The Black Canary has returned to Arrow, and the latest incarnation is unlike any other Canary to hit the streets of Star City so far. Dinah Drake is actually a metahuman with a Canary Cry, and the inclusion of a superpowered hero on Team Arrow will change the scale of how the good guys can fight crime. The big question now is whether she is too much of a wild card to stand with Team Arrow against the likes of Prometheus. Actor David Ramsey plays original Team Arrow member John Diggle, and he recently spoke to CinemaBlend about how the new Black Canary will begin her life in Star City, saying this:
She's been through a heck of an experience with losing her partner/lover and living with these powers for however long she's been living since the particle accelerator. So she's just now really adjusting, she's letting go of some of that pain, and reaching out with some of that pain.
Dinah Drake was originally a cop in Central City, but she left the life of official law and order behind after the death of her partner, and she was wreaking havoc on the bad guys of Hub City when Team Arrow found her. It took the entire episode for Oliver to convince Dinah to uproot her life and join their cause in Star City, and she's clearly not going to be as easily cowed by Oliver as the other team newbies were when they joined. She isn't going to open herself up emotionally at the drop of a hat.
If Dinah opens up and reaches out at the wrong time, she could become a major liability for Team Arrow. We already saw earlier this season that Prometheus was able to play on Evelyn's vulnerabilities and recruit her; it's possible that he could find Dinah's weak spot and turn her against her new teammates. Even if she doesn't necessarily join Prometheus' cause, he could certainly do something to encourage her to go rogue, and her abilities as a metahuman mean that a rogue Black Canary would be big trouble for any who get in her way.
David Ramsey elaborated on Dinah's difficult position in Team Arrow, telling me this about her potential susceptibility moving forward:
Clearly she - if you want to call a weak link - is the weak link only by virtue of her being the newest link and kind of unsettled... So if there's anyone who could be the most influential under Prometheus' power, it would be her... But we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. We're not going to see that immediately, if it does happen. Her first step will be a sincere adjustment to the team.
No matter how Oliver and Co. welcome Dinah, she'll still be the new kid in school. Who can blame her if she can't immediately settle into the team? David Ramsey also teased that Diggle will do what he can to ease her transition in the same way that he did with Wild Dog, but that may not be enough with a supervillain like Prometheus on the loose.
The Dinah we've seen so far is a strong-willed character who has a distinct sense of right vs. wrong that transcends the rules of law and order; if she goes off the straight and narrow in Star City, Oliver and Co. will have a significantly harder time stopping her than they did Evelyn. After all, Evelyn was a teenage girl with a bow and arrows. Dinah Drake is the metahuman Black Canary, complete with Canary Cry. We'll have to wait and see if Dinah causes trouble for Oliver and Team Arrow in the rest of Season 5. It sounds like she has the best intentions with her decision to make the move to Star City; we can't know just yet if those intentions will shift the longer she stays.
Tune in to Arrow on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW to see what's next for the new Black Canary, and don't forget to check out our midseason TV premiere schedule.
