On Arrow, the show premiered with a ready-made love triangle that the audience didn’t care for, which left it scrambling for an alternative after spending half a season setting up Oliver and Laurel as an endgame couple. The presence of a relationship only a fraction of viewers were emotionally invested in led to resentment, and Laurel’s character has never really recovered from the lashing she got back in the first season.

Listening to the fan-base

So Arrow had to find someone the audience did like, and sharpish, finally landing on Felicity after listening to the deafening chorus of shippers demanding their friendship become the romance it’s since evolved into. Felicity wasn’t even supposed to be a recurring character following a one-off guest appearance, but the show’s writers smartly listened to the fan-base, giving them exactly what they wanted, for lack of a better option.

And this can often be the best path – rolling with the criticisms and changing course when something isn’t working. Otherwise, there’s a legitimate danger of How I Met Your Mother-syndrome, in which the endgame planned from the pilot is followed through on, regardless of what’s happened since.

The problem is that the same thing seems to be happening on The Flash, which has offered viewers the slightly-creepy relationship between Barry and adoptive-sister Iris. Iris isn’t nearly as hated as Laurel was on the parent show, but common consensus has the potential romance as one of the series’ weakest elements during the first few episodes.

The fact that some of these couples are already canon in the comic book-universe makes it harder to deviate, but as Arrow has proven, it’s not impossible. The favourite for an alternative is currently Barry and Caitlin (or ‘SnowBarry’), but that may be too similar to Olicity.