Few TV characters have experienced complications quite like those of the Arrow-verse's Black Canary, a.k.a. Laurel Lance, and I'm including every Earth's version of her. Arrow last left viewers with a bit of a bombshell when actress Katie Cassidy appeared in the final moments, seemingly as the been-deceased Laurel. And though that has since been sort of unpacked thanks to the midseason premiere's trailer, audiences still want to know if Black Canary will be suited up by Oliver's side in battle again someday, and showrunner Wendy Mericle has a surprisingly positive response.
There's definitely a possibility. Look, it's hard to do a show about Green Arrow without having a Black Canary. I don't know if it will happen this season or when, but...we are going to be true to origins in the DC universe, and she's always going to be there.
So, the plainly-stated thing here is that Arrow viewers are going to see Black Canary show up on the show again before its story has been completed. That is pretty general, though, and doesn't get into specifics on several issues. To begin with, Wendy Mericle doesn't say if we'll see the vigilante hero persona again in costume this season, but it could definitely happen. The finale presumably won't be filmed for a couple of months, so an arc could be worked out for her to return to Team Arrow in some capacity. Or maybe it'll have to wait until the recently ordered Season 6.
Perhaps because the specific approach hasn't been conceived just yet, Wendy Mericle also wasn't able to speak about that capacity in her talk with TVLine. As in, will Black Canary be a current-day version, or will she appear in one of the non-Oliver flashbacks that were teased, or will she be another hallucination, or will she be from some other Earth? Or is there another route for the creative team to take the character that we haven't even seen yet?
And finally, Wendy Mericle doesn't even mention Laurel Lance or Katie Cassidy, so there could easily be another character and actress inside the suit and behind the mask. There has been some thought that Felicity's storyline could take her to a place where she feels driven to join Team Arrow in a more fists-first form, and her taking the Black Canary mantle would tie into the legacy theme that Arrow has been consumed with in Season 5. Or, you know, maybe John Diggle could...nah, he couldn't.
Arrow will return to The CW for its midseason premiere on Wednesday, January 25, with some answers about the return of Laurel Lance. And while we're waiting to hear the words "Black Canary" come out of someone's mouth on the show, head to our midseason premiere schedule to see everything else hitting the small screen in the coming months.
