The seemingly ever-expanding Arrowverse will not grow to include Green Arrow and the Canaries, with The CW network announcing it is no longer moving forward with the anticipated Arrow spinoff. It's been almost a full year since the Canaries story was launched as a "backdoor pilot" planted into the second-to-last episode of Arrow on January 21, 2020. The series would have returned to Star City circa the year 2040, where Oliver Queen's daughter Mia Smoak (actress Katherine McNamara) is the new Green Arrow and meets up with a time-traveling Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) and Dinah Drake, a.k.a. Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy).
The original "Green Arrow and the Canaries" episode of Arrow drew a strong 890,000 viewers - more than the next week's series finale, making it the second-highest rated episode of the season after the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover episode from the week prior. Since then, fans have been waiting patiently for some burning questions to be answered, such as the mystery of who kidnapped Mia's brother William, and just how 2020's Black Canary, last seen headed to Metropolis on her motorcycle, instead ended up 20 years in the future.
But those answers will have to wait, with TVLine reporting the news that CW has cancelled Green Arrow and the Canaries while it was still in pre-production. “There are burning questions,” Arrowverse executive producer Marc Guggenheim told the site last spring, adding, "And I do think we owe answers to a lot of those moments and questions.” Pondering a future without the new series, Guggenheim confessed, "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.”
Still, the producer said things can get tricky “when you’re dealing with another time period… the only show that could handle that or really deal with those questions is Legends [of Tomorrow]." But he hedged on whether even that idea could work, calling it “a tricky bit of business, since the tonal mashup of Legends and Canaries is so very different." As for the question of how Black Canary winds up in the future, Guggenheim insisted that the Arrow finale scene of Dinah Drake leaving for Metropolis "does jibe" with her later appearance in the future, “given the backstory that we’ve worked out for Dinah that we haven’t revealed to you yet. She doesn’t get on that motorcycle and … immediately end up in the future."
While it's not clear why the CW passed on Green Arrow and the Canaries, what is clear is that the network - and viewers - may be missing out on a great opportunity for a new woman-centered superhero series that could also carry on the legacy of the Arrowverse's original, flagship series. With Supergirl entering its final season and Batwoman replacing its lead actress, there was an opening for this team of strong female heroes to save the day and fill the void left by both the departing Supergirl and the already-gone Arrow. Let's hope DC, CW, and the creative forces behind the Arrowverse have some new heroines ready to take flight.
Source: TVLine
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January 09, 2021 at 06:18AM
