5 Reasons The Death Of [SPOILER] Is ‘Arrow’s Biggest Loss

4: Her Black Canary Journey Was Just Starting

Whether you think her journey into becoming the Black Canary was rushed or not, it can’t be denied that it has only been a year since she first put on that costume and became a crime fighter, which looking at as a retrospective, is a very short time. The second season dealt with Laurel being broken down after she lost Tommy Merlyn (Colin Donnell) which took her down a dark path as she became an alcoholic and addict. That journey is what eventually rebooted her character as she worked her way back to the light as she was getting closer to her comic book destiny as the Black Canary. We saw her clean herself up, going to AA meetings as she redeemed herself for her troubled year. The third season started with the “death” of Sara who was The Canary and that tragedy was the final step for Laurel to enter the world of crime fighting. Ted Grant a.k.a. Wildcat (J.R. Raminez) was introduced to the show he started training her, which is close to the comics lore as Wildcat trained the Black Canary. While this version of Laurel wasn’t a meta-human, the show eventually incorporated the Canary Cry when she went to The Flash’s Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) to upgrade her sister’s sonic weapon which he evolved into the Canary Cry.

She also had to struggle with trying to live up to what The Canary was in order to honor Sara’s memory and that was also something she eventually overcame. But when you look at all of this over the course of 2 and ½ years: it’s a very short amount of time that she has been the Black Canary. In addition, as I mentioned previously, this was a character that was heavily underutilized and not given the time she should have been given. As we saw Season 4 feature her friendship with Oliver starting to repair itself, that was really the beginning for the Green Arrow and Black Canary dynamic, even if they weren’t exploring those two possibly heading towards a romance again. Given that she is such a big character in the mythology, it feels really strange to not only see her be killed off, but also the short time that we had of her as the Black Canary. Her journey as the Black Canary was really just starting out as there was so much that they could have explored.