Considering Hogue’s lack of resources and the shorter time it took for Team Arrow to take him down compared to Sebastian, I’d say no, but that’s just in the short term. Had this reworked Church of Blood been allowed to continue growing under Hogue’s leadership, it could’ve morphed into something legitimately more dangerous considering their religious fanaticism. Granted, I’m not necessarily picturing an outcome where Starling City gets completely wiped out like Slade had planned, but rather something more gradual that would’ve corrupted the minds of many of the homeless and other destitute people in the city. The church would still be committing various acts of violence in the short term while trying to enact further control of the population in the long term. Hogue may have had true belief in whatever deity he felt he was serving, but that sort of truly unhinged behavior can make for a different kind of danger that still holds sway over a lot of people. And as we saw from the Crisis in Kahndaq arc, even a smaller group of unhinged fanatics can still terrorize an entire population. Even after taking Hogue down at the end of the Blood arc, it would’ve been wise of Team Arrow to keep an eye out for any further Church of Blood in the event that another acolyte took up the Brother Blood mantle
I’ve gone a bit back and forth on this. On the one hand, if you’re gonna keep your characters grounded and realistic, having Black Adam be a religious zealot and leader of a terrorist group does feel like a fitting change since he’s still able to be a sadistic leader imposing his will on others through violent measures. But knowing that the show was about a season away from going full-blown magic on us, I wondered why they couldn’t have leaned more into his powered side. Introducing the full-blown Shazam story would’ve been too much, but having Adam still be Kahndaq’s super-powered, magical dictator who’s lived for thousands of years wouldn’t seem like that much of a stretch in advance of Ra’s al Ghul and especially Vandal Savage. But then I had to remember where the show was at the time and how the writers seemed to take a more gradual approach to introducing magic to the universe. I guess having Adam be more comic-accurate would’ve actually felt like too much before season 4, so all things considered, I think this really was an interesting interpretation. Even though he most likely died at the end, he could always be alive post-Crisis…
Considering my frustration in finding out that a number of these tie-in comics have been wiped from the official canon, I’m willing to believe that most everything else from these issues did happen on the show. I don’t think anything from the Blood arc contradicted the events of the show, and the Crisis in Kahndaq arc could’ve still happened in between seasons sans Turner’s death. The operation could’ve still happened the same otherwise, just w/ him making it out alive this time, perhaps w/ serious but non-fatal injuries. I’m probably putting too much thought into this, especially since Crisis could’ve wiped it all away entirely, but I’d still like to think these stories happened on the show in some capacity anyway. To me, it just makes the stories more impactful if there’s evident cohesion w/ the show it’s building off of
On a meta level, we know that they wouldn’t have referenced this in the episode since those issues in the arc hadn’t been released yet. Even if they had been, the writers would’ve known that a majority of viewers wouldn’t have read the comic. But if the Blood arc is canon, what’s the in-universe explanation? I think this could be justified in two ways:
We know Zytle tinkered w/ the Vertigo formula in between these appearances, resulting in Oliver having different hallucinations each time. While the side effects were similar, they also could’ve been different enough to make the team think that these were 2 different substances. Also, Oliver had probably been hit w/ enough drugs at that point in his vigilante career to make these instances a little less special, if no less concerning in the moment. Not analyzing the different drugs to see if there are any similarities might not be the most responsible approach, but it’s also somewhat understandable given all the other crap the team has to deal w/
I know I mentioned this somewhere before, but it’s worth repeating that it’s kind of upsetting to see Crisis finally establish a proper Justice League, only to know that more than half the roster is now on their way out. When Supergirl ends next year, Barry, Sara and Clark will be the only one of those members left starring on a show, and at this rate, I can’ t imagine that either Flash or Legends has much more time left. Obviously all these shows have to come to an end eventually, but I was really hoping that we could’ve gotten a couple solid years of this group interacting as a unit though major annual crossovers and occasional smaller ones
Of course you have to realize that COVID had to have changed the CW’s plans at least somewhat. But it’s not like this was ever gonna stop them from making shows entirely, so why not still try to commit to this roster for at least a little while longer? The big overhauls that are coming also have me buying into speculation that WB is trying to exert more control over the streaming rights of their shows by getting rid of ones that have Netflix deals. While I can see how it makes sense from a business perspective, it’s also good business to ensure that you maintain quality products on screen regardless of where they go afterwards. I don’t wanna knock these new shows too much when we know nothing about them aside from the most basic premises, but it is unfortunate to see these more classic heroes getting dumped in favor of ones that were only created in more recent years or, in Wonder Girl’s case, haven’t even debuted at all
