Let's do a quick run-down of Helena's comic-book characterization here, just for fun. I'll limit myself to pre-Flashpoint, because frankly all the fun stuff happens pre-Flashpoint. (And, for that matter, Flashpoint erases basically all of Helena's history and character development - and it was written by the same guy who co-wrote "Muse of Fire," so, um...) Anyway, now you're looking at a character that existed for barely more than two decades, with the nineties focusing more on her relationship with Batman, while the noughts see her move over to the Birds of Prey.
Quick overview of her history: introduced in 1989 as an anti-mafia antihero, "what Batman would have been if his parents had been in the mafia," Huntress worked in Gotham City, taking down the mob while making a token effort not to piss Batman off too much. Her characterization didn't change much until 1999's No Man's Land arc, which ran across all the Bat-family titles. After Gotham City is devastated by an earthquake and abandoned by the government, Batman goes missing and Huntress takes up the mantle, becoming Batgirl II (she jokes to someone she rescues that Batman was always a girl - after all, would you rather confess to being beaten up by a girl or confess to being beaten up by a giant bat)? When Batman returns, he briefly sanctions her actions, but ends up firing her for disobeying orders (as well as for a few ulterior reasons, such as he knows what she'll do if he fires her and he wants her to do that, and Oracle, whom he really needs on his team, does not like Huntress and particularly does not want her wearing Oracle's old costume*). At the end of that story arc, Huntress fights off seventeen of the Joker's thugs in order to save 80 civilians and gets shot three times for her trouble. She survives, but five months later, in 2000's Cry for Blood miniseries, Batman pretty much straight-up accuses her of murder, and Huntress's inner monologue suggests that getting shot wasn't worth it, because Batman still doesn't like/trust her. He ultimately gives her enough room to resolve the storyline** on her terms, hoping she won't revert to her old violent ways... that hope is in vain. In 2003, Oracle contacts Huntress and asks her to join the Birds of Prey, where she remains up until getting smacked by the reset button in 2011. During that time, she lets her teammates - particularly Dinah Laurel Lance, Black Canary II - ride herd on her more violent impulses, and she (generally) refrains from killing so as not to hurt her friendship with them. She never quite leaves the anti-hero position, but she is a more moral person by the end of the series.
*If you don't know - Oracle was the original Batgirl, crippled by the Joker, became a computer genius and information broker. Felicity Smoak on Arrow is pretty much a knockoff of her in terms of her role on the team.
**Batman comes off as less of a dick here than he did in No Man's Land - in NML he kills one of Poison Ivy's creations called Ferak, but later in a flashback it's revealed that he allowed Huntress to (briefly) keep the costume because she let (a) Ferak (it's not clear if there are more than one) live earlier. Furthermore, when he does kick her out, his stated reason for doing so is her failure to hold off two hundred of Two-Face's men. In Cry for Blood, she accidentally shoots him with a crossbow bolt, but he still gives her room at the end of the story to do her own thing.
Psychologically, Helena's a mess. A mafia orphan who hates the mob and mocks their code, yet abides by omerta. A (sometimes lapsed, sometimes not) Catholic who incorporates crosses into her outfits and yet is also an unrepentant multiple murderess. A woman who insists to everyone, including herself, that she does not want Batman's approval, while her every action (at least until 2000's Cry for Blood) screams the exact opposite. With clumsier writing, this could all seem horribly inconsistent, but I don't see it that way; she's a complex character and very, very human.
I've covered it a bit before, but Huntress and Batman never exactly get along, mostly because she doesn't give a crap about his "no killing" rule. A cynical person would say that how badly she wants Batman's approval depends on the writer; I prefer to think she's just in denial when she says she doesn't want his approval - or, more accurately, what she wants is to be accepted for what she is, and what she is is a violent psychopath. She wants validation and will rage against the heavens (word choice deliberate) when she doesn't get it (see the scene where she's unmasked as Batgirl II in No Man's Land for a good example of this)... but deep down she knows she's a sinner (word choice still deliberate). But she does in fact have the grace (the religious meaning of the word - remember, she is openly religious; there is no way the religious subtext in her stories is accidental) to change on her own. Example: during Cataclysm (the prelude to the No Man's Land arc that ran for the entirety of 1999), she fights a random thug while in her Huntress costume and ends up leaving him to die buried in the rubble, claiming that there are no rules now. Towards the end of the No Man's Land arc, there's a flashback to her brief stint as Batgirl, where she's about to kill a (different) thug, justifying it to herself that this is No Man's Land and there are no rules... but she stops when she catches a glimpse of the bat-insignia on her chest in a reflection.
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| Sorry for the crappy picture on this one; would you believe that I can't find the most important page in Helena's character development anywhere on the internet?!? |
Still, I believe the contrast with her earlier actions as Huntress is deliberate: she does not have to be the murderous psychopath; she can be the hero, but only if she chooses to be. Or to put it another way, it's a case of What You Are In The Dark (Batman is MIA at this point - Helena chose to put on the costume, because "Gotham needs a Bat," and she actually tries to live up to it - something she hadn't really done as Huntress when she knew Batman was around!), and thus the first time Helena tries to be better than she is.
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| Being good feels good! |
And it's telling that, after she burns all of her bridges in Cry for Blood, she joins the Birds of Prey and basically lets them keep her in check. And this means working with Barbara Gordon/Oracle, whom she's wounded twice over: first by sleeping with Nightwing, then by taking the Batgirl persona - two things that the wheelchair-bound Oracle can no longer do. That can't be easy to forgive (for Barbara - and if you think otherwise, go re-read the scenes in No Man's Land where a) Babs screams at Batman for even contemplating letting Helena keep the costume and b) Nightwing kisses Helena on New Year's after Robin hints that he (Nightwing) is going to hook up with Barbara), or to live with (for Helena). But they manage, and Huntress becomes a better person. Would the nineties Huntress have been willing to sacrifice herself for one of her friends ("What are those?" -nineties Huntress) the way noughts Huntress nearly does by taking Black Canary's place in her duel with Lady Shiva? The only comparable thing is Huntress's Last Stand at the end of No Man's Land,* and that's not really premeditated, is it?
*Huntress very nearly performs a heroic sacrifice on Christmas Eve, which I refuse to believe is a coincidence. Literally the only way it could possibly have been more blatant would have been to have it take place on Good Friday.
So... are the complaints that Arrow!Huntress is Huntress In Name Only accurate? Or is she actually a decent reflection of her nineties persona?
The plot of this two-parter, at least with respect to Huntress, is a tremendously simplified version of Cry for Blood, with the references to The Godfather and The Empire Strikes Back taken out, and Oliver standing in for both Batman and Question... Okay, so all that's really kept in from Cry for Blood is that Helena faces a choice between salvation and revenge on her biological father, and chooses revenge. In both cases she's left utterly alone at the end of the story, because she had a chance at redemption and willingly threw it away.
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| Michael in the boathouse. That is all. |
She is more violent than her comic counterpart, in the sense that she doesn't give a crap about civilian casualties. Let's be clear here: this is pre-Birds of Prey Huntress, the one consumed by bloodlust and her vendetta. Let's also stipulate that the live-action adaptations are more violent than their comic counterparts. Batman has a no-killing rule, but has he ever abided by that in the films? Keaton!Batman exploded a guy with dynamite, for crying out loud! More to the point, Huntress is always the most violent
I wonder which version of the character is actually more messed up: Arrow!Helena was an informant trying to take down the mob before the mob did anything to her, whereas Comic!Helena's backstory is basically Michael Corleone in spandex. Comic!Helena's motivation was the murder of her family, but Show!Helena was working against the mob even before her fiance was killed. That would seem to make Show!Helena a more intrinsically moral person, in spite of the fact that her vendetta takes her to further extremes than her comics counterpart.
While I was a little bit annoyed that the cross necklace got reduced to a plot point, I was glad to see Helena praying at her fiance's grave. Her being religious is important, dammit - the subtext is "she is a sinner but there is always the possibility of redemption." (On that note, she does jump into bed with Oliver awfully quickly, but this is a CW show.)
So, yes, the Huntress we see early in Season 1 is not the Huntress we know and love, but neither is it some stranger that hijacked her identity. A decent enough start, considering both the medium and her guest-star status. I'll swing back to this when I get to the episode(s) where she reappears.
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