'V Wars' Season 1 Finale: Netflix show takes a major plotline from a female Asian character and gives it to an old white guy
When 'V Wars' was adapted for the small screen, we had written about how the show will stray from the comics written by Jonathan Maberry. One of those included a plotline for a major character from the comics named Yuki Nitobe.
Spoiler Alert follows for Season 1 of 'V Wars'!
Yuki Nitobe was renamed as Kaylee Vo for the show to reflect the Vietnamese heritage of the actress cast to play the role, Jacky Lai. However, if that were the only change, it would have been fine. In the comics, Yuki is a spunky journalist who is determined, to tell the truth from both sides. She is a good friend of Dr. Luther Swann's and ends up working with the Bloods to tell their side of the story while the government actively tried to suppress it.
This is more or less the same for 'V Wars'. Whereas Yuki was a formidable and well-known television reporter in the comics, Kaylee is an online journalist running her Wikileaks-like Reveleaks. She works mostly on her own but has an intern/boyfriend to help her out.
Though she is initially shown to be cold, when the intern, Jergen dies, she takes it quite hard, realizing that she loved him. After this, when she shows emotion at thinking another might be dead, she is told that she "improved". All that aside, what cannot be forgiven is that 'V Wars' took one very important aspect of Yuki's to give to a character -- a white middle-aged bureaucratic male. Eventually, in the comics, it was revealed that Yuki was, in fact, the leader of the Bloods.
But as Episode 10 ended, we see that this twist in the plotline was instead given to a character named Calix Niklos and though he was portrayed to be suspicious from the beginning, it was unfortunate the writers felt an Asian female character could not have pulled it off for the small screen.
All episodes of the first season of 'V Wars' are now streaming on Netflix.
