Updatedfollowing the Arrow Season 6 finale, so avoid if you aren’t caught up.
Let’s get a couple of things straight right off the bat when it comes to The CW’sArrow: I am a big fan ofPaul Blackthorne, I think his character Quentin Lance is a necessary everyman on the series, and I think the amount of psychological trauma dealt to the Lance Family patriarch has finally reached a point where Quentin needs to retire and go into exile, or be killed off and get some existential peace. Viewers who have been along forArrow’s wild ride since Day 1 have watched Quentin climb the ranks of the Star(ling) City Police Department to the heights of its political hierarchy, all while being, at times, an antagonist, ally, informant, friend, father figure, confidant, right-hand man and more when it comes to the Green Arrow. And yet Quentin has suffered more emotional torture for his role than perhaps any other character; it’s time to let him go or leave him be.
While Oliver Queen and the Queen Family members have all suffered their own share of slings and arrows (and puns) both literally and figuratively, many of them were by their own making. And most of those traumatic turns have either been natural events–friends and loved ones are going to die, that’s the way of the world, superhero or not–or ameliorated by the fact that they have crossed paths with doppelgangers that bring the lost back into their lives. Quentin Lance, as an everyman, is stuck on the outside of this zany, comic book lifestyle, and his very mortal psyche has absorbed alotof damage from the events ofArrow’s six seasons. I don’t think he can successfully recover from that level of PTSD without some sort of major change to the narrative.
Let’s take a moment to look back over the many heartaches of Quentin Lance:
This. Is. In. Sane.
With the exception of the title hero, every other character who has suffered even a fraction of this insanity has either been mercifully killed off or allowed to transition into a doppelganger version of their character. Quentin Lance has received no such comforts. Between alcoholism and depression, drug dependency and tenuously held sobriety, it’s amazing that Lance hasn’t completely cracked and gone crazy yet.
That’s certainly one optionArrowhas in the quiver, but it would be a disservice to the character and to Blackthorne. Another option is to let him die the hero’s death, either self-sacrificially or in service to the plot in which he’s trying to save Alt-Laurel; that’s definitely on the table. But what I’d prefer to see is some sort of reward for Lance’s dedication to (at least attempting to) keep Star City safe. Let the man retire to some tropical locale, let him investigate petty crimes and small-town mysteries … or let Blackthorne go back to Chicago as wizard-turned-private investigator Harry Dresden in a reboot. Both Quentin Lance and Paul Blackthorne deserve better than the slow, psychologically pummeling-to-death he’s currently subjected to onArrow.
Update:Farewell, Quentin Lance. May you be well-remembered.
