Arrow 100 Interviews: How Does Katie Cassidy Return To The Fold?

This summer at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, it was announced that Katie Cassidy, who played the departed “Black Canary” Laurel Lance, had signed a deal to appear in shows across the DC TV universe… but since then there hasn’t been a whole lot more that has been said. Naturally, that means we took to the Arrow 100th Episode “green carpet” to try to get answers. While we didn’t get Ms. Cassidy herself, we did get some vague hints from others, which you will see in video form on our YouTube channel sometime in the next few weeks.

First, we tried to get answers from Executive Producer Wendy Mericle. “I can tease that she’s coming back,” Wendy said, without offering solid details. “We’re really excited to have her, and it’s absolutely going to be a surprising, cool way that we bring her back,” she teased.

Series lead Stephen Amell expanded a little bit more about how and where we will find her. “We find her in a very unexpected spot at a very, very retrospectively expected time,” Stephen said.

While we couldn’t get new recruit Madison McLaughlin (Evelyn) to say if Artemis and the Black Canary have met this season, McLaughlin said that Evelyn’s reaction to the Canary would probably be similar to her own response when she first met Katie Cassidy. “Probably a bit star struck… they’re big shoes to fill,” Madison said. “Meeting Katie, she was the sweetest; she totally embraced me and really welcomed me, and I have a feeling it would be a really similar encounter with Evelyn and the Black Canary.”

Finally, Executive Producer Greg Berlanti offered the most explicit details of her return, revealing that we’ll be seeing Laurel in several alternate ways. “She gets to play a couple of different things this year. She’s not just playing a character this year. She’s a couple of different things,” Berlanti said.

We asked if Black Siren, seen in The Flash’s “Invincible,” is still on the table.

Berlanti nodded that yes, she is. Hmm…

Arrow’s 100th episode airs later this year on The CW; be sure to follow our Twitter feed and “Like” our Facebook page for more interviews as they become available!