After failing to convince Black Siren, aka Earth 2 Laurel, to come over to the side of angels, Oliver and the team set about trying to find a new recruit to take her place instead and become the next true Black Canary. Shooting down every candidate, seemingly for being over qualified, Curtis then brought up the urban legend of a meta-human woman who's been fighting crime across America for the last 3 years, who even has her own Canary Cry. You'd think something like this might have been brought up sooner, but such is the writing in ARROW; Elements are conjured into existence when needed and the writers needed a new Black Canary stat!
Our new Black Canary is Tina, played by Juliana Harkavy, a former undercover cop from Central City whose partner and lover was murdered in front of her at the exact moment the particle accelerator explosion (the same that gave Barry Allen his powers) turned her heartbreaking scream into her new super power. Quitting the force after burying her ex, she's since been roaming the States working her way up the food chain to find gang boss Sean Sonus who killed him. The symbolism of her cry being in a sense frozen from the moment her partner died was a brilliant touch, but her mission for vengeance felt a little cliché. Oliver offered to help her take Sonus out, who had developed his own sonic superpowers, especially upon finding out he'd been dealing drugs to the kids of Hub City, but he was mostly concerned with losing Tina to the dark side if she killed him. The fact she killed one of Sonus' men earlier seemed to be brushed over. A rooftop confrontation lead to a pretty amazing action sequence, with the Green Arrow, Wild Dog and Tina taking out a few dozen armed men and a helicopter before finally Tina got her gun on Sonus. Trying to convince her not to kill him, right after blowing up a helicopter that at very least had a pilot in it seemed strangely hypocritical, but I suppose there's is a difference between self defence and execution. Fully expecting Tina to relent, she instead blew my mind when she blew Sonus away, dropped the gun and fled. So much for her redemption it seemed. Or so I thought until she turned up later in Oliver's office asking if his offer to join Team Arrow was still open. Again, brushing the murder under the carpet, Oliver welcomed her into the fold, talking about second chances. Or was it third or fourth? Graciously accepting, Tina then reciprocated Oliver's trust in her by revealing that Tina was just an alias she used whilst undercover to protect herself and her family. Her real name? Dinah Drake. Oliver couldn't help but comment on the peculiarity of looking to find someone to take the mantle of Black Canary from his friend Dinah Laurel Lance, and finding someone with the same name and same powers. It's almost as if the writers were admitting, hey, we screwed up with that Black Canary, how about a do-over?
Diggle's sub-plot veered dangerously close to the dues ex machina evidence cache that I feared it would, but thankfully with a twist. Adrian discovered the NSA had evidence on the corrupt General that had framed Diggle, but it was gone after the General had pulled a few strings and shut the investigation down. Felicity attempted to hack her way into the NSA to retrieve the files, only to discover they had been corrupted. Receiving a message from another hacker from the dark web, Felicity set up a meeting in real life only to discover the person who got to the NSA files before her was a Felicity super fan, oddly enough, reminding me very much of Felicity herself back in season one. Handing over the info without asking for anything in return, the young woman merely wondered if Felicity would get back in the hacktivist game that she essentially started all those years ago in college. Upon checking the memory stick for the NSA files pertinent to Diggle's case, Felicity discovered a wealth of other info that made her eyes light up. What's in the future for Felicity? Did she see evidence that could help Team Arrow, or could this new found power lead her down a path away from the team towards something more sinister? Either way, Diggle was exonerated, so should be back in play next episode.
In the flashbacks, Talia, who noticeable hasn't introduced herself as an Al Ghul yet, baited Oliver into going after an associate of Konstantin Kovar's, specifically a trafficker of young girls. After pistol-whipping the guy to death, Oliver realised Talia had tricked him into such action, but questioned why. Talia revealed that she recognised that Oliver had been tutored by one of her own students, Yao Fei, and had been keeping an eye on him for some time. She believed a man of his talents shouldn't be wasted and wanted to take him under her wing, to focus that dark part of him towards a loftier goal. For him to become someone else, something else, mirroring what Oliver has been telling us in the show's opening ever since season one. Donning the original “hood” costume for the first time, with Talia pointing out that Oliver's father left him a list of targets to exact revenge on, it appears the flashbacks have entered their endgame as Oliver's 5 years of hell are about to come to close and his story comes full circle.
Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer -- Click to read Nick's posts
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