The Letter for the King is a TV series I recently found on Netflix. I thoroughly enjoyed the first few episodes because it had that epic fantasy feel you don't find much in TV shows - not unless they're accompanied by tons of blood and gore. So I was pleasantly surprised to see this show that was catering to a younger audience and free of all the grimness but still had that whole epic/medieval fantasy feel.
Most refreshing and exciting about this show was that we had a Black boy as the main character - as the hero. And in the first few episodes his backstory and his personal struggles are portrayed very well. I was able to ignore the occasional thinness of the plot and the tropes and stuff because I would get to see this kid learn how to use his magical powers and become the hero of prophecy. These are well used tropes for a good reason, they work well - and to see them applied with a Black main character would be awesome.
And then the end of episode 5 happened and wow!
SPOILERS AHEAD
YOU WON'T WANT TO WATCH THIS ANYMORE AFTER THIS SPOILER
So it turns out that the main character had no magic to begin with. It was the white girl all along. And then, in the final confrontation she defeats the evil sorcerer, the guy who has literally absorbed the powers of multiple powerful magic users, by GLOWING. She literally did nothing but stand there and glow. But, guys, it's ok, because the Black boy got to hold her hand while she was glowing.
Wow.
Within two seconds the show went from giving a positive portrayal of a Black HERO to throwing out all this development and turning him into a completely useless character so the White girl can be the hero. Oh, and let's not forget that the badass Asian girl character (who was literally the most competent of the young knights-to-be) turned out to be a complete traitor to the very end.
Let this be a lesson to anyone trying to make any show or book or movie. If you're considering "adding diversity" to your media just don't bother please. If you're just adding it in without realizing why it's important to have these characters then you're probably going to end up being racist instead. Because that's what that was. It would be much better if you didn't try to include any representation and just had all White characters.
It almost felt as if the original show's writers had been having some kind of tug of war with some producer who just couldn't stand all the representation and couldn't handle having awesome diverse characters. The tug of war kept going with the Asian girl's character, so she kept switching from an ally to a traitor. Finally, the original writers were fired and the racist producer took control and was like "PLOT TWIST!"
*sigh*
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