New Delhi
The 'Arrowverse' isn't expanding on the smaller screen. The latest news suggests that the CW is not moving forward with "Green Arrow and the Canaries", its planned spin-off from the popular superhero series "Arrow".
The show was announced in September 2019, six months after it was revealed that "Arrow" would end with the eighth season. A backdoor pilot aired in January 2020 as part of 'Arrow' season 8, titled 'Green Arrow & The Canaries' and drew a strong 890,000 viewers - more than the next week's series finale, making it the second-highest rated episode of the season after the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover episode from the week prior.
The episode was set two decades after the end of the original show. It starred Katherine McNamara as Mia Smoak, Katie Cassidy as Laurel Lance, and Juliana Harkavy as Dinah Drake. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Arrow" showrunner Beth Schwartz and Marc Guggenheim penned the script for "Green Arrow and the Canaries". Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Schwartz, Guggenheim, Jill Blankenship and Oscar Balderrama were all executive producers on the project.
Arrowverse executive producer Marc Guggenheim told TVLine last spring, adding, "And I do think we owe answers to a lot of those moments and questions.â Pondering a future without the new series, Guggenheim confessed, "My instinct would be to try to answer those questions in the form of, like, a comic book tie-in â which is not to say that it couldnât be done on the other shows.â
Still, the producer said things can get tricky âwhen youâre dealing with another time period⦠the only show that could handle that or really deal with those questions is Legends [of Tomorrow]." But he hedged on whether even that idea could work, calling it âa tricky bit of business since the tonal mashup of Legends and Canaries is so very different."
As for the question of how Black Canary winds up in the future, Guggenheim insisted that the Arrow finale scene of Dinah Drake leaving for Metropolis "does jibe" with her later appearance in the future, âgiven the backstory that weâve worked out for Dinah that we havenât revealed to you yet. She doesnât get on that motorcycle and ⦠immediately ends up in the future."