In its five year history, Arrow has managed to produce a lineage of Canaries that’s starting to rival the number of Robins that Batman has accrued. First, Sara Lance broke the ice as the Canary (keep in mind that she never used “Black” as a prefix), with her sister, Laurel, following in her footsteps as the first proper Black Canary. And although neither women were metahumans and instead relied on hypersonic technology to produce their “Canary Cry,” both boasted loyal fanbases.
But after Laurel was killed off in season 4, the viewing audience was damn near ready to riot because the character is such a key component in the Green Arrow mythos. Luckily, we were introduced to Dinah Drake (played by Juliana Harkavy), whom some of you may know as the Golden Age Black Canary from the comics, in season 5.
In the time since, she’s proven to be an invaluable member of Oliver Queen’s squad, and can actually lay claim to being able to belt out a Canary Cry without any augmentations, for she actually is a metahuman herself. Having established all that, we were thrilled to learn that she was becoming a more permanent fixture on the show when Harkavy was promoted to being a series regular.
Naturally, fans are expecting the rivalry between her and Black Siren to continue, a situation made doubly interesting due to the fact that the villain hailing from Earth-2 just so happens to be the evil doppelganger of Dinah’s predecessor.
Fortunately for us, it looks like such a thing is a certainty, as the network has put out a neat little featurette today teasing a season 6 rematch (seen at the top). Of course, Katie Cassidy and Juliana Harkavy each have their personal opinion when it comes to who should emerge the victor, but if we were to guess, we’d go with the one who’s on the side of good – though you really never know.
Arrow returns for its sixth season on Thursday, October 12 on The CW.
