DC Comics On TV: Left For Dead

Everyone is taking a break while we get through the holidays. Both Arrow and Constantine are on hiatus until they return next month and what better way to ensure your viewers return? Leave your protagonists on the brink of death. No one is faulting them for their formula because it will most surely work.

Photo from Official CW Arrow Facebook page.

On Arrow we find out Malcolm Merlin had more than just paternal motivations for taking and Thea and training her. He manages to drug her into a highly suggestive state and from the evidence he produced to Oliver, it looks like she killed Black Canary.

In order to save his lying sister from the League of Shadows Oliver takes her place and confesses to the crime in order to save Thea.  The cost is a duel between him and the League's leader, Ra's Al Ghul. If you know anything about Ra's, read up on Batman's list of villains.  Alternatively you can watch Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight  trilogy and know that he is a bit out of Oliver's league.

They have their duel and surprisingly it ends with Arrow being mortally wounded.  It's surprising because of the graphic detail of his injuries, not because he lost to Ra's. He gets kicked off the cliff and we're left waiting for the next episode in January. If you anything about DC comics and anything relating to Ra's Al Ghul is that death is never final.  Arrow is most likely going to make it.

Photo from NBC.com

Constantine who walks the thin line between heaven and hell is not a stranger to walking a thin line between life and death. In the mid-season finale of Constantine, John finds himself crossing paths with an old girlfriend to help fins some babies that are being stolen by an old race of vampire. Trust issues between John and his old flame pop up but they manage to work together most of the time to save the stolen babies.

Zed, gets a little more interesting as she is left behind at their base of operations to fend off her fathers henchmen.  We still don't know who she really is , or what she really wants but at least the character is finally getting interesting. Who knows where the writers want to go with her but at least they're staying away from Hollywood's need to make characters fall in love.

While Constantine helps rescue the babies, they are chased by another entity and in order to slow it down his ex shoots him in the belly.  Leaving him mortally wounded as bait for whatever was chasing them after they eliminated the vampire that was stealing babies. If anyone knows how to cheat death, its John Constantine so we're sure to see him find a creative way to save himself.

Leaving characters on the brink of death is a good way to make sure people will be impatiently waiting to find out how theses characters will survive. What do you think will happen to them? Please comment below.