Oliver Queen may be rocking a new identity and costume in Arrow Season 4, but he still won’t be the only vigilante roaming around on the show. Team Arrow will still be going strong, including Laurel Lance, a.k.a. Black Canary. Laurel has come a long way since Season 1, and when the series returns in the fall, fans will see her go through another change when it comes to how she handles her life as a superhero.
According to executive producer Wendy Mericle, following her training period during Season 3, Laurel will be “fully arrived as Black Canary” when Season 4 kicks off, so there won’t be any more learning curve when it comes to taking on the bad guys. Mericle also told TV Line that Laurel will face struggles balancing her day job with her nighttime crimefighting activities. As Mericle put it:
She has a secret identity; how does she grapple with that? And she’s an ADA, so what kind of impact is that going to have on her decisions as Black Canary — and vice versa?
Fans watched Laurel’s career as Black Canary get off to a rough start in the middle of Arrow Season 3, but by the end of the season she was able to hold her own. So don’t expect to see her in boxing lessons with Ted Grant or learning from Nyssa al Ghul, though that’s not to say we won’t see either of those characters again. Plus, if her fighting skills aren’t enough, she also has the Canary Cry collar that Cisco Ramon made for her in the The Flash episode “Who is Harrison Wells?”
As for Laurel’s identity dilemma, it’s remarkably similar to the one Marvel hero Daredevil deals with as an attorney in Hell’s Kitchen. Both work within the legal system by day, but by night they put on a mask and dish out a beating to criminals on the streets. So despite being agents of the law, they’re breaking it by taking justice into their own hands. It’s a huge moral conundrum that wasn’t explored much in Season 3, but it sounds like Season 4 will tackle this head on. Oh, and let’s not forget the obvious: being one of the city’s top legal employees takes up a lot of your time, so how exactly is she going to be able to get away without her coworkers eventually getting suspicious?
On top of everything above, Laurel will also have to deal with her sister Sara being brought back back to life. Discovering Sara was alive in Season 2 was hard enough, but learning she was revived via the Lazarus Pit and underwent a personality change may be even harder. Then there’s also Damien Darhk and H.I.V.E. arriving to cause chaos, which will be a pain in the ass for everyone on Team Arrow. In other words, Laurel will have a full plate on her hands.
Arrow Season 4 will premiere on Wednesday, October 7 on The CW.
