What characters have been the most wasted in your favorite tv show/movie

[QuinnFillory]

I was reading the article on how the MCU didn't handle Captain America's supporting characters well. While I only agree with what they had to say about Sharon, it did get me thinking about a lot of characters in fiction that have been underserved in recent years.

Ex: Laurel Lance (the first one) on Arrow. To say that she was mistreated is an understatement; for some reason the show did not like to use her at all.

[DrNewGod]

ST:TNG. Will Riker. From S2 on, his role on the show become progressively redundant, with the trend picking up speed after a brief flash of hope in the S3-4 bridging episode, Best of Both Worlds. IMO, he should have been written out of the show at that point.

[TriggerWarning]

Luke Cage. I loved his character in Jessica Jones which is my favorite comic book TV show on any network.

But in his own series he's utterly wasted with cartoonish villains, unlikeable supporting characters, and boring plots. Only good thing I can say about the Luke Cage series is that sometimes the music groups frequently featured playing in the club were great. It took me over a year to get through the first eight episodes of season 2 before I finally gave up wondering why I was torturing myself by trying to be a completionist in watching all the Netflix MCU shows.

[TriggerWarning]

Wally West on Flash. First I was annoyed they went with Nu-Wally instead of real Wally who is my favorite DC character. To my surprise though I actually ended up liking the character once they got him away from his cliched "street racer" origin and I liked Keiynan Lonsdale in the role (despite his horrific haircut one season). Then they basically wrote him out of Flash. For a bit it looked like they might use him in Legends but it ended up being no more than a guest appearance.

[XPac]

I thought Boba Fett was somewhat wasted in the original Star Wars trilogy. He was a pretty cool character that stood out in the minds of a lot of people ... but in the grand scheme of things did very very very little.

[Sandmans_Raven]

Spoilers for Penny Dreadful, but I was soooo pissed with what they did with Van Helsing. I was so excited to have David Warner play him as well. Such a waste

[jetengine]

ST:TNG. Will Riker. From S2 on, his role on the show become progressively redundant, with the trend picking up speed after a brief flash of hope in the S3-4 bridging episode, Best of Both Worlds. IMO, he should have been written out of the show at that point.

Riker was practically the main character in TNG compared to how badly Voyager bungled Chakotay.

[AnakinFlair]

Arrow:

Roy Harper- should have been a bigger part of the show, and his relationship with Thea was always one of my favorite things. But then he left during season 3 (I don't fault him for that. He left because of his mental health and he wanted to get better, and I wish him all the luck in the world with that). Unfortunately, he was willing to come back just as Willa finally had enough and left the show. And now he isn't coming back for Season 8. In all honesty, I wish they had cast a more reliable actor in the role.

Thea Queen- She should have been half of the big bad in season 3, alongside Malcolm, before going through a redemption arc. Instead she was used to fridge one character, and then basically marginalized except for a couple of standout episodes- one of which she died in. And you could tell she was sick and tired of being marginalized and misused from season 4 on, when she demanded more time off and didn't even come back to finish the first big crossover.

Laurel Lance- I never could tell if Guggenheim hated the character or the actress, and if the latter, why he didn't replace her before the show started filming. Laurel was horribly misused from season 2 onwards, and even her death was an afterthought and only carried out because they wrote themselves into a corner, and they needed to kill someone.

Flash:

Wally was also criminally underused. It was like they couldn't wait to get him in the suit, but then as soon as they did, they couldn't figure out how to write for two speedsters. Same with Jessie Quick- they wrote her out of the show as fast as they could.

Supergirl-

Literally every character that didn't make the move to Canada. Lucy Lane, Maxwell Lord, Sam Lane and the rest. They at least used Cat well for the times they could get Calista to come up to film, but even then the show lost something when she left. As for the rest- why the hell didn't they just recast?! They finally did that with Alura, but Lucy was supposed to be running the DEO along side J'onn, and they've never mentioned her.

Jimmy was also misused, but then I've never cared for this interpretation of the character. Though it was a bit shocking how quickly they 86'd the romance between him and Kara. If anything, I thought that would have been easier to do on the CW, as opposed to having the big black man in a relationship with the blonde girl on CBS. Instead, she was all 'Bye Felicia' and moved on almost immediately to Mon El.

[AnakinFlair]

Riker was practically the main character in TNG compared to how badly Voyager bungled Chakotay.

I know one episode doesn't make a difference, but 'The Pegaus' has always been a favorite episode of mine, and it was a Riker-centric episode.

[Jim Kelly]

John Wesley Shipp on DAWSON'S CREEK, ALL MY CHILDREN, NYPD BLUE and the CW FLASH--and probably other TV shows, as well. I started watching both DAWSON'S CREEK and the CW FLASH, because JWS was in the cast. And I'm still bitter how he was treated on those shows.

[Frontier]

John Wesley Shipp on DAWSON'S CREEK, ALL MY CHILDREN, NYPD BLUE and the CW FLASH--and probably other TV shows, as well. I started watching both DAWSON'S CREEK and the CW FLASH, because JWS was in the cast. And I'm still bitter how he was treated on those shows.

Yeah, I enjoyed him as both Henry Allen and Jay Garrick but the show ultimately never did much with him in either role.

Which is kind of a shame given how enthusiastic he was to work on the show.

[Sandy Hausler]

John Wesley Shipp on DAWSON'S CREEK, ALL MY CHILDREN, NYPD BLUE and the CW FLASH--and probably other TV shows, as well. I started watching both DAWSON'S CREEK and the CW FLASH, because JWS was in the cast. And I'm still bitter how he was treated on those shows.

Was John Wesley Shipp on All My Children? I know he was on Guiding Light.