Green Arrow fans have seen a few TV versions come and go, none of which quite got him right. Billionaire playboy Oliver Queen returned home after being presumed dead and waged a war on crime as a masked vigilante in Arrow, which debuted on the CW October 10th, 2012. But there was a catch. At the time, there was a rule at Warner Bros.: No Batman on television. The CW had a clever loophole. Arrow lasted eight seasons and built an entire television universe but also turned Green Arrow into Batman with a bow and arrow. The show even featured Batman villains Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Assassins. It wasn’t even the first CW Green Arrow. Justin Hartley appeared as a much more charming Oliver Queen on Smallville, which debuted on The WB in 2006 and ran its finale on The CW. Neither series captured the iconic Green Arrow/Black Canary romance, but maybe DC’s ready to get it right.
DC Studios is developing a Green Arrow and Black Canary series, according to a report from Fortress of DC. Following the success of Lanterns, which introduced Hal Jordan and John Stewart into the franchise, Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance may be headed to James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU. There’s been no official word on whether HBO or DC Studios will produce the show. There’s also no known information on a creative team. But the pairing would give the DCU a chance to investigate one of the longest-running relationships in superhero comic book history.
We are hearing that a project featuring Green Arrow and Black Canary is in early development—likely a series 
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Green Arrow debuted in 1941’s More Fun Comics #73, while Black Canary appeared in 1947’s Flash Comics #86. Their romance began after Dinah joined the Justice League in the late ‘60s and developed throughout the 1970s, around the time Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams reimagined Oliver as a socially conscious, politically vocal hero. The couple finally tied the knot in 2007. One of their best adaptations was Bruce Timm’s Justice League Unlimited. In the 2005 episode “Double Date,” written by Gail Simone, Green Arrow, voiced by Kin Shriner, and Black Canary, played by Firefly and Deadpool star Morena Baccarin, fight Huntress and the Question over a mobster. It’s an episode that plays like a superhero double date gone horribly wrong as Oliver and Dinah flirt and argue their way through the adventure. The full episode is available for free on Tubi. There was an odd cartoon produced for DC Nation that featured the pair as rivals and surprisingly captures the couple’s energy perfectly:
Give Stephen Amell credit for carrying Arrow for eight seasons, but he never really got to play Ollie versus Oliver Queen. The wisecracking, outspoken billionaire with a Robin Hood complex turned into a brooding Batman replacement. Even Felicity Smoak, played by Emily Bett Rickards, was essentially Barbara Gordon’s Oracle, including a storyline that put her in a wheelchair. Of course, Felicity was so ridiculously charming that the writers abandoned one of DC’s most iconic romances to pair her with Oliver. Felicity Smoak, you are so damn charming!
Arguably, the Arrowverse did an even greater disservice to Black Canary. We love Caity Lotz as Sara Lance, especially after she became White Canary on Legends of Tomorrow. But Sara was no Dinah Lance. Katie Cassidy was Laurel Lance, who eventually became Black Canary before the show killed her off. Cassidy and Amell never quite had the same chemistry as the Ollie and Dinah we have loved for decades. The show’s third attempt, Dinah Drake, played by Juliana Harkavy, gave us the hero, but not the backstory that made her relationship with Green Arrow so important. There was an attempt at Green Arrow and the Canaries series at the CW, but that was mercifully killed. The Birds of Prey movie gave us an accurate Black Canary, but no Green Arrow.
The DCU can make up for that mistake. We need an Ollie who tells terrible jokes, uses absurd trick arrows, and is unafraid to call Batman a fascist. We need a Dinah who is his equal, can challenge him, and still loves him. We’ve had eight seasons of Green Arrow pretending to be Batman. Let fans finally have the most endearing relationship in DC. Then once the show gets its legs, maybe Ollie and John Stewart can go on a little road trip across America.
