Stephen Amell has a lot going on in his life, but something he does not necessarily need to worry about is the future of Arrow’s potential spinoff series. In the flagship show's final season, Amell took an episode off so that Arrow could present the backdoor pilot entitled “Green Arrow and The Canaries,” which opened up doors to a lot of future stories. Thankfully, the powers that be have a plan in place to give fans the rest of the story if the TV plans don't get realized.
As the title of the episode hinted, the spinoff would be primarily focused on Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak’s daughter, Mia Queen, as the Green Arrow, with Laurel Lance’s Black Canary and Dinah Drake’s Black Canary united at her sides. The episode aired all the way back in January and there has been no word on a series pick-up yet, despite the fact that the 2020-2021 schedule was released. How will those questions the spinoff raised be answered if the show does not happen? The Arrowverse’s Marc Guggenheim told TVLine:
My instinct would be to try to answer those questions in the form of, like, a comic book tie-in — which is not to say that it couldn’t be done on the other shows.
Interesting, and sensible. Obviously, the use of a comic book as a follow-up for on-screen adventures is not an entirely foreign concept for the Arrowverse. The franchise employed it to flesh out the last mega-spinoff, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Now, the franchise's storytelling speadheader Marc Guggenheim (who recently helmed an episode of Legends of Tomorrow) thinks the medium could come in handy again for the Arrowverse spinoff.
Marc Guggenheim acknowledges that it is not as if the questions posed by "Green Arrow and the Canaries" are not pressing. In fact, Guggenheim considers them of the “burning” variety, and the audience’s desire and need for them to get answered is not lost on him. Guggenheim explained:
There are burning questions. Certainly, the backdoor pilot ended with the cliffhanger of William’s abduction. And I do think we owe answers to a lot of those moments and questions.
Fans certainly want to know what became of Oliver Queen’s son after he was wrenched away from his life. If the spinoff does not eventually come through, though, fans will have to wait on other means to get the answer, without Ben Lewis acting it out. And there's a slight chance some of the story elements could be explained in other Arrowverse shows if the comic idea doesn't come to fruition.
While there are already a lot of Arrowverse series, only Legends of Tomorrow with its time travel abilities is a viable contender to resolve the question of William’s abduction. After all, the multiverse as we knew it is over. However, he points to Sara Lance as being a meeting point between the two worlds.
Time will tell if The CW eventually gives a greenlight to Arrow's Canary-filled spinoff. Hope has not been entirely dashed at this point, but the cast can only wait for so long before they'll inevitably have offers that would stop them from sticking with the Arrowverse, especially as the industry works to resume production worldwide. The Superman and Lois Lane spinoff is well underway for a 2021 launch, and already has a 9’o clock Tuesday slot confirmed for next year, so here's hoping someone has news soon about this spinoff.
While you wait for word on the spinoff, you can currently stream Arrow and other Arrowverse series on Netflix, along with lots of new 2020 content. New seasons of the Arrowverse will not premiere on The CW until well after this summer’s in 2021, so hang in there.
