Why Sara Lance's Legends of Tomorrow Return Won't Invalidate Arrow

Since the news broke that a forthcoming Atom/Firestorm-led series spinning out of the events of Arrow and The Flash would star Caity Lotz (presumably in her role as Sara Lance), a lot of questions have been floating around.

One of them, of course, was just how she might come back. We've now seen in the DC's Legends of Tomorrow trailer that it appears to be via the Lazarus Pit -- an interesting choice, since the current Ra's al Ghul was responsible for her death -- but it has left plenty of other questions hanging in the air.

One raised as a concern by fans of Arrow is that since Sara's death drove much of Arrow's third season, what would her resurrection mean for the heroes of Starling City? Her sister Laurel, in particular, has been transformed and gone on a journey toward fulfilling her destiny from the comics as a direct result of Sara's death.

"Sara's return won't affect Laurel's arc," executive producer Marc Guggenheim told a worried Arrow fan on Tumblr. And we believe him.

Why?

Well, first of all you cannot undo all that character growth. Personal development doesn't work like a bank error, where the discovery of a mistake can wipe everything out in a fell swoop. If it were to turn out that all of your personal growth was predicated on a lie, it might be worth discussing what that does to your continued commitment to changing yourself...but that's also not we're looking at.

In the case of Laurel in particular and the Arrow cast in general, there were a number of circumstances that led to their evolution. Sure, a lot of it was precipitated by Sara's murder, but there was more than just that going on, as they discovered pretty quickly.

The experiences of Season Three still happened, whether Sara is alive or not -- just like the experiences of the "missing" five years happened even though Oliver and Sara turned out not to have died on the boat. Quentin Lance's descent into and then recovery from alcoholism wasn't magically invalidated because he daughter came back at somebody who dressed up in leather and beat up losers. Thea's abandonment and addition issues didn't just magically go away because Ollie showed up with a beard.

Look, it's entirely possible that a little bit of bad writing could undo a lot of the forward momentum some of these characters have built up. But it's not likely to happen, and it certainly isn't guaranteed.

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