Originally Posted by
lemonpeace
if they reverse engineered Oliver Queen into Bruce Wayne - like out of the blue start throwing out winks and nods towards the idea, until they introduced Oliver's stepdad that raised him from a kid, so pretty much like he was his real dad, and his name was Thomas Wayne, and in the last episode in the final Mr. Wayne gets shot and Oliver's story ends on him picking up a Bat themed suit, purely based in the two characters in question both are rich white dudes - would that sit right with you? coming from the same network that took one of the coolest black male lead heroes and made him the goofy gay sidekick?
it's not a matter of Diggle being a "version of John", they did that when they revealed Diggle on the retro earth 3(?) flash's world as a power ring (implying that's actual John Stewart), it's the fact that some fans saw two black guys named John who were in the military and figured they're the same guy (largely in jest) and despite not being the name character the showrunners figured "oh well he is Black and named John, oh yeah that makes sense; be John Stewart!" and decided to contort John into someone he wasn't. it's cheap and it treats black characters like a monolith, and you can just plug and play whatever Black wherever you want because, well, a black is a black amiright?
look, I like Diggle, John Ramsey's one of the best parts about Arrow, but it's not only a disservice to his character by not letting him actually be his own fiction entity but it's a weird contrivance that's more insulting than clever. if they just had him out of the blue become a GL, none if this extra winking and nodding at John Stewart, I wouldn't have cared but the way they are going about this is some premium bull as far as I'm concerned. I stuck it out with Arrow for a grip but by the end they were getting gimmicky and soap opera esque, which is how we get to the point where the showrunners where substituting craft fan service based on fan theories from reddit become over actual story and compelling plot points. that's the other thing, it's just plain lazy aside from it's general corniness. I remember reading this exact fan theory when it first came out, so the fact that I know that these creators were just perusing the arrow reddit and haphazardly throwing whatever lowest common denominator fan concept on the show in some backwards attempt to boost viewership. it's a big reason why I fell off and have had no desire to return to that universe.
mind you, that's just my stance on the idea, I've long since stopped watching the CW shows. so I guess, ultimately, it doesn't really matter since, except maybe Stargirl , definitely Black Lightning, and unless Naomi gets her show, I'm not the guy watching their shows anyway; I just think it's some bullshit.
if a got typos, meh fuckit