As much as Laurel and Oliver tried, their romance never really worked out. He cheated on her with her sister. He slept with her when she was dating his best friend, Tommy, the day before he died in the Glades quake. Pretty much every tragic event in Laurel’s life was caused by Oliver, yet on her deathbed, she confessed she’s never wanted anyone else and hoped he would find a woman to carry on the Black Canary’s legacy.
But now that Oliver has found that woman, Dinah Drake, fans are already starting to push for a romance. Shippers, either for or against, are making noise on social media and reddit even though Dinah and Oliver have known each other for all but a month AND he already has (well as of last week, had) a girlfriend. To be fair, Black Canary and Green Arrow were a pretty big power couple at certain points in the comics and we never got to see that play out in the series. But series star Stephen Amell is not convinced their comic book counterparts should affect the course of the show.
“The idea that Oliver would end up with the Black Canary being Katie Cassidy or any new iteration thereof? To me, it could happen, it could not, but it’s certainly not destined to happen or predesigned to happen,” Amell explained to Entertainment Weekly.
“There have been feuding factions in the fan base — people that call upon the comics and people that have lived in the universe of the show,” he continued. “I would say that we try to find a happy medium for both, try to live in the universe that the show has created where characters that weren’t a part of the Green Arrow mythos have become completely indispensable.”
At first, we all thought the new Black Canary’s name was Tina Boland---a name that doesn't exist in the comics. Neither do a lot of Arrow’s star characters--Diggle and Thea in particular, but also Felicity, whose character was significantly transformed for the series. But in a really big unexpected twist, Tina tells Oliver that’s just her undercover name. Her real name is in fact Dinah Drake, the first Black Canary in the comics.
“If you want to talk about Game of Thrones now existing beyond the realm of the books, that was one of my favorite seasons of television ever,” Amell concluded. “I think that it would be a pretty two-dimensional world if you simply followed with what the comic said.”
Dinah and Oliver seem to be in each other’s friendzones for now, but what do you think? Should they take their friendship to the next level? Let us know in the comments.
