With the final season of the CW’s Arrow set to premier in just a few short weeks come word that the network has given the go-ahead – a greenlight if you will – to a new spinoff seies which would feature three of Arrow‘s female crimefighters.
According to Variety, Katie Cassidy, Katherine McNamara and Juliana Harkavy will headline the new, as-yet-untitled series playing the roles that they have originated on Arrow – Laurel Lance, Mia Smoak and Dinah Drake, collectively known as the Canaries. The characters were previously seen together in a future version of the show’s Star City setting where residents of the slum area known as The Glades had risen up to take control. An episode of Arrow‘s upcoming season will function as a backdoor pilot for the new show.
Cassidy as Laurel Lance has been with Arrow the longest, since the show first premiered back in October 2012. Laurel was a past love of Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), aka the Arrow, aka Green Arrow who would eventually take up her own crime fighting alter-ego, the Black Canary. After she was killed in action, Cassidy stayed with the show playing an evil doppelganger of Laura’s from a parallel Earth, Black Siren, who slowly found her way over to the good guys’ side.
Harkavy started on the show in 2017 as a police detective who takes over Black Canary’s role on Team Arrow after Laurel’s death. McNamara is the relative newcomer to the franchise, only joining last season in the role of Mia Smoak, the future daughter of Oliver and his love Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) in a storyline that was a flashforward twenty some years into the future.
Spearheaded by producer Greg Berlanti, Arrow has been the building block on which the CW has built a franchise of interconnected superhero shows based on DC Comics characters. The franchise now encompasses five shows – Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow and the new-this-season Batgirl.
