Spoilers Arrow - Season 5

[Christopher]

This was a... mixed... episode. Okay, the road trip to Hub City was interesting, and the tie-in to the Central City/metahuman backstory and Captain Singh (and a literal blink-and-you-miss-it Flash cameo) was cute. But these shows are just so casual about killing sometimes. For superheroes, these guys are amazingly willing to forgive actual premeditated murder as long as it's committed by their friends and allies. And Green Arrow didn't exactly have a lot of moral authority to say "Don't become a killer" when he'd just blown up a freaking helicopter 20 seconds earlier. This would've been a better story with less gratuitous violence.

Other than that, the new Canary has promise -- and it looks like she's meant to be a keeper, given what her real name turned out to be. We finally have a Black Canary who goes by Dinah. (I was a little confused, because I thought that Dinah Drake was Laurel's mother's maiden name. But apparently not. Though as it happens, Laurel's mother Dinah lives in Central City.)

I'm getting so tired of seeing every single rooftop action scene lately take place on the exact same rooftop helipad (the Canada Post Main Office) with the same skyline in the background, with the Vancouver Lookout tower and the distinctive stadium roof. And frequently in whole different cities or even different Earths. I wish they'd at least digitally erase the Lookout tower or the stadium from the background of some of these scenes.

 

[DigificWriter]

@Christopher: Laurel and Sara's mother's maiden name was never actually mentioned/shown onscreen. It was just assumed that it was Drake given what information we had about her character at the time.

Personally, I really enjoyed tonight's episode, especially the recruitment of Tina/Dinah and the way that it brought in connections to Tobias Church and The Flash. It was also nice to see more of the Rene/Curtis friendship dynamic developed.

Talia's introduction in the flashbacks was also neat, as was the revelation that she's the one responsible for prompting Oliver to actually fulfill his father's mission for him.

I had been a fan of the Laurel Lance character as depicted on Arrow from her very first appearance and was as excited as anybody to see her finally take on the Black Canary moniker in Season 3, but I also have no problems whatsoever with the introduction of Juliana Harkavy's Tina Boland/Dinah Drake as the new Black Canary, largely because her character is so interesting and cool and so very different from either of our previous Black Canaries.

I really didn't care all that much about the Diggle subplot, although I did like that hacker girl that Felicity met and am interested to see where this whole Helix thing ends up going.

I'm giving this episode a 9 out of 10 largely because of how cool I found the Black Canary Hunt parts of the episode, and because of how much I really like Tina/Dinah.

 

[tomalak301]

I feel like this episode was rewarding me for binge watching the series for the last two months. That's one of the best episodes I've seen in a long long time. Both present day and flashbacks feel like things are coming together and that was a great intro to Black Canery. I knew about the Dinah thing but I'm assuming Dinah Drake is Black Canery in the comics? Nonthaless, that was a great ending.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ Dinah Drake was the original pre-Crisis Black Canary, but they eventually introduced the Laurel character as her daughter and the second Black Canary.

Post-Flashpoint, they rebooted the Laurel Lance version of the character as Dinah Laurel Drake (eventually having her marry a man named Kurt Lance, making her Dinah Laurel Drake-Lance).

 

[tomalak301]

@DigificWriter

Thanks for the synopsis. That's a long name though.

 

[Christopher]

There never was a "Laurel Lance" per se in the comics. The original Black Canary, Dinah Drake (created by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino), was introduced in 1947 as a villain and soon switched sides and got her own series due to her popularity with readers. She went on to join the Justice Society. When the '60s comics revived the JSA as Earth-2 characters, it was revealed that Dinah had married her longtime love interest Larry Lance. She eventually migrated to Earth-1 after Larry died and became a frequent Green Arrow guest character and love interest. In the '80s, the current Black Canary was retconned as Dinah Laurel Lance, the daughter of the original BC, Dinah Drake Lance (and the Earth-1/Earth-2 stuff was dropped after Crisis on Infinite Earths). That lasted until The New 52.

I was never really clear why Arrow decided to refer to Dinah Lance by her middle name; maybe they thought Dinah was an old-fashioned name. But clearly they've changed their minds by now.

It's weird, though, that we've never managed to get a Dinah Lance Black Canary in live action. The Birds of Prey TV series included a Dinah, but she was Dinah Redmond, a metahuman psychic/telekinetic who was the biological daughter of Caroline Lance, the retired, sonic-screaming superhero called Black Canary. And in Arrow we've had Sara Lance as the Canary/White Canary, (Dinah) Laurel Lance as Black Canary, and now apparently Dinah Drake as Black Canary II.

 

[Jax]

Olly really is going to get intro trouble one day for being so throwaway with his "secret" identity. Also can I just say the hacker girl who met Felicity so needs to return because I did try to google more about this Helix group she mentioned but didn't get too much back is this a known DC property or just for Arrow show? Also Olly blew up a Helicopter over a city? secondary causalities anyone, the writers need to think about the action sometimes.

Olly doesn't get to do his speech to stop people killing others if he does and most his team (Diggle and Wilddog shoot ppl with guns ffs)

 

[dahj]

I really liked the episode, the road trip was fun and the new Canary seems promising.
She's tough, and she's already been kicking ass for 3 years and with police training prior she should already be one of the stronger people on the team, but they could have just gone and made her Oliver's equal in skill like the comics Black Canary is.
It's a mighty fine coincidence she's Dinah Drake, but I like it and am just gonna roll with it

Talia was great... calm, cool, awesome and I hope we see more of her. Maybe some backstory, why she left the League, what's she been doing(training heroes and sending them on their way?) and I really, really hope she's not Prometheus because Arrow has borrowed enough from the The Dark Knight trilogy.

Diggle is free, though that went surprisingly smooth and confrontationless. That was a storyline that was kinda pointless and underwhelming after John learned to live with what he did, but I'm still surprised they've wrapped it up so quickly.

Both the Rene/Curtis and Rory/Felicity interactions were cool, nice to see the team bonding.
Glad to see Felicity will be getting something to do as well, that Pandora file seems ominous.

I'm liking the tiny crossovers this week, it's fun they're doing this

Oh, where's Thea?

It's weird, though, that we've never managed to get a Dinah Lance Black Canary in live action.

Maybe she'll eventually marry Sara and become Dinah Lance

 

[tomalak301]

I miss Thea and Quintin too. I hope they come back soon.

 

[Gryffindorian]

It's interesting to see the recent Arrowverse episodes this week have "mini-crossovers" or cross-references to other Berlanti shows, e.g., Flash/Supergirl, Arrow/Flash, Legends/Flash (if you count the Black Flash as being part of Barry's story). I'd like to see more of this in future episodes, so there's more cohesion in Arrowverse storytelling.

Sometimes I feel the flashback scenes are redundant to the episode. Earlier on Ollie was telling Tina/Dinah that she was afraid, running away from herself, from what she had become. Then later we heard the same dialogue between Talia and flashback-Ollie. "You're running away from what you've become" (I'm paraphrasing.) But I liked how last night's flashbacks said more about Ollie becoming the vigilante he is than any other flashbacks had touched on. Talia reminded Ollie of what his father had asked of him (to go after the people in "Starling" City whose names were written on his late father's book) instead of chasing after people like Kovar, et al. Ollie said, "There's a monster inside me," to which Talia replied, "But you are not that monster. That's why you need to be someone else, something else."

As for the violence, I noticed there were so many gun shootings and killings, especially Mad Dog, although that level of violence is hardly new to the series. At least Mr. Terrific's devices and gadgets aren't meant to kill anyone.

 

[dahj]

As for the violence, I noticed there were so many gun shootings and killings

I think the idea is they're still shooting them in non-lethal ways, mostly.

Those guys in the chopper, they're baked though.
But the chopper was full of drugs, so they probably died happy?

 

[Nerys Myk]

I did try to google more about this Helix group she mentioned but didn't get too much back is this a known DC property or just for Arrow show?

There is a supervillain team called Helix who fought Infinity Inc. Co-created by Todd McFarland. DEO chief Mr. Bones was a member. DC also had a SF imprint called Helix.

 

[dahj]

Supervillains, eh?
So is mini Felicity actually who she says she is, or is she working some scheme for Prometheus?

 

[Christopher]

So is mini Felicity actually who she says she is, or is she working some scheme for Prometheus?

I was half-expecting Felicity's computers to get infected with some kind of Trojan horse when she plugged in that thumb drive. Realistically, a hacker of Felicity's caliber would have all sorts of firewalls and malware protections, but of course this is TV, where computers are basically magic and programmers are as brilliant or stupid as the plot demands.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Also can I just say the hacker girl who met Felicity so needs to return because

Kacey Rohl, was also in an episode of The Magicians yesterday at almost nearly the exact same time that she was on Arrow, which is quite confusing since Kacey seems to "act" like at least two completely different people, who kinda look alike a little.

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[dahj]

I was half-expecting Felicity's computers to get infected with some kind of Trojan horse when she plugged in that thumb drive.

Come to think of it, both Felicity and Oliver were a bit too trusting of mini Felicity and another Dinah when they know Prometheus is out there playing exactly this kind of mind games.

 

[Reverend]

I was half-expecting Felicity's computers to get infected with some kind of Trojan horse when she plugged in that thumb drive. Realistically, a hacker of Felicity's caliber would have all sorts of firewalls and malware protections, but of course this is TV, where computers are basically magic and programmers are as brilliant or stupid as the plot demands.

I had a similar thought. Honestly, the simple precaution of an air gapped laptop in a Faraday-cage would have been enough for me. But I suppose there's no point in doing that from a dramatic standpoint unless they want to intentionally play up suspicion, which doesn't appear to be the intent here.

 

[dahj]

A reminder that this is a show where they wirelessly downloaded(?) a super advanced processor and then built it(??) in the arrow cave to help them hack thousands of nukes in the air that are all connected to the internet(???)

 

[Christopher]

You know, I just realized... If Curtis can make a few more of those portable metahuman-power dampers and provide them to Team Flash, it'd make their job a whole lot easier. Maybe the Legends too, though I'm not sure if Eobard Thawne is a metahuman or something else. I doubt it'll actually happen, since it might make it too easy for them to stop their foes, but that would raise the question, why the heck not?

 

[dahj]

metahuman-power dampers

I think these are just some sort of sonic dampeners, not general meta ability ones.