The Franchise Episode 3 “Scene 54: The Lilac Ghost” offers a grisly rebuke to the toxic misogyny that still runs rampant in the film industry and among fandoms. Because the HBO show’s fictional comic book studio is perceived as having a “woman problem,” newly hired (and female) producer Anita ( Aya Cash ) is tasked with brainstorming a way to make the in-production Techto: Eye of the Storm more feminist. The eventual solution is to beef up supporting actress Quinn’s ( Katherine Waterson ) role to make the passive Lilac Ghost a major power player in the fictional universe.
**Spoilers for The Franchise Episode 3 “Scene 54: The Lilac Ghost,” now streaming on Max**
After a tense brainstorming session, Anita latches onto third AD Dag’s ( Lolly Adefope ) idea to give the Lilac Ghost additional powers and an iconic staff (that is usually associated with a male character). Anita’s plan is to rewrite a pivotal scene for the character that will hopefully assuage the ire of feminists criticizing the studio’s poor lack of representation onscreen.
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While the audience might assume that Quinn, a sweet and classy Oscar-nominated actress, is thrilled to play a more “empowered” version of the Lilac Ghost, she’s not. As her experiences on set, online and even offset prove, sexism is still so pervasive within society that Quinn becomes a target of irrational amounts hatred. The studio’s “woman problem” hasn’t been solved so much as it’s been exposed. And the horror of the whole story arc only works thanks to Katherine Waterston’s subtly tragic performance as Quinn.
“We really wanted someone that had real gravitas in the room and that you believed,” The Franchise creator and showrunner Jon Brown told Decider. “Part of the tragedy of these movies that they take such great talents, great actors and actresses, and make them say such weird things in such stupid costumes. It can be heartbreaking, right? It’s like, this is what we’re giving our talent.”
“So we needed to have someone that you immediately believed carried a sort of gravity around them.”
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For The Franchise ‘s executive producer, Armando Iannucci, the tragedy of Quinn’s story wasn’t just that she was relegated to doing terrible work, but that she was being harassed by fans for doing it.
“That whole thing of the online hate or whatever, that certain people get, is something that I don’t think has been explored yet in anything that looks at how movies and television are made,” Iannucci said. “A comic or a dramatic take.”
In a recent feature in The Hollywood Reporter , Brown cited a specific Marvel star as an example of this trend in real life: “What’s sad about that is you get humans caught in the middle — people like [ Captain Marvel star] Brie Larson — actresses bringing some humanity to a female comic book figure that was probably invented in the 1960s, and then they get death threats — which, obviously, are not funny. But it’s insane how seriously people take these things.”
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When Decider asked The Franchise star — and superhero genre alum — Aya Cash if anything specifically resonated with her experiences, she first called out the stress of wearing a supersuit before bringing up a specific scene wherein Dan (Himesh Patel) and Dag enter Quinn’s trailer to discover the actress crying in a unique angle.
“Katherine Waterston crying in the chair so that her makeup won’t run,” Cash said. “I have definitely tried to sleep standing up to protect my hair.”
In the end, tensions between Waterston’s Quinn and Billy Magnussen’s leading man are resolved by behind-the-scenes politicking. However, Quinn’s future looks rather bleak as the episode ends with her requiring top level security to deal with violent death threats.
What happens to Quinn after The Franchise Episode 3 “Scene 54: The Lilac Ghost”? We don’t know as the character only appears in this single episode.
“It felt like that was a sort of contained story,” Brown explained, before revealing he could see the character coming back in a potential second season. “I think there may be more in that story that we’ve yet to mine.”
For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com
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