Team GATV Midseason Roundtable: Arrow Season 5 So Far

Should Arrow “go there” with a new Black Canary?

MATT: I get the idea of using Black Canary as a moniker and a symbol, but the show even takes great pains to explicitly connect Black Canary with Laurel Lance. There’s a frickin’ 10 foot statue AND a headstone dedicated to to her and that connection. So, if there is another Canary, it would make more sense if it was Laurel. The introduction of what seems to be the Earth-2 Laurel pretending to be the resurrected version kind of lends itself to that, but that’s a lot of hoop jumping to transition her from the villainous Black Siren to a legit Canary. That transition might be kind of fun to watch and give Katie Cassidy a lot to play, but that seems like too steep of a hill to climb. Then comes the idea that Felicity could use the grief of Billy Malone’s death to become an active vigilante in her own right, and I just think that would be a bad direction to take. The show has had an issue for years with everyone being in a mask, and finally going there with Felicity I think risks the shark jump.

CRAIG: Unpopular opinion #2 time: Sure. What I’d like the most would be for it to be a reformed Black Siren in Katie Cassidy, but if Katie Cassidy’s not available or not interested, and, say, “Tina” ends up being a new Black Canary, why not let it happen? All I know for sure is if Felicity were to suddenly be the new Black Canary, heads will roll.

STEPHANIE: I’d be on board with a new Black Canary if she came about from a Black Siren redemption arc, like Craig mentioned. Otherwise, I’d rather have a completely new vigilante persona if another female character were to join the team, which I think the series needs if Thea’s staying in the mayor’s office. The mantle of Canary was so strongly tied to the Lance family – first with Sara’s League name, and then with Laurel taking it up to honor her sister – that it would feel weird if someone else tried to fill those shoes without having the same attachment… unless it were Nyssa.

MELISSA: No, I really can’t see the benefit of doing a fourth take on the character. (Sara, Laurel, Evelyn, and whoever comes next.) It’s repetitive and strange. I’m all for a female fighter being added to the team, but Laurel’s last request for Oliver to go out and find someone to take on the mantle of the Black Canary so she’d always be with him was bizarre, creepy, and demeaning to Laurel in its beyond the grave, stalkerish overtones. Sure, don’t go it alone, but I can’t see the logic in recycling a code name when the character won’t even have a comic history to justify it.

Someone with a new skill set would have been refreshing. Instead, not only does it just feel like rinse and repeat, it feels like an insult to Laurel. Whatever happened to preserving her Legacy? Of honoring her contributions? From a show standpoint, why remove a character that I had years of history with for some newbie I couldn’t care less about? I wasn’t a Laurel fan, but I’d become accustom to her and I’d have much rather have kept her Black Canary than have to start all over again with yet another new character of dubious provenance.