HUGE spoilers for Arrow S4E18: ‘Eleven Fifty-Nine’.
Let me start by saying that this was the best episode of Arrow in a long time. Like, a long time. It’s also the last episode of Arrow I’ll watch on purpose.
It’s 5a.m. in the UK right now, but I’m kept awake by the equally terrible and laughable idea that a Green Arrow show just killed off its Black Canary. It’s been made very clear that Laurel’s death is permanent. No lazarus pit – nothing. And I’m done.
You can say I should give the show a chance, but I’ve given it too many already. The only reason I kept watching was the thought of watching Laurel Lance turn into Black Canary.
And now that’s gone, we’re left with Oliver and Felicity.
I have no problem with Felicity as a character, but the minute she and Oliver happened was the end of any kind of Black Canary, and the fact that the writers had the nerve to have Laurel’s last words be about Oliver and Felicity sums it up.
Not until the last five minutes of this episode did Felicity appear, and I honestly didn’t notice. Because it felt like Arrow again. It felt like Arrow, but with Laurel making the quips rather than Felicity, like Black Canary should.
The one time this show got Black Canary right was in her final episode.
It all started with Sara, whose years of training under the League of Assassins meant that she overshadowed her sister, and every time she returned to the show, Laurel was pushed further back.
Her training with Wildcat was rushed and so infrequent that it was never enough to make us think she had surpassed Sara, and so Laurel was everyone’s second favourite Canary from the moment she wore the wig.
It didn’t help that they never explained that Sara was not the Black Canary. Sara was the Canary, Laurel became the Black Canary so as to represent something different.
While all of this was happening, ‘Olicity’ became a thing, and Laurel was again pushed to the sidelines while they figured out where that was going.
And I guess it was around then that the ‘shippers’ (yep, that’s the kind of show this is now) started hating on Katie Cassidy. Not for her performance, but for her character’s role in slowing down Oliver and Felicity.
If she decided to leave the show, I get it. I suppose she wanted to go and act on a show where half the fanbase won’t hate her, a show that actually gives her something to do. She’s already shown that she can make something of nothing (‘nothing’ being the Arrow scripts), I’d love to see what she could do with actual character development.
If she was killed off without asking to be, it goes to show that the writers never knew what they were doing with Black Canary.
Laurel was the female lead, second-billed throughout, and the first person Ollie wanted to see when he came back from Lian Yu. That it came to this is so sad, for Katie Cassidy as much as anyone else.
The fact that she gave it her all right to the end is a huge credit to her, because she never owed this show a thing.
Green Arrow without Black Canary isn’t Green Arrow. Arrow without Laurel isn’t Arrow.
And I won’t watch something that claims to be Arrow. No more recaps or reviews or whatever it is I do. I’ll maybe watch the crossovers while Barry Allen is still around to reverse time.
But until then: Arrow – you have failed Laurel Lance.
