How Sara Lance Saved Queer Representation on TV

For those of you who don't know who Sara Lance is, she is a superhero known as the white canary who travels through time to help save the world. She also happens to be bisexual. And, according to a list on advocate.com of 52 queer superheroes and villains, she is the first LGBT superhero to appear in a mainstream TV show. While that may seem amazing, the best part about the way they write her character isn't that she is bisexual, it is that her sexuality is not even close to the most interesting thing about her. She became an assassin, working for a group called 'The League of Assassins' after surviving a shipwreck off the coast of the island of Lian Yu, which is apparently mandarin for purgatory.

As you may have guessed by now, Sara Lance is currently my favorite character on television. I relate to Sara on a personal level in many ways, one of which is obviously because we are both bisexual women who have a preference for women. Another is that we often tend to close ourselves off from the people closest to us because we want to handle whatever we may be going through on our own. But once they confront us about it, our walls come down and our emotions come out in such a raw and honest way. It is nice to finally have a character that I can really relate to on such a high level.


Starting out on the CW show, Arrow, and then moving on to Captain a time ship in the hit show, Legends of Tomorrow, Sara Lance is nothing less than extraordinary when it comes to showing the physical, mental, and emotional strength of women. The actress who plays Sara, Caity Lotz, once said in an interview, "I've had so many girls who are bi, or lesbian or just not sure say how much it means to them to be able to see a character on TV that's like them, and to see that and go, 'Oh look, OK, I'm not weird, I'm not messed up, this is normal.' And to have that representation on TV and what it means to them has been the best thing about this character [Sara Lance]. If you don't understand it, that's what makes you afraid. And the fact that we don't make it this big thing about who she is - it's not like, 'Oh, the bi girl'. It's just one thing about her, and that's the way it should be handled."