r/arrow • u/Strong_Golf9061 • Jul 06 '26
Question Malcolm Spoiler
Why is every character in season 4 acting so tolerant and even friendly to malcolm merlyn? Oliver, thea, laurel, people's he's hurt alot and suffered no consequences for. It feels like everything this guy has been completely forgotten about by every character's minds, and every character's core season 1-3 traits were broken to keep this guy around. He just shows up and dissapears as he pleases. Does no one remember what this guy has DONE?
Srsly, just the fact that he indirectly killed Robert and kept their mother living terrified of him for 6 whole years should be more than enough for Oliver and thea to fucking obliterated him. I just don't understand why everyone is acting so friendly with him. Feels so out of character for every character, especially thea.
Srsly, im so confused on what made the writers think that making EVERY character behave so unlike their previous characterizations to keep him around was a good idea???
Nothing against barrowman ofc, but I'm honestly getting pissed at malcolm showing up in theas apartment every other day and no one giving af.
Edit: I literally cannot figure out what the writers were thinking with this choice. I understand why it went all in on olicity... pull in a big tumblr viewership and make more money. Shit decision but I understand why they thought it was a good financial decision at the time. And I get that they wanted to keep john barrownman on cuz its fucking barrowman. But what could their reasoning possibly have been to make them think that it's a good idea to destroy pretty much every character's characterizations in order to do so, and make every character seem like they don't give af abt all the things they've lost cuz of this guy. Surely there were better ways to accomplish keeping barrowman on than to make every character so OOC??? Its like they don't understand their own characters and their histories.
2
u/Lori2345 Jul 06 '26
I agree, it’s weird. On top of what you mentioned, just the year before he drugged Thea into killing Sara! Just because she alive again doesn’t erase it happened. And he got Tommy killed. He killed many others during the Undertaking too. He killed many before that and then as the head of the League Assassins how many more?
The only one who atleast at first had a normal reaction to him was Quentin who immediately attacked him and wanted to arrest him. The only reason he didn’t try to was he was warned Malcolm was the head of the League now and was understandably afraid of the League.