Arrow: Goodbye, Laurel Lance

Goodbye, Laurel Lance. We’re going to miss you.

Not the real you, no. Not really. We’re going to miss the possibility of you, the promise. We’re going to miss the kickass Black Canary with a heart of the comics, not the women the writers barely knew how to handle. But we’re going to miss you nonetheless.

When Arrow started, we were on your side. Yes, Oliver was the hero, but you were the wronged party. The whole premise of the show made it hard to root for him and easy to root for you. Or, at least, we thought so.

Maybe it’s that he got the benefit of friends – Diggle first and Felicity later, to soften him up, to give us another glimpse of the man he could be. Maybe it’s that you were understandably mad and bitter and without any chance to explore that, we were just left with a woman who said one thing and then did another. Or perhaps the problem didn’t start then – maybe it was later, when the show moved away from the Oliver/Laurel romance. Maybe it wasn’t you, maybe it was them.

It probably was. Season 1 Laurel was someone we didn’t love, but also didn’t hate. If anything, she was someone we were rooting for. Season 2 Laurel could still have been that, except giving such a complex arc to a secondary character you don’t mean to provide with that much screen time was a mistake. It’s hard to sympathize with Laurel the addict when you only get to see the results and not the pain that pushed her in that direction.

Oliver was as – if not more – lost in Season 1 than Laurel was in Season 2. And yet, Oliver was given reasons, backstory, and much more importantly, a support group. Laurel was thrown problem after problem and never allowed to show the kind of vulnerability that would have made us empathize with her.

And, in a way, that’s understandable. Arrow is the Oliver Queen show, not the Laurel Lance one. For as much as the Black Canary has always been an important part of the Green Arrow story, she’s is not the whole story. However, it remains completely baffling to me that this show could so mis-handle such a key character. It’s like without romance they simply had no idea how to write for her – and it showed.

Season 3 was when it all came to head. It was supposed to be the season of Laurel, the time, at last, for the Black Canary to emerge. And though the writers stuck to the plan, two decisions they made earlier in the show ended up damming this arc before it began:

Namely, Sara and Tommy.

When Sara was first introduced, it was obvious she was there as the sacrificial lamb in Laurel’s path towards being a hero. And, yet, for reasons that we have never been able to understand – maybe because she was a blank slate or perhaps because she had her own darkness to contend with – Sara was much easier to like than Laurel.

When she acted badly, we forgave her, because, she came with a traumatic past. When she was nice, you loved her, for that same reason. In a way, by writing Sara the way they did, the writers damned Laurel even more.

And then there’s Tommy. He wasn’t sacrificed to further Laurel’s journey, no. He was sacrificed to further Oliver’s. But his death had a huge impact on Laurel as well. It both crushed any possibility of romance between her and Oliver, and it left her on the fringes of every storyline – with only one other regular character to interact with regularly, her father.

There were other, possibly better ways to kill the Lauriver romance, and yet the writers too this one. They took it because it was easy, because it was simple, and because it was a turning point in Oliver’s journey towards the Green Arrow. They probably didn’t think of Laurel at all when they made this decision – but they should have.

Season 4 brought us a better version of the Black Canary – stronger, a better fighter, and yet, Season 4 also underscored the problem with Laurel Lance, a problem the writers themselves had been responsible for creating. She was the Black Canary, yes, but nothing else. Lawyer-Laurel was a thing of the past, and Laurel the sister and Laurel the daughter appeared only sparingly.

Even when she appeared, though, she was painted in an unfavorable light. Sara needed to be resurrected, fine, but Laurel didn’t need to come off as out-of-touch and irrational while doing so. In the end, even while playing the role the writers most liked her in – as a sister – the writing failed Laurel Lance over and over again.

At some point, when you have a character like this, it’s better to call it quits. No actor wants to be stuck playing a role that has no direction, and no show wants to be stuck with a character they can’t find a use for. And that’s sad, but ultimately, better, for the character and the actress. They’re both free to go on to better things – and in a way, so is Arrow.

Laurel Lance was a beautiful promise that Arrow never truly knew how to fulfill. Now that promise is over. Maybe it can be resurrected later, in the movies, or in her own TV show, but for now, the journey of the Black Canary is finished. And we will miss what she could have been.

We just won’t miss her.

Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

Lissete Lanuza Sáenz

Lawyer. Writer. Columnist. Geek. Falls in madly in love with fictional characters. Hates the color yellow, misogyny, and people who are late. Can always be found with a book. Watches an absurd amount of TV every week, often, while eating coffee ice cream. She has no regrets. You can check out her blog here: Absurday. Lissete is a senior writer for Tell-Tale TV. Follow @lizziethat