Trivia / Forging a Better Future

• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, Thanksgiving was supposed to have the Lances all together for the first time, which is where Dinah would've revealed her decision to let Sara sleep with Oliver, and that is what would've caused the division between the family and the eventual breakdown of Quentin's relationships with his daughters. It was changed because Arlyss realized that it's unlikely pre-Character Development Quentin would've taken Sara's past as an assassin well, so the estrangement happened much earlier.
  • As noted in the afterword of Legend, Thea originally was going to be dragged off to Nanda Parbat and forced to join the League of Assassins by Ra's al Ghul, which would've set her on the path to becoming the Dark Archer. Arlyss changed the ending after Nyame pointed out that Oliver would be desperate enough to challenge Ra's al Ghul to a duel to prevent that from happening. While Thea did end up joining the League eventually, it was the result of reneging on Oliver's deal with Talia and refusing to train as a vigilante.
    • Thea not being dragged off to the League also spared Malcolm, as he was originally going to be taken by Ra's in exchange for Tommy's freedom. Helping torture him before his inevitable death would've been part of Thea's training, while Tommy would've become a vigilante to atone for Thea's fate instead of it being part of a bargain made to avoid having to join the League.
    • As a part of that, there were discussions of Thea killing Tommy later down the line in revenge for what happened to her. That was discarded after it was decided to make Tommy both a hero and one of the main characters of the series.
  • After it was determined that Barry/Sara was no longer feasible, Barry was originally going to be paired with Caitlin. However, Arlyss realized that his residual anger against Iris' characterization in the later seasons of The Flash (2014) had faded, and that he had written Iris to be much more supportive of Barry. So, he elected to change the pairing to Barry/Iris instead and try to redeem the pairing like Nyame did in To Hell and Back (Arrowverse).
  • Before it was decided to completely eliminate the Legends timeline and time travel in general from the series, one of the possible ideas for it was having Tommy join the Legends with Sara and have her continue his training during their time on the team.
  • Originally, there was going to be a Birds of Prey arc with Helena later down the line, and Helena was going to end up Tommy's love interest for the series. However, all of this was scrapped when Arlyss and Nyame decided to have all those on the List slammed with a RICO case, taking down Frank Bertinelli before Helena could even consider becoming a vigilante.
  • One of Tommy's early choices for hero identities was the Question (suggested by RayWritesThings), since he was initially going to be paired with Helena. After it was decided he was going to join Team Arrow, both Arlyss and Nyame decided to go with an original hero identity instead to match the color-coded names of his friends. They chose blue (to contrast future JL member the Flash, who would be wearing a red suit), and the initial name was Sapphire Blade before changing it to Azure Blade, determining that 'Azure' was more masculine-sounding than 'Sapphire'.
  • After Helena was no longer a viable love interest for Tommy, it was decided to make Tommy and Sara a couple instead, due to a combination of the chemistry the characters had and Sara's own lack of a love interest after Barry/Iris was set in stone.
  • Before it was decided to rewrite the third and fourth volumes, Thea was set to be taken by the League and eventually replace Malcolm as the new Dark Archer and Oliver's true Arch-Enemy. Her journey to becoming a villain would've seen her dedicate herself to the League's training for the sake of revenge against Oliver; later, she would've eventually killed Malcolm with a Cruel and Unusual Death, and used the boon given to her by Talia to receive Heir-level training from the League. Once her term with the League was up, she would've become a mercenary-for-hire in order to build up her fortune for the sake of her revenge, and would've eventually returned as one of the last major antagonists before Crisis.
  • Originally, Arlyss and Nyame intended to have Future Felicity have no role in the series other than the occasional potshot at her canon toxic actions. The decision to make her brainwashing metahuman who had been controlling Oliver and the others for years cropped up in one of "Let's Watch Our Show" Plot Fan Fic that they had been writing together for Legend (which they intended to make a Spin-Off series to the main Forgingverse), so they decided to incorporate it into the main series.