Couple more points that I acquired from this year’s Comic-Con.

Firstly, Lincoln is gone from AoS, because Luke Mitchell (aka the bloke who plays him) will be starring on ‘Blindspot’ instead. I like ‘Blindspot’. It is influenced by AoS, but it has found its’ own niche soon enough, and one of the crucial differences between the two shows in question is that ‘Blindspot’ treats its characters with respect. It also has a consistent script that goes exactly where the staff of ‘Blindspot’ wants it to go, and does not meander over the last two seasons, as it did in AoS. ‘Blindspot’ already has Jaimie Alexander as its female lead – and she was lady Sif in MCU, meaning that she was much more prominent than Luke and his character were, but-

But regardless, one feels that there is some bad blood between Luke and the cast of AoS – judging by the official AoS material that found its way online – YouTube, the official AoS sites – the cast didn’t mention Luke/Lincoln at all; rather, they pretended that Chloe/Daisy was dating Brett/Grant all this time – sort of. What gives?

…Luke’s choice not to stay with AoS did cause extra problems for a show with already problematic and re-arranged plot; in particular, the finale of S3 would’ve made more sense if Daisy’s not-interaction ‘6 months later’ was with Mack and Lincoln than with Mack and Coulson, for example; much of S3 plot was to build-up Lincoln and Daisy as a couple – and then Luke shot it all in the foot by going over to ‘Blindspot’, so now Chloe’s character is single, again. Yes, it is just a show, yes it probably was just the matter of money or something similarly pragmatic, but apparently Luke’s decision not to stay with AoS hurt some feelings altogether.

So now, they will probably just sweep Lincoln under the metaphorical rug and almost do not mention him in AoS S4 and beyond. The show already did it with Kara Palamas and her plot line after the S2 finale; ditto for Raina, (Ruth Negga, who played her, is one of the female leads in ‘Preacher’ now); and Jaimie Alexander’s character, Sif, so far isn’t appearing on ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie either. Fair enough, and besides, MCU is having larger problems, apparently – the InHumans own movie was postponed, (and frankly, in S3 they were largely a plot device than anything else), and ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ is now going to be a single movie, rather than two. Between that, ‘Agent Carter’ and ‘Most Wanted’ TV series cancelled leaves one wonder if MCU is not experiencing some problems – with budget, with viewers, etc.

Of course, things are not rosy over at DCEU either. If MCU has problems with its’ TV series, (frankly, it might’ve been better to keep ‘Agent Carter’, rather than AoS – but Hayley Atwell, who was the titular heroine, decided to star in ‘Conviction’, not unlike what Jaimie Alexander or Luke Mitchell have done), then DCEU just cannot make it big on the movie screen. Their ‘Arrowverse’ is developing nicely: there are ‘Arrow’ and ‘Flash’, there’s ‘Legends of Tomorrow’, and now ‘Supergirl’ is joining them on CW, and now that TV show is going to star Superman proper…perhaps as a special guest superhero?..

This is all very good and outright impressive – but DC movies are not connected to this at all. This might actually be for the best, since when it comes to films DC seems to be largely trying to rip-off Marvel: ‘Batman vs. Superman’ was very reminiscent of the latest ‘Captain America’ movie, ‘Wonder Woman’, (both the film and the titular heroine) is ‘Captain America’, gender-flipped, complete with WWII scenario, while the ‘Avengers’…pardon me, the ‘Justice League’ (the film) is showing similarities with the ‘Avengers’ even in the trailer – Diana is Cap, Bruce is Stark, (complete with an iron suit), this version of Barry is the latest incarnation of Spider-Man, etc. Seriously, how does copyright infringement here works?

However, while DC suffers from being too similar to Marvel, Riverdale (the upcoming 2016 TV series) suffers from the opposite problem – it has too few connections to the original material, the Archies’ comic.

Let us be fair. Archies’ main feature is that it is a comic about teenagers, and it is generic. It can be transformed into anything – there was a crossover with Marvel’s Punisher, (way before he appeared on Daredevil’s S2), with ‘Alien’ the movie franchise (you know, the one that fights the ‘Predator’), currently they are doing something both with zombies and with the Lovecraftian mythos, etc. The fact that CW (yes, the same CW that has DC ‘Arrowverse’) took the characters and made them into another teen drama is no big deal.

And yet… from what we have seen on Comic-Con? K.J. Apa is not a redhead, which is strange, because Archie is THE redhead, that is his trademark shtick. Lili Reinhart may be playing Betty, but she came across like a blonde Veronica, while Camila Mendes, who will be playing Veronica, looks like a Latin American Betty instead. Cole Sprouse, who was one of the twin stars in Disney’s ‘Suite Life’ series does not look like Jughead, and so far, his character is something of an anti-Jughead, since he is a ladies’ man, and the canonical Jughead is anything but.

So… we got AoS, who got problems with its cast; we got Marvel in general, who has greater problems; we got DC, who has creativity problems; and we got Riverdale, which is basically a teen detective drama with characters who share names, and some personality traits, with the characters of the Archies’ comics. Whether this will hinder or help Riverdale the show, we will have to wait and see when Riverdale comes out; until then, there is always ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ to keep our spirits up…