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The Many Songs of the Black Canary


Of course, with DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, we also have the White Canary, an identity assumed by the series’ original Black Canary, Sara Lance. While the character and her arc is completely unique to the DCTVU, the moniker isn’t.

Originally appearing in the Brightest Day era of Birds of Prey comics as a mysterious foe to the Dinah Laurel Lance Black Canary, the White Canary is revealed to be an honour bound warrior with elaborate plans towards bringing about the downfall of both, Black Canary and Lady Shiva by holding the life of Sin, Dinah’s adopted daughter, hostage.


While further development on the White Canary has unfortunately been cut short due to the occurrence of Flashpoint (in the comics), this lack of popularity has allowed the Arrow team to make the character memorable on her own merit, arguably forging one of the most liked original characters.

Which brings us back to Tina Boland/Dinah Drake. Not only does this character seem unnecessary, her presence almost trivialises everything that has come before. Sara’s use of the moniker prior to Laurel inheriting it was a neat reflection of the mother to daughter inheritance the comics had.

This was further stressed upon when Evelyn Sharp took up the mantle, only to be treated as a pretender before being guided to her own identity as Artemis.


This also brings about the question: how’s Sara gonna feel about this? The Black Canary identity isn’t Oliver’s to give or Ms Drake’s to take—it was Sara’s and it was passed on by the virtue of bloodline. Ultimately, while I appreciate the writers of the series injecting some comic-book level story/character revelation here (seriously, Black Canary is the Jean Grey of the DCTVU), this honestly feels misguided.

Keeping in mind that Arrow was originally conceived as a 5-season show, this move almost seems like it was planned at the very start as an end-game, tying up all loose ends, kinda move… a la Robin and Ted in How I Met Your Mother. Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually work very well… and it isn’t the first time it’s happening on the CW either. Remember Jimmy Olsen in Smallville? Or, should I say, Henry James Olsen, older brother of the actual Jimmy Olsen. Yeah… it was pretty stupid then, too.

More over, however, is that Arrow doesn’t actually need another whole new character to take over the Black Canary character, they already have the best potential heir to the identity: Earth 2’s Laurel Lance a.k.a. Black Siren!

(Unless this is all due to Katie Cassidy wanting to leave the show for some reason…)