I don’t watch any of the CW Arrowverse shows with any regularity these days, and honestly, I haven’t for a while. I do plan to catch up with Black Lightning and Legends of Tomorrow at some point because I hear, for the most part, good things about them.

But I got bored of Barry and Oliver’s man pain years ago and, as hard as I tried, and as much as I want them to, Batwoman and Supergirl simply don’t grab me tightly enough to choose them over doing something else for two hours each week. I am intrigued by the new Superman and Lois Lane project that had a season order announced the other day. (I like Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch a lot in their respective roles and, at least in theory, I like the “new parents trying to write truth and save the world” spin the synopsis claims the show is going to have.)

I do, however, watch the annual crossovers because they’re fun and often silly, and they’re a chance for some of the actors/characters I do enjoy to stretch a little. Brandon Routh, for example, finally got to wear the House of El sigil again, proving that it was very much the movie, and not his casting, that was the mistake back in 2006.

Watching Tom Ellis’s Lucifer and Matt Ryan’s John Constantine attempting to out dochebag each other was *chef kiss* (my only complaint about that interaction was that it was far, far too short). The final two episodes of this year’s Crisis on Infinite Earths had some very extremely cheesy moments, but overall it was sailing along nicely, getting some laughs, and feeling like an excellent way to relax for a couple hours after a long work shift.

Beware, there be spoilers ahead.

And then they brought The Spectre into it.

I should pause here to say that, yes, The Spectre does have a large role in the Crisis on Infinite Earths comics as the only being strong enough to defeat both the Anti-Monitor and Parallax, even depowered. So maybe it isn’t so much that they brought him into the crossover but how they did it.

I have a lot of feelings about The Spectre. He’s one of my favorite DC characters because I stan a true lawful neutral. As the spirit of vengeance, The Specter, no matter who he happens to be inhabiting at a given moment (Detective Jim Corrigan, Hal Jordan, and Detective Crispin Allen have all played host), he’s there to balance the scales and make certain evil is punished.

No matter who you are, he knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows where you took hostages during that bank robbery, and he knows when you killed that guy and dumped the body in the river.

But they went and made Green Arrow the Spectre. And not just Green Arrow, which, even though it’s outside canon, I would have been fine with, but the CW version of Green Arrow. My people, my folx, my geeks, you cannot capture the depth and breadth and intent of the Spirit of Vengeance by embodying it in an actor with the emotional range of a tree stump.

Auto-tuning his voice and putting him in a giant green duster isn’t going to change that. I mean, with John Diggle (David Ramsey) and Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning (Cress Williams) standing right there, they made bland-ass, one trick, and (most offensively) completely-without-a-sense-of-humor-or-proper-facial-hair Oliver Queen The Spectre.

Thanks, I hate it.

The Spectre does not walk around all calm and collected. The Spectre is not flat. And while his host may have regrets, the spirit very rarely, if ever, does. The Spectre is a figure who fits into the “cosmic” level bracket with Doctor Fate and Phantom Stranger, able to look down and see the threads of reality, of memory, of lives. He scares John Constantine’s punk ass. He’s a being over which his vessel, no matter how physically powerful, no matter how intelligent, no matter how full of heart, barely has control, and Jim Corrigan can tell you if the Spectre wants out, you’d best get out of his way because he’ll bust that body at the seams rather than let his quarry go unpunished.

That, right there in that panel? That’s what happens when you try to wrestle The Spectre into submission. Corrigan’s eyeballs are bleeding. That’s what The Spectre does to you if you try to hold him back. He is angry; angry at those who hurt others, furious at the depths to which humanity will sink, and he’s going to do something about it. Once you have his attention, you are well and truly screwed.

Did you get a sense of any of that watching Crisis? I didn’t. You want cool, calm, and cryptic, make Oliver The Question or put Doctor Fate’s helmet on him (Constantine, if you’ll recall, had it in his collection back when he had his own show, and that’s not the kind of thing you leave laying around for just anyone to find). Amell’s portrayal, however, was completely missing the urgency, the focus, and the seething rage The Spectre deserves.

If you want a little more insight into why I’m so heated over this, check out Ray Fawkes, Ben Templesmith, and Andrea Sorrentino’s creepy, and completely engrossing Gotham by Midnight, wherein the only Batman sighting is when he drops some files off for Corrigan’s “special task force” and The Spectre is having a go at the city’s magical beasties and dirty cops.

There’s also John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake’s 2014 run, collected into two volumes: Crimes and Judgments and Wrath of God.

The Spectre also makes an appearance in the original run of Books of Magic (1993-2001) by Neil Gaiman, John Ney Reiber, Peter Gross, John Bolton, Scott Hampton, Charles Vess, Paul Johnson, Peter Gross, and Jason Temujin Minor.

I get wanting to send Ollie of with a bang and that’s cool. Throw him off a cliff. Have a demon eat his face. Make him so crazy when he comes out of the Lazarus Pit that his friends have to kill him again. Oliver Queen has always been (another) favorite of mine because he’s human and there are plenty of ways to give a human hero their final bow. But that actor and this Spectre? I’m just not having it.