her sister's mantle and becomes the new Black Canary. Helps save Starling City from Brick and works to help Team Arrow from both within the legal system and on the streets.
Felicity is
rejected by the man she loves because reasons, and then watches him make every stupid, selfish decision possible showing no real concern for everyone else. Such decisions include him going off to fight the head of an assassin organization to the death, being "killed," then going to get a rematch cause his ego was bruised, then considering joining said assassin organization. She finally starts to tell his stupid ass off,
Like, how do you fumble this shit this badly? How do you write these characters in such a way that your audience simply cannot see things from their perspective and notice when their reactions are justified? Obviously, I left details out and those details are the things that answer my question. lol Things like
dragging out Laurel telling Capt Lance,
Still, as many of us say in this here thread, at least they aren't Barbara from Gotham.
Edit: added spoiler tags for those of y'all who haven't seen Season 3 of Arrow.
From what we know about Iris, she's going to flip out on everyone for lying to her and treating her like a child. Which is totally justified from her perspective, but is also going to cement the fact that the fanbase will hate her forever.she's not going to magically become chill once she knows Barry is Flash.