The CW Cancels An Anticipated Superhero Show Without Making It
After a backdoor pilot in the last season of Arrow, The CW has decided to not pick up the Green Arrow & the Canaries spinoff.
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In Arrow’s last season, the penultimate episode, entitled “Green Arrow & the Canaries,” was aired as a backdoor pilot for a potential spinoff. Almost a year after that episode aired, The CW has announced that they will not be picking up the Green Arrow and the Canaries spinoff series for their lineup.
Back in May, the CW President Mark Pedowitz said that the network was still in “active discussions,” and that there was a strategy being worked on with Warner Bros. TV to get the series on the air. Deadline reports that these plans included possibly running Green Arrow and the Canaries on both The CW and HBO Max at the same time. While these plans have apparently been scrapped, there are rumors that The CW and HBO Max could team up in a similar way for The 100 prequel that is also in development.
Green Arrow and the Canaries would have starred Katherine McNamara, Katie Cassidy, and Juliana Harkavy, and the series was set in 2040 in Star City. The description of the show read: “Mia Queen (McNamara) had everything she could have ever wanted. However, when Laurel (Cassidy) and Dinah (Harkavy) suddenly showed up in her life again, things took a shocking turn and her perfect world is upended.”
Considering how important Arrow has been to The CW’s lineup over the last decade, it’s somewhat surprising that The CW didn’t pick up another spinoff set in this world. The CW has leaned into the massive amount of superhero shows on their network, most of which have tied into Arrow in some form or another.
While shows like Flash and Supergirl were originally developed independently of Arrow, the plan was always for all the characters to unite for several spin-offs and team-ups. These three series also teamed up with Legends of Tomorrow for the crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Arrow even saw a crossover event with Constantine, even after the series ended its single-season run on NBC. Green Arrow has been the center of The CW’s superhero slate for years now, it’s sort of strange to imagine the network without the character.
Yet beyond Green Arrow & the Canaries, there’s still a ton of superhero content coming out of The CW. The Flash’s seventh season is set to premiere on February 23, 2021, and Legends of Tomorrow is expected to premiere its sixth season in midseason 2021. The CW’s newest superhero show, Stargirl, has also been renewed for a second season, airing sometime in 2021. Also coming in midseason will be the final season of Supergirl, and the final season of Black Lightning will debut on February 8, 2021.
But maybe another reason The CW didn’t pick up Green Arrow & the Canaries was that the network already has a ton of other superhero shows also in the works. Superman & Lois is coming out on February 23, 2021, and a Wonder Girl DC series is currently in development at The CW as well. Even if the network hasn’t picked up Green Arrow & the Canaries, the network shows no sign of slowing down when it comes to their roster of superhero programming.
