And I can assure you,Octavia's role becomes much bigger and she honestly has the greatest arc of them all ♥

Very cool, she definitely has the potential to be a favourite character for me :D And I would be interested if there were any deleted scenes on the DVDs, it did seem like the writers just decided to build up a Romeo and Juliet pairing between the two sides, but didn't want to put the time and effort into adequately setting it up. Octavia and Lincoln definitely make for a super-pretty couple though, I could see myself getting a lot more into them in future seasons, once I get past how jarring the beginning of their story was

And hmm that is weird, you'd think there would be *some* explanation at least, like smaybe the actress committed to another project and was no longer available. There must have been a change of plans if she was originally meant to be a regular cast member. Oh well