Green Arrow and the Canaries Will Feature a Name Change for Mia Smoak

The newly-released official synopsis for "Green Arrow and the Canaries" -- the penultimate episode of Arrow and the backdoor pilot for the planned spinoff starring Katherine McNamara as the daughter of Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak -- seems to give a major insight into how the events of Arrow season eight and "Crisis on Infinite Earths" shape the world of the series that The CW has planned. In the backdoor pilot, which will air the week after "Crisis on Infinite Earths" ends later this month, Mia Smoak will return to her home in 2040, but will be living in bliss and under the name "Mia Queen," rather than the violence-ridden hellhole that Star City had become in the flash-forwards that began last season.

There is no explanation for exactly why she takes the new name, but ComicBook.com has confirmed that the synopsis is accurate, and that Mia's new name is not a typo. One assumes that the relationship she built up with her father during Arrow's final season, as well as the sacrifice he made in the Crisis and maybe a little supernatural bonus the family may or may not get now that Oliver is The Spectre, are likely the causes for her change of heart.

"Given that it's the final season of Arrow, given that so much came since the end of last season, and there were a lot of questions to be answered, Beth very kindly called and filled me in," McNamara recently told ComicBook.com, of her character's relationship with Oliver. "I was so excited because that's been Mia's struggle since day one. She has this desire and this missing part of her to get to know her father, but also, in her mind, he is the reason, and his choices are the reason, that she had such a difficult life and missed out on so much. So now that he is standing right in front of her, she's really forced to confront a lot of these things in a very real way and how she handles that, it changes throughout the course of the season."

During the Crisis, Oliver repeatedly told Mia to find Felicity and her half-brother William, and to give them his love after his death. Any number of things that have happened in the eighth season of Arrow are likely to change the bleak future that we had seen up to this point, where Oliver died without knowing his daughter and Felicity left both of the kids in the custody of others for their protection. That dynamic created a hostility that drove Mia to do impressive and dangerous things, but she was driven by rage and felt unloved and abandoned.

The planned spinoff will also bring back Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) and Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy) in supporting roles, while bringing over some Arrow writing and producing talent to run the show if it goes to series. The backdoor pilot, which will air on January 21, will center on a version of Star City in 2040, where Mia finds idyllic life threatened when she has to return to action as the new Green Arrow.

You can check it out below.

STAR CITY 2040 – It's the year 2040 in Star City and Mia Queen (Katherine McNamara) has everything she could have ever wanted. However, when Laurel (Katie Cassidy) and Dinah (Juliana Harkavy) suddenly show up in her life again, things take a shocking turn and her perfect world is upended. Laurel and Dinah are tracking a kidnapping victim with direct ties to Mia and they need her help. Knowing it will change everything, Mia can't help but be a hero and she, Laurel and Dinah suit up once again to save the city. Tara Miele directed the episode written by Beth Schwartz & Marc Guggenheim & Jill Blankenship & Oscar Balderrama.

Arrow returns to the air on January 14 as part of the finale night for the five-part "Crisis on Infinite Earths" storyline. The following week, "Green Arrow and the Canaries" will air, followed by the series finale, "Fadeout," on January 28.