The CW Casts Dinah Lance, Their Maybe-Black Canary in Their Maybe-Green Arrow TV Show

We’ve been staying quiet on the Green Arrow pilot front. After all, it’s just an order for a pilot. The whole thing could still wind up all pear-shaped like the Wonder Woman show, and then we’d just feel all silly again. So while the show has successfully cast its Ollie/Arrow (Stephen Amell), and Moira Queen (Susanna Thompson), Oliver’s mother and possibly an antagonist.

But the production most recently cast one character that we can’t help but do a whole post on, because if the show actually gets made, she’ll be the first live action DC Heroine on television in years. Decades. [Update: Commenters have caught me in a terrible lie: I forgot about Smallville.] Katie Cassidy has reportedly been hired for the role of Dinah “Laurel” Lance, the civilian identity of Black Canary.

Cassidy’s made a name for herself in geek circles most recently as one of the actresses playing Ruby in Supernatural, but she’s also a veteran of 7th Heaven, Melrose Place, and Gossip Girl.

Here’s how Green Arrow‘s casting call describes her character.

28 years old, smart sexy, Laurel is a legal aid attorney determined to use her life as a one-woman war against the 1% following the death of her younger sister Sara.

Her sister died in the sinking of Oliver’s father’s yacht, an accident that also claimed the life of Oliver’s father, and is presumed to have been the end of Ollie as well, until he resurfaces.

So, there’s no indication that she is also the vigilante Black Canary, but we’re talking about the cast description for a pilot. It’s going to have to spend enough time introducing one superhero origin story, we’ll forgive it for not capitalizing on Dinah Lance immediately. It does, however, paint her as a ideological twin to Green Arrow, always something of a Robin Hood character, so it’s reasonable to assume that some kind of stage is being set here. Like I said, this is simply the pilot, and adding Dinah’s traditional role of fellow crime fighter and love interest of Green Arrow seems like something writers of the show would want to capitalize on.

(via Topless Robot.)