Arrow: 10 Ways That Season 3 Went Wrong

For fans of the Green Arrow comics, the name Dinah Laurel Lance is immediately recognizable as an individual to wear the mask of the Black Canary. So, when a woman by that name was introduced on Arrow as the female lead, many such fans assumed that she would be hitting the streets as a vigilante in no time.

For everybody else, the idea that Laurel Lance, Esq. could ever become a vigilante on par with Oliver’s Arrow was absurd. The show’s incarnation of the character was a lawyer whose combat training consisted of self-defense classes. By Season 3, she was 30 years old. It was surely too late for Laurel Lance as Black Canary.

Or so it had seemed.

The first episode of Season 3 saw the death of Canary 1.0 Sara Lance. In the third, Laurel sought out the help of a boxer. By the end of the tenth, Laurel was bedecked in leather, wearing a mask, and delivering quips as she smacked thugs around. The tenth episode.

It should have taken longer than seven episodes for all of the custom buckles for her suit to arrive in the mail. Rushing Laurel into an effective Black Canary marginalized the journeys of Oliver and Sara as vigilantes, strained suspensions of disbelief to the breaking point, and made no sense within the narrative.