DC Reveals Red Canary’s Identity

DC’s Lazarus Planet event is now underway, throwing a number of heroes and villains from the publisher’s canon into uncharted territory. In addition to franchise staples like Batman, Robin, and Martian Manhunter, the event also features some of DC’s newer fan-favorites — including Red Canary. The heroine, who was introduced amid last year’s Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths as a new legacy character following in the footsteps of Dinah Lance / Black Canary, has appeared in quite a few stories since her initial debut. In this week’s Lazarus Planet installment, we got the best inkling yet of her true identity. Spoilers for the “Red Canary” story in Lazarus Planet: Next Evolution #1 by Deliah S. Dawson, Brandt & Stein, and Troy Peteri below! Only look if you want to know!

The Red Canary introduces us to a bit more of the titular character’s everyday life — as had been hinted in previous stories, she is a college student living in Seattle, Washington. As she skips a day of college to go fight Lazarus-induced monsters in Chinatown alongside Derek James / Sideways, we get even more hints about her life. She feels like she’s not living up to the expectations of her “Straight-A Family”, a set of parents and an older brother named Leo, and would much rather fight crime and play music like her idol. Through a passive-aggressive note from her college roommate, we also learn her first name — Sienna.

Could Red Canary be DC’s Sin Lance?

When Red Canary was initially introduced, theories swirled as to whether or not she could secretly be a character with existing ties to the Green Arrow family. One theory, that she is the further-grown-up version of Roy Harper / Arsenal’s daughter, Lian Harper, is definitely debunked by this story (as well as both characters appearing on the cover for the upcoming Green Arrow #1). Another possibility has been that Red Canary could be the long-awaited return of Sin Lance — and oddly enough, the text of this story could very well support that.

Created by Gail Simone and Paulo Siqueria in 2006’s Birds of Prey #92, Sin is a young girl who enters Dinah’s orbit at a vicious martial arts camp in Asia, which Dinah has enrolled in after swapping lives with Lady Shiva for a year. After Dinah learns that Sin is being trained to be the next Lady Shiva, she helps her escape the camp and essentially becomes her mother figure. The two of them live in Metropolis together, and Dinah quits the Birds of Prey so she can better protect Sin. In 2007’s Black Canary miniseries, Dinah and the Green Arrow family battle with the League of Assassins over Sin’s future, as the latter group wants to kidnap her and make her their new leader. To end the conflict, Oliver Queen / Green Arrow fakes Sin’s death and hides her away in a monastery, where Dinah visits her from time to time.

Of course, the DC continuity has been rebooted multiple times over since Sin last appeared or was even acknowledged in the comics, leaving the nature of her current history — as well as her history with Dinah — a little nebulous. Whether or not Sin and Dinah’s pre-Flashpoint past still exists in this nebulous new timeline, it would be one heck of a reveal that she is now back in the canon under the (let’s be honest, similar-sounding name of) Sienna. Given the ways that other sidekicks of the Green Arrow family have aged since the mid-2000s, Sin would probably be a college-age young woman in the present day anyway, so maybe Sienna’s family adopted her from the monastery and raised her to believe that she was their biological daughter. Or maybe this is just a new way to introduce Sin without the baggage of the previous storylines, an approach that has certainly been used on other sidekicks over the years. While it’s wonderful to see Black Canary get a legacy character regardless, the chance to possibly connect a decades-long storyline of hers in the process would be something special.

What do you think of the latest revelations about Red Canary? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!