Arrow Adds Vixen to the Huge Expanding Almost Never-Ending Roster

Off rip, I am here for Vixen being added to ANYTHING, fam. After CW announced they would be doing a web series on CW seed for Vixen’s debut, the (Black) nerd community was pretty excited to get one of the most popular Black Woman characters in comics into some new media. And then we all went to watch that first episode online and realized it was only 4 minutes long…

I too, illogically even, shoved it off because it wasn’t a “full-size” production, but I found my way back to it a few months later. I plowed through all five episodes in quick succession (did I mention that these episodes were 4 minutes long?) and was surprised to find how much I liked it. Even with the short run time, it told a brief, yet complete story and properly introduced Mari McCabe to fans of Arrow and The Flash that may not have known her from the comics themselves. Now it is announced that Megalyn Enchikunwoke will reprise what was originally just a voice acting role as the live-action version of Vixen when Arrow comes back in January. After watching the short series, I’m definitely excited to see Enchikunwoke don the (probably more modest) yellow jumpsuit and go safari on enemies on the small screen.

So…just how much Vixen are we likely to get? I don’t want to skirt over the fact that Arrow is actively working to combat the diversity issue it has had over the first couple of seasons, especially since its partner show in The Flash took the opposite approach. But the roster for Arrow is getting, like, huge. The plus side of Arrow making it into season 4 is that they now have a wealth of characters to do call backs on and reference for storylines. The downside is that the characters we want to care about have become a bit crowded. While villains are either defeated, choose a new moniker, or sent to supermax for long stretches of time, the heroes on Arrow stick around forever. And then are forgotten.

There was plenty of fuss being made about the debut of Mr. Terrific this season as not only adding another person of color to the roster but also adding TVs first out-homosexual hero. Currently, Mr. Michael Holt is on pace to appear in 10 of the 23 episodes this season. I’m not saying that Mr. Terrific should be stealing time away from more established characters on the show, but I’m saying that this will probably happen with future characters as well. Now that the roster looks pretty set for Legends of Tomorrow, it’s hard to tell just how much Vixen we’ll get beyond some cool Easter eggs and a fight scene or two. (And for the record, the CW shows do Easter eggs better than anybody.) Or will this be a Kitana situation where we see the alias for episode after episode and then when we finally see Kitana…it’s over.

At the end of the day, I have drifted away from Arrow, but this announcement will probably get me to check it out again, even if it’s just to see how they display her powers on TV. More sistas on TV in supported roles is never a bad thing. Comic book show, too? I’m here for it (even if it ends up being brief or sparse).

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