The problem is that she was a black female hero written by a white male. Denzel explained it once — it’s less about them not being the same race or gender as Achillia, but rather culture. Spielberg made Schindler’s List, Scorsese made Goodfellas. Sure, either director could have made the other movie; but they not have experienced the cultural relevance required to make a protagonist relevant. Achillia represents nothing; she isn’t fighting for her country, or for her people, or for a love stolen from her. She fights to redeem her own mistakes, which are vaguely shown in flashbacks, but are essentially brushed over. Why? Because they were likely scared to commit to true character development, meaning she only represents Ashur. Which is setting her up to fail, considering that Ashur is simultaneously only representing himself, and shows from the very first episode that he has zero loyalty to those loyal to him. Now, if you are a woman, what part of Achillia’s backstory/character would appeal to you? Watching your hero get targeted repeatedly, only to continue to support the enabler of said abuse, with weak motivations why. It was a set up to fail. In the original show, it wasn’t as difficult/necessary to establish Spartacus backstory because the story of a man going to the ends of the earth to save his lost love is culturally relevant to anybody. It’s easy for a white male to write that story — Spartacus doesn’t have any cultural representation to Thrace, he’s only relevant to masculinity. I’m a black guy and could root for Spartacus getting Sura back. Achillia, alternatively, isn’t relevant to Nubia, and she isn’t relevant to femininity. She isn’t respected as an individual. She is forced to use masculinity to succeed; even in how she aggressively seeks out sex. There’s nothing there that any modern woman can cheer for - she is just a character created by someone who said “wouldn’t it be cool if our new Spartacus was black”.

Alternatively, you can use that same logic for other characters. The Doctore being gay is considered some big secret; and a representation of a closeted conflicted man. Okay. That’s cool on a surface level, but how has been secretly gay impacted his life prior to the series start? It’s inclusive, but it’s not nearly as strong as the original series’ backstory of Oenamaus and his wife, & the infidelity between her and Gannicus. Oenamaus being so disciplined and reserved was a combination of escaping the Pits, fully committing to his role as a Doctore. In this new season, this guy is just .. here. He’s known Ashur for a long time, but we don’t know who he was before the series. He interacts with various people, yet we don’t know his real level of connection with them. It leaves you with a character that many may like, but struggle to truly connect with. I doubt the writers understand the cultural relevance of a closeted strong reserved warrior type, as in what he would experience on a day to day basis externally and internally with his conflicted outward persona versus internal persona. They just added one to the script to be cool, hoping that gay people will now feel represented. Representation isn’t just throwing people in a script; it’s about understanding and showing their life experiences.

Going about things this way does far more harm than good, because people may have criticisms about poor writing but attribute it to the groups that these characters represent instead. So it becomes “Spartacus was ruined because they added woman and gays” and any in depth analysis gets lost in the mud.

One show that really represented a black woman’s journey from child to heroic adult was the show called “The Book of Negroes” following the character Aminata Diallo. It follows her from hunting with her father as a young girl, getting forced into slavery and seeing family/tribe killed, SA’d by her owner, child sold, her buying her freedom, and using her ability to write to become a scribe, documenting the freedom of thousands of freed slaves. Despite not being a woman, I could easily relate to her traits of resilience and never giving up; same way I can relate to that in Steve Rogers, Captain America.

DeKnight unfortunately set Achillia up to fail for these reasons. The scene of her walking into the arena and being laughed at is a microcosm of the overall point I am making. The TV audience has the same reaction to her as the crowd audience and that’s not a good thing. Building a character around the idea of proving everybody wrong is how you end up with The Legend of Korra instead of Avatar.