Why A Birds of Prey Movie Should Help Green Arrow and the Canaries Get Picked Up

In the run-up to David Ayer’s Suicide Squad in 2016, The CW quietly (or sometimes not-so-quietly) removed characters like Deadshot, Katana, and Amanda Waller from The CW’s Arrow and its related shows. While Warner Bros. TV and the producers never openly acknowledged that these changes happened at the direction of Warner Bros. corporate, most fans intuited it to be true. There were similar armwrestling matches with theatrical around characters from the Batman and Superman families of characters, many of whom played important roles on Arrow or Supergirl, and it became a kind of truism that when a character was omitted for unclear or unspecified reasons, it probably had to do with the movies.

Earlier this week, Arrow signed off the air for the final time, and there is no official word yet on the status of Green Arrow and the Canaries, a planned spinoff that would team Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy) with Black Siren (Katie Cassidy) and Mia Smoak-Queen, the Green Arrow of the year 2040 (Katherine McNamara). The backdoor pilot for the series, which aired following “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” was the second-highest-rated episode of the season (the highest being “Crisis”) for Arrow, with numbers dropping to near a series low for this week’s finale, suggesting that there is something at play in Green Arrow and the Canaries that was drawing in more than just casual Arrow fans.

One might expect those kinds of numbers to move the needle at The CW — a network that recently renewed every show in its primetime lineup that had not already been slated for cancellation. So far, that has not been the case. The other big question mark left on next year’s schedule is a planned spinoff for The 100, with new series Walker: Texas Ranger and Superman and Lois already on the boards for the 2020-2021 TV season.

There will likely be a lot of speculation between now and when Green Arrow and the Canaries gets greenlit as to exactly what the factors are that are going into The CW’s decision. Given that it’s a female-driven, future-set genre show, it may be competing for a spot with the planned The 100 spinoff, which has a pretty similar energy. It could also be held up, or sped up,. by any number of factors…but with Jurnee Smollett-Bell debuting the Black Canary on the big screen in just over a week, there are already voices in fandom asking whether Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is hurting the show’s chances of moving forward.

As with previous cases, from Batman and Superman to Deadshot and Harley Quinn, it is impossible to definitively say what, if any, impact the movies have on TV plans. Still, as long as there is no firm answer on Green Arrow and the Canaries there will be a certain level of curiosity about the timing — even if it seems unlikely that the producers were especially worried about that, since they wrote The Huntress’s daughter into the backdoor pilot.

Instead, it seems to us that the events of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” — specifically, the acknowledgment that DC’s film universe (and Ezra Miller’s take on The Flash from Suicide Squad and Justice League) is part of the same multiverse that is populated by Arrow and its sister shows — should make the idea of moving forward with a show featuring Black Canary an even more attractive prospect, not less, in the wake of a successful feature film that uses the character.

With Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) squarely in the lead role for Birds of Prey, other characters are less likely to get a lot of screen time or story dedicated to their backstory. For casual fans who are thrilled by Smolett-Bell’s take on the character, it might be good to know that Arrow has given fans various iterations of Black Canary (plus White Canary and Black Siren) over 7 seasons of storytelling. The hope is always that these movies will push the millions of exicted fans toward the comics, but it rarely seems to happen and is often viewed as a commitment that TV and film don’t represent.

With WB seemingly very bullish on Birds of Prey, then, we hope that the viability of the property and the characters is reflected with extra enthusiasm for the Green Arrow and the Canaries spinoff, which (from what we have seen, the arcs of the characters involved, and the fan enthusiasm for the show) feels like it deserves a shot.

And, hey. If this goes forward, maybe someday we can see David Ramsey’s Green Lantern with Ezra Miller’s The Flash. Which…that just feels like it needs to happen, let’s be honest.

You can check out Arrow‘s final few episodes (including the “Green Arrow and the Canaries” backdoor pilot episode) on The CW‘s website and app now, or buy the ten-episode final season on streaming video on demand platforms.