The Flash and Arrow have introduced some pretty epic heroes to the small screen, ranging from iconic DC Comics characters to original characters who have become irreplaceable. We simply can't get enough of some of them, and hiatus will be a painful break from their action each week. As for other characters... well, we'd be happy to never see them on The CW again. Now that the Scarlet Speedster and the Emerald Archer have both finished their adventures for the 2016-2017 season, it's time to look back at all that has happened on The Flash and Arrow and reflect on the characters who definitely don't need to ever come back. Check out our picks!
Wild Dog
Team Arrow expanded in a big way in Season 5 with the additions of Artemis, Ragman, and Wild Dog, and Wild Dog was the last newbie standing with the good guys by the time we got to the finale. Unfortunately, Wild Dog is also a vigilante who feels fairly redundant. He favors firearms, can hold his own in hand-to-hand combat, and has no superpowers. Basically, he's a less skilled, less effective, and less experienced version of Diggle. Do we really need Wild Dog? If he keeps dropping "Hoss" half a dozen times in every conversation with Quentin, it might be time for Oliver to go back to shooting his sidekicks whenever they get annoying. We already know that Wild Dog will be back in Season 6, but we don't have to be happy about it.
Grodd
As big a Flash fan favorite as the show's villains get, both literally and figuratively, Grodd has had a solid run in live-action-ish CGI, giving Team Flash and Central City a hectic round of monkey business in all three seasons so far. And while this show's visual effects can look pretty haphazard, Grodd has looked as good as Joe West has at times. (Okay, so that's ridiculously hyperbolic.) Plus, the double-episode arc that introduced Gorilla City is the kind of thing that comic fans wouldn't have thought possible for a TV show. But that was absolutely as far as any story about sentient and telepathic B-villain gorillas should ever be taken, and Grodd should remain confined and unseen within A.R.G.U.S.' walls.
Laurel Lance
Over its first four seasons, Arrow tried pretty much everything to make Laurel Lance work as a character. She was a love interest and a lawyer, then an alcoholic with a vendetta, then a wannabe vigilante who wanted to fight crime in her sister's jacket, then a member of Team Arrow who was apparently secretly in love with Oliver the whole time. Laurel was an inconsistent character all the way up until her tragic death in Season 4. She's been brought back a few times for flashbacks and hallucinations, but the time is come for Arrow to let sleeping birds lie. Original Recipe Laurel is dead, we have a new Black Canary named Dinah, we have Katie Cassidy in another role, and we can all move on to brand new stories.
Malcolm Merlyn
The very first supervillain in The CW's grand superhero universe was Malcolm Merlyn back in Arrow Season 1, and he was a pretty great villain, not least because he was played by the fantastic John Barrowman. He managed to come back time and time again, no matter how dead he seemed or how many lines he crossed. By a certain point, however, it became ridiculous that nobody had just snapped and killed the man. Malcolm's survival despite drugging Thea, giving up Oliver's son to Damien Darhk, and joining the Legion of Doom on top of the Undertaking felt contrived by the end. He was killed in the Season 5 finale, and it would be best for everybody if he stayed dead and gone.
Savitar
When characters die in the Arrow-verse, there's a better chance of Oliver hiring a full-time hair stylist than those characters staying dead. Especially where the villains are concerned. Reverse-Flash returned multiple times and became a major villain on a different show, while Zoom ostensibly returned as Black Flash. By Flash rules, It's literally inevitable that Savitar will come back into Barry's life in the future, since our time-traveling hero is the one that eventually becomes his own worst enemy, but that doesn't mean we want to be there whenever the speed god gets into that big battle with all of Barry's remnants. There were indeed interesting stories to be told with Savitar, but since they didn't all happen already, it's too late.
Susan Williams
When news first broke that Carly Pope would be playing journalist Susan Williams in Arrow Season 5, it seemed like Arrow was going in a new direction by putting Oliver rather than the Green Arrow under investigation by a neutral party. When Season 5 kicked off, however, episodes never seemed too clear on whether she was an intrepid investigator, a respectable journalist of principles, or a political reporter who didn't care about conflicts of interest if the mayor batted his baby blues at her. At times, it was hard to tell if we were supposed to be rooting for her or against her, and Oliver seemed to lose all higher reasoning around her. The show won't be missing anything if she never comes back.
Pre-Island Ollie
The end of Arrow Season 5 marked the end of an era as Oliver completed his five-year recovery from his hellish experiences after the Queen's Gambit went down, and it means that we won't see nearly as much of Stephen Amell in flashback wigs as we have over the past five seasons. If we're lucky, the end of the flashback narrative (and the fact that Stephen Amell really can't pass for 22 anymore) will translate to never seeing Pre-Island Ollie ever again. Sure, Pre-Island Ollie wasn't exactly the most despicable character ever to debut on Arrow, but Sir Poorly Coiffed Cheats-A-Lot could be pretty difficult to watch. Present Oliver is so much more palatable, visually and emotionally.
Earth-1 Hunter Zolomon
Whenever The Flash introduced multiple Earths into the overarching narrative, it changed everything about the way fans could look at plots and mysteries, since there were now potentially endless versions of familiar characters out there somewhere. And when Season 2 intentionally introduced Earth-1's Hunter Zolomon into the mix, it seemed we were guaranteed to see him show up again. Yet we didn't, and he has continued to remain a viable option in guessing who The Flash's masked characters are, because that's the nature of this wacky universe. And even though Black Flash's death-by-freezing almost necessarily means we'd need Earth-1 Zolomon to return in order to see Teddy Sears again, we hope his life remains mysterious, as well as safe from Barry's choices.
Evelyn Sharp
There have been problems with Evelyn Sharp ever since Oliver first decided to let her join Team Arrow in the beginning of Season 5. She was 17 years old when Oliver let her hit the deadly streets of Star City, and he really only has himself to blame that she was in a position to be recruited by Prometheus. Once she was no longer especially useful to Prometheus as a way in to Team Arrow, it stopped making sense why Prometheus would keep her around all the time. She's literally a teenage girl who doesn't have the experience, training, or size to take out any of her opponents, so it's hard to take her seriously. If we never see her again after Lian Yu blew up, the Arrow-verse won't suffer in the slightest.
Vandal Savage
While Vandal Savage may be better known in the Arrow-verse as the Legends of Tomorrow big bad from Season 1, Casper Crump's immortal-esque villain first showed up on The Flash for the second big crossover episode that basically launched Legends. And we might not have split hairs there if Savage hadn't been such a dullard for the bulk of his time-jaunting stint. Considering how great Arrow and Flash's first villains were, Vandal Savage should have felt like much more than just an inexplicably survival-friendly foe of the week, but it never quite happened, and he was eclipsed by his own enviable facial hair. We're hoping that the all-around lack of Savage in each of the respective shows' most recent seasons is indicative of the character's absence forevermore.
Did we leave any characters out? Let us know in the comments! Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest in superhero news, and don't forget to check out our summer TV premiere schedule to discover all your viewing options now and in the coming weeks. Be sure to drop by our rundowns for cable/streaming and broadcast TV renewals and cancellations as well.
