What great characters? Ollie, Roy, Thea, Digg and Felicity are doing fine regardless of whether Sara comes back.
Who cares if they're doing fine? I don't watch TV to see everyone be okay, do you? But yes, those are the great characters (Thea still needs some work) that I'm talking about.
I don't know who Damian Dark is and is this confirmed are just your idea? The Red Hood is one of the best story arcs of the last decade so I don't see what your issue is.
Ausiello says the next guy is "Damien Dark."
Here. Those guys there decided he really meant something else and not
Damien Darhk of H.I.V.E fame because they, like you, and I before you clicked on that link, did not know who Damien Dark is either.
The Rood Hood's story quality is debatable, but more importantly, it derives power from it's context: a hated character revived as a villain to fight a Batman who doesn't have (m?)any new interesting stories to explore. A better comparison might be The Winter Soldier, which actually was one of the best stories in the past ten years, but again, not a good fit for early Cap/Batman when those deaths are recent and there's a ton of villains who haven't even been introduced, and the hero hasn't even peaked yet. A nostalgia villain doesn't mean much without a time component.
Nothing was explored beyond the melodrama, now Laurel is developing as a fighter they'd have a lot more to do and more avenues to travel together.
A fighter? Laurel is developing as a
character. Fight scenes can be good, but without
character, they're pointless and forgettable. Which is why being able to fight together doesn't actually open up any new avenues as far as character or emotions. They've worked together before. They work well together, they've been through hell together, for each other, against each other and because of each other already. What else is there to say?
And what about the future? We've seen how working with Roy challenges Laurel, makes her grow as a character, how her friendship with Felicity ennobles her, and empowers both characters (Bechdel test ftw!). What about Laurel and Diggle back to back? Does he care about her humanity like he does Oliver's? That's new and interesting and different and makes sense with Laurel's current place in the universe. We haven't even seen Laurel training with Ollie, which carries more unexplored emotions with it than a season of Walking Dead, but you want them to prioritize her working with Sara over that? I guess you just don't like Laurel.
And it's not just Laurel. The show is already rife with vigilantes. Having another one with the same skillset will not add anything to the action, much less the plotlines. Another way to say it: Sara's role on the team has been taken.
Ollie's butt kicking partner: Roy
Ollie's love interest: Felicity
Road to the Black Canary: Laurel
LoA connection: Thea & Malcolm
Secretly Alive twist/storyline: Ollie, Malcolm
Secret to keep from Quentin: Laurel
To bring Sara back would then be to take this role from someone who is already in that role, thus retconning their growth, and preventing them from continuing to push the story forward so that you can take the story backwards for a fan favorite character.
Why do you keep using plural when what you mean is Laurel, none of the other characters are benefiting from Laurel, her Nyssa and Sara in a BoP show would leave room for Team Arrow to develop Roy and Thea more and allow the core of Ollie/Felicity/Digg to get back on track.
I mean what I say. Without Sara, Roy had to take leadership in the field with Laurel, and had the best character moment all season with Thea because of Sara's death. Diggle getting sidelined, having a daughter named Sara, all that is meaningless without Sara dying. Felicity being pulled two directions doesn't even fly when Sara can fulfill her emotional, fanservice and technical roles on the team to some degree. If Sara had not been dead in Season 3, we'd still have all the foolishness that came from bringing Malcolm back and bending a story around him, all the melodrama of Olicity but with none of the actually good character moments from the season. All the characters benefited from Sara's death, just like the show runners said from the beginning. They said it, it happened. Your focus on Laurel doesn't change these realities, or my honest, direct and consistent report of them.
Even the ridiculous announcement of an Atom/half of Firestorm/Captain Cold/Sara spinoff is more interesting and provides for more aawesomeness than trying to get Sara back into her old Nyssa/Laurel storylines, which have moved on without her as both of those characters belong on Arrow with the rest of their supporting cast.
That's basically my case in point, in order for Sara to flourish after her return, we'd have to take Laurel out of the interesting storyline she's finally getting on Arrow and put her in Sara's shadow on a BoP show. Because bringing back Sara doesn't make the show Arrow any better.
The story as largely been a mess this season and they already did a mini retcon mid way through. Bringing back Sara won't harm anything as there hasn't been anything this season to harm, bar Laurel which seems to be your main focus. Telling a story in a visual medium isn't like writing a book, you adapt to what works, every show does this.
I think you've missed my point a bit: bringing back Sara won't harm the past, those episodes already happened. It will harm the show from her resurrection forward, just as Malcolm's resurrection did. Sometimes adapting to what works means leaving a fan-favorite character dead. That's "what works." But this is just one of many "I'd love to have Sara back" posts that is not concerned with what works, only how to get Sara back and ignore anything good that happened on the show since she died. Every character had to check themselves because of Sara's death. Every character had to step up to the plate in Sara and Ollie's absence. Every character is invested in the LoA issue because Sara isn't there to smooth everything over. This is on top of all the things that had nothing to do with Malcom's fanservice resurrection taking the show backwards or Olicity. But I guess who cares, if Sara's not there?
It has nothing to do with Laurel vs Sara for storyline prominence. It's Arrow vs The Canary for storyline quality, and I side with Arrow.