Had Ivonova stayed on, her main arc at the start would have been Leetah's role in the telepath arc.CrypticMirror wrote: ↑Sat May 02, 2020 6:39 pm I think if Ivanova had stayed as new station commander then even she would have struggled a little to find a place, and would have depended heavily on character familiarity for her storylines.
Knowing that, the reason that arc felt so empty and aimless is made a lot more clear. It would have been the payoff for her series long arc and also split that story to more of the main cast.JMS wrote:It's no secret that I would've had Ivanova becoming somewhat linked to Byron romantically (she would see him as a character like Marcus, which is why there are certain similarities, and she would take a chance only to find it wrong this time, underlining that she'd missed her one major opportunity thus far for a good relationship). This was expressed to Claudia toward the last part of S4, so she knew at that time that her latent ability would be coming out, and that she'd have a big part in S5.
In this scenario, Lyta would have become a devoted follower of Byron's, much as she has, but it would have been more love from afar: protective, somewhat unrequited but hoping for more...so that when he met his fate, Lyta would end up right where she is now, just by a different road.
They KNEW, really really REALLY knew that season 5 was the last one. That had always been the plan and that was all TNT was going to go for. There was no chance of a season 6 and they didn't want a season 6. Saving anything specifically for later would have been a very bad call.
As is she was supposed to become a major character in Crusade and that... did not work out. (That Crusade happened at all is because the network WAS pleased with the ratings, but not the cost or the fact that viewers tuned in for it and then didn't stay for any of their other programming.)
