Arrow: Birds of Prey Easter Eggs and DC Comics References

Tonight's episode of Arrow, just concluded on The CW, was a pretty DC Comics-heavy one. There was The Huntress, meeting up with Black Canary for the first time, references to Intergang (apparently), a bunch of callbacks, some inside jokes, Kate Spencer and Gail Simone. Let's look at the tape, shall we?

Huntress A member, along with other female heroes like Black Canary, Oracle and Catwoman, of the Birds of Prey. Last year, Oliver trained Helena Bertinelli to be a deadly vigilante...but she didn't have the hero's journey that he's been having and has remained deadly and dangerous. We won't go into too much depth since she appeared last season and people probably know her, but it's worth noting that while she's mainly a Batman character in the comics, her relationship with Oliver here is very similar to the one she had with Batman in the post-Crisis era; she emulates him, but also frustrates him with her willingness to kill. Hugo Manheim Bruno Manheim is the underboss to Boss Moxie, of Intergang fame. In the comics, he's got connections to a weapons plot in Kahndaq, where the Suicide Squad foiled a weapons plot in last week's episode. Hugo, as far as I know, isn't a person who exists in the comics, but it's hard to imagine that a gangster named Manheim isn't an intentional connection being created here -- especially one with ties to that one, specific fictional DC Universe locale.

Adam Donner We've covered this before, but District Attorney Adam Donner is named for Richard Donner, director of Superman: The Movie. He's pictured at left in conversation with The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan. Seems as though this will be his last appearance, or one of them. Will he turn up working for Brother Blood? Or Amanda Waller? Neither is totally out of the question, considering that he's a disgraced ex-D.A. whose last major issue was doing drugs live on the air. "Don't call me Speedy."

In the comics, Roy Harper started his career as Speedy. During that point in his career, he first encountered Deathstroke the Terminator, who served first as a villain for the Teen Titans. He's not going to keep the role in the Arrowverse, though. "We want to keep inching Roy towards an Arsenal place," Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim told us in a recent meeting with reporters. "One of the runnings gags is that he keeps getting called Speedy and says, 'I don't like that nickname. Come up with another nickname for me.' When the time is right, eventually the nickname that will stick will be Arsenal, but the time has to be right." "Kid Gloves" Diggle says, "Non-lethal arrows? It's not like you to play with kid gloves." While the course of this season has seen Oliver work harder and harder not to kill anyone, he's generally steered mostly clear of his trick arrows except in special circumstances. That said, it's difficult not to wonder whether that was a reference to the famed boxing-glove arrow that fans keep expecting to show up in the background somewhere. Vodka "The guy from the private party said we stocked the wrong vodka," the waitress tells Thea. Slade, as we've seen, has a very particular taste in alcohol so my first thought was that it was going to be him in the bar -- but it turned out to be  just a ploy to get Thea away from the crowd. More lies in the family Sara has to lie to Laurel in order to keep her secret identity. This is a recurring motif. Moira lies to everyone; Oliver lies to everyone; Roy has to lie to Thea. It's a recurring motif this season, and something that will likely come to a head in a big way starting next week, when Thea is in Slade's custody. After having said that more people would learn Oliver's secret identity this season, Marc Guggenheim teased in a recent interview, "I will say that Thea learns something pretty massive in Episode 18, and it will cause a tectonic shift in her relationship with Oliver." He added, "She's in phsyical danger and emotional danger and sort of the Sword of Damocles that's hanging over her in episode 18 is a double-edged words, both physical and emotional. And I can guarantee that by the end of 18, one of those edges is going to cut her."

Canary scream It's been so long since we saw Sara's scream device that it seems worth mentioning again. It's a high-tech equivalent of what is, in the comics, a flat-out super power…but it works well in the context of the Arrow universe, and its use here was unexpected not becuase it wasn't similar to its previous appearance in "Broken Dolls" but because it had been so long that we half-forgot she had the thing. "Gail Street and Simone" That's a heck of a hat tip to longtime Birds of Prey writer Gail Simone. And considering her contribution to the Birds mythology, it's well-deserved. Kate Spencer District Attorney Kate Spencer returns for another cameo. In the comics, of course, Kate was created by Marc Andreyko and Jesus Saiz and is best known for her time as Manhunter. Working as a prosecutor, she got tired of watching super-criminals slip through the cracks in the system, stole a bunch of superheroes' and supervillain's tools from the evidence locker to fashion herself a hugely-functional costume, and became a Huntress-like vigilante who killed the bad guys. So...kind of an ideal week to have her around, with everyone debating and discussing Huntress's ethics so much.