
(Warning: I make frequent use of the term “white women.” Those with more delicate sensibilities, I do not advise reading further.)
*deep, long-suffering sigh*
Look. There were many, many, many reasons to enjoy Elseworlds, the Arrowverse crossover that aired in November. Every piece of gloriously charming comedy from the body swap between Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell). Grant Gustin in the Green Arrow suit. Kara (Melissa Benoist) getting to bond with Kate Kane (Ruby Rose, in her small screen debut as Batwoman). Grant Gustin in the Green Arrow suit (y’all know good and damn well why I said it twice, but here’s a reminder anyway). The mind-blowing teaser at the end that has me worried for my favourite SuperFriends.
And, truthfully, the comic-book fan in me loves crossovers, or at the very least the idea of them. I love watching all the heroes who don’t usually speak get together, I love the comedy that comes from everyone catching up on what’s gone on in their different cities, and I love anticipating which Big Bad they’re going to draw from the comics. In theory, they’re a comic-book fan’s dream. And for many, they hit the sweet spot that Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and the rest of the bigwigs in charge of the Arrowverse were aiming for. Some fans – more, I think, than probably those higher-ups were expecting – were less than impressed, even before the crossover aired. Several bits of news caused them to lose faith in the crossover before they saw it, and they decided to air their grievances in a hashtag called #ElseworldsSoWhite – chief among them, that Iris West (Candice Patton) wasn’t crossing over. Again.

The face Iris and I made, upon learning that she wouldn’t be crossing over again.
There were other problems, of course, and even the matter of Iris – and more specifically, as we’ll come to see, Patton – not crossing over once again is more complicated than it first appears. I was not surprised, as fans of The Flash who care in particular about Iris West have been known to campaign for her in this way, so much so that creators of the show and Patton herself have acknowledged the fact they’ve made an impact or at least have been noticed. However, upon scrolling through the hashtag, I quickly got annoyed. Not at the fans who were complaining about the mistreatment of minority characters and a Black woman in particular, but at the fans who, upon seeing this…decided to start complaining themselves.
- Amazing.
- What would discussions about representation be without a white man telling women of colour that their problems don’t exist?
- …or white women telling us about “actual racism”?
- I don’t think she’s sorry, guys.
These are but a small sample of nonsense that people were putting into the hashtag. They were, literally, complaining about the complaining. They hadn’t read the hashtag. They hadn’t asked fans why they were upset. They hadn’t even attempted to understand the problem. But they were mad. One was even taking the time to create a video about it! It was, to say the least, extremely irritating. Irritating that people were reducing complaints about mistreatment to “ship things.” Irritating that people are still so uneducated about diversity and representation that they think it’s as simple as having people of different ethnicities on screen. And irritating that as angry as they are about fans campaigning for fair treatment for characters that look like them, those same people are curiously silent on the very real harassment and abuse hurled at the people playing the characters. Which, of course, just so happen to mostly be women, women of colour especially.
#ElseworldsSoWhite isn’t about ships, and it isn’t about our favourite character. It’s about a pattern of racism and exclusion on a network that continues to say that it is “open to all” while being anything but, in a franchise that insists on collecting diversity points while doing its level best to ignore anyone with too much melanin. And so the reaction to it, insisting that people are being dramatic and that they should simply sit down and take representation wherever we can get it even when it’s problematic, is stupid.
So. We are going to talk about #ElseworldsSoWhite. We are going to give it context. We’re going to talk about what it is and what it isn’t. And we’re going to talk about how the people complaining need to go sit down somewhere.
Like I said. I’m mad.
So let’s talk about it.
Absolutely fantastic article and well worth the wait. Thank you for writing it.
Thanks Jade! Appreciate you.
Absolutely needed to be said, great article!
Thank you!
Hey, remember when Flash producers said it was “hard” to write 2 speedsters after Wally left when we now know that they were planning to bring in Nora a season later? (yes, I know Keiynan wanted to leave)
That excuse was obviously because Keiynan Lonsdale wanted time off and they couldn’t come up with a better excuse.
“#ElseworldsSoWhite wasn’t something that fans of Iris West cooked up in our evil Negro labs of anger, adorned in our all-powerful shipping goggles while we stirred our cauldrons full of fanfiction.”
I loved this bit lmao
You once again so eloquently stated the whole truth and nothing but the truth sis. It’s gotten so blatant that the Arrowverse showrunners at large don’t see Iris as important as she should be via the comics that I even saw some people impartial to her say it didn’t make sense for her to crossover, not only because she’s Barry’s wife but the leader of Team Flash and most of the action took place in Central City. I can’t help but wonder if hashtags would be necessary if Iris was portrayed by a white actress. But I think we all know the answer to that one.
Also, lol at the buffoons listing all the other POCs not included to counter the hashtag thus proving our point.
Thank you!
I don’t really know what to say at this point. I like the idea of crossovers, but I’ve always hated these ones because they’re not inclusive at all. It’s just one long ego stroke for Oliver and sometimes Barry.
Right? How stupid can you get?
I love this so much Ivy.
The only cross-over event that I’ve been excited about was Crisis on Earth X, even as problematic as that was. After the first part of this year’s cross-over, I barely watched the rest, because I knew that it was about to be some BS that would just make me mad. I love Barry, and at one time I used to love Oliver, but the amount of screen time they got in comparison to Kara just got on my nerves.
The fact that once again Guggenheim and his band of misogynistic aholes didn’t see fit to include Iris, when we had a new character in Lois Lane that literally had ALL the damned arcs made me mad af. And I’m somebody who LOVES Lois Lane. Love. Her. She has been one of my favourite comic book humans for decades, but I was still mad that she got so much screen time over an established character like Iris.
One of the things that was also glaring was how much Superman got to do on Supergirl’s episode. But I guess that’s par for the course over there with Kara being sidelined for any white man within a 200 mile radius.
Anyway, it was a fantastic read, thanks.
I liked the Flash part of the first one, hated the second, and the parts of the third with Barry and Kara. Loved the fourth until the end. Seeing as I hate Oliver, crossovers are very hard for me.
Guggenheim is just unspeakably bad. There are no other words. The fact that men routinely get more to do in the Supergirl episodes just says it all.
Girl. I’m so tired.