‘Arrow’ season 5: On Juliana Harkavy, Dinah Drake, and the implications

Tonight on “Arrow,” the CW series chose to drop what was clearly one of the biggest bombs of the season, even more so in our mind than “Laurel Lance” showing up in the winter finale. (We knew that Katie Cassidy was going to be returning to the show previously.)

Going into “Second Chances,” we certainly did anticipate that Tina Boland was going to be in consideration to be the new Black Canary. However, what we did not expect was for the character, played by Juliana Harkavy, to have such a close connection to the comic-book lore. Tina was simply a code name for Dinah Drake, who was the original Black Canary in the comics so many years ago. Of course, what makes this so interesting is that on Earth-2 Dinah Drake was the mother of Dinah Laurel Lance.

Clearly, the show’s taking a few liberties here, but they wanted to come up with something that felt like a nice callback to the comics while also at the same time standing on its own two feet. It’s an interesting twist that further legitimizes Boland as the new Black Canary if she stays — though we may still need her to get a new costume and the mask before we’re ready to call her the Canary for sure.

If there is one major cause for concern right now in the aftermath of this twist, it’s the simple fact that there are so many characters now on the show that some are getting reasonably left out. Diggle’s been very quiet thanks to his arrests, whereas both Thea and Captain Lance have been missing in action entirely over the past couple of episodes. We know that Lance will be back sooner rather than alter, but it’s not entirely clear when Thea is going to be coming back.

Ultimately, we’re excited to give Dinah a chance. Harkavy gave a great performance in her first episode, and we certainly know that she has the crime-fighting skills to qualify for the role.

If you missed it, head over here to read our review of Wednesday night’s new episode in full. Also, let us know what you think about the twist in the comments! (Photo: The CW.)