Arrow S02E04 - Crucible Review: Black Canary's Identity Revealed

Arrow S02E04 Review: Constant Improvements

Be aware Spoilers inside
CW Arrow's second season opened fantastically. Only four episodes aired and this Green Arrow comic’s adaptation looks phenomenal with constant improvement. Every episode tops its predecessor and builds towards something great.
Black Canary
Black Canary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



One of the most interesting revelations in this Arrow Crucible episode was the identity of the Black Canary. It was ... brace yourselves  ... Sarah Lance, the twin sister of Laurel.
Let's ignore the fact that she looks nothing like Laurel Lance and CW wanted to add another hot chick to the Arrow roster, so they used Caity Lotz and that’s OK.

If we focus on the important stuff like the fact that Black Canary's origins story seems to be mysteriously cool and very intriguing. In season one that "it" factor that had you glued to the TV, watching every episode. Was the viewers never ending will of knowing what exactly happened to Oliver Quinn (Stephen Amell) on the island and eventually understand what shaped him to become the arrow. 
Green Arrow and Black Canary
Green Arrow and Black Canary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We didn't get the entire story yet, we are getting it in very small doses. After this 4th episode in season 2 we got a new origins story that will keep us glued to the screen in addition to The Arrows origins story. 

Something really bad happened to Sarah in the last 6 years, we don’t know what it is but she is hurting. Add Oliver and Slade Wilson to the mix and you are addicted to find out more. Sarah's mentioning Wilson's name makes you go crazy because they reveal so little and you have to wait so much to get your information in such small doses. You would think that a revelation of this caliber (Black Canary = Sarah Lance) would be left for an episode finale as a great cliff hanger but as we saw the real cliff hanger finale of Crucible with Sarah meeting Oliver on the ship in a flashback from 5 years ago, Black Canary's identity revelation seemed like a distant memory.

Now to the other sister, as Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassidy) lost her wish for vendetta against the vigilante (aka the Green Arrow) and turned her focus on drowning her sorrows in self pity and slight alcoholism tendencies she becomes even more irrelevant to the series and most of her scenes can be summarized by a sad eye candy that changes evening gowns in every opportunity that she gets. That’s all great but we expect a bit more from her, unfortunately it seems like the Laurel Lance character is going nowhere important.

Not everything was perfect in Arrow S02E04

  1. The kitschy segment before every episode "I can't be the killer I once was ... Bla Bla Bla" does get on the nerves repeatedly, the problem is that they continue shoving it down our thoughts during the episodes as well. 
  2. Another thing that is unfortunate in this season so far is: Summer Glau. She is just not used enough. When the writers will start using her, Arrow will only gain from the process.
  3. The cash for guns event was just the odd thing out. There is a limit to the ridicules things you can put on TV and make the audience accept it, the cash for guns event wasn’t one of them. Everything that got to do with the scene looked so artificially bad. 
  • We start with Roy who gives away his arsenal of weapons and doesn’t want a dime in return. Roy is the first poor guy you meet that will decline cash for ... doesn’t matter what. Roy's character was a lot more tolerable since he become Arrow's informer and stopped being his poor copycat.
  • Than we have Oliver go buddy with the self riches douche Sebastian Blood.
  • The Meir shows up mumbling something meaningless and shoots bunch of unimportant people (Sin included). The guy seems to be a gun maniac, he shoots way too much.
  • Sebastian Blood confronts the Meir for unexplained reason (can be explained by self riches stupidity) and Oliver makes the save.
Oliver's constant sucking up attempts to Sebastian Blood looked somehow pointless. Why would Oliver Quinn want to get an approval from a local anarchist. Until this episode it was hard to understand why Sebastian blood was showcased so much, the guy was painfully annoying in all of his scenes but as the crucible episode reached its final scene you get why Mr. Blood or should we say Brother Blood was showcased so much. i knew there was a reason of me not liking this guy and there was a reason Sebastian Blood generated so much self riches heat.

The Black Canary made this episode great. If you have not seen the episode or Arrow in general I recommend you to start immediately because Arrow’s season 2 shapes itself to be the hottest thing on TV so far.

Arrow Season 1 DVD

Arrow: The Complete First Season [Blu-ray]




About Sasha Shapiro

Sasha is the founder and editor of Cool Reviews Rule. He is very passionate about Movies, TV Shows and some Books. His favorite genres are: Action, Fantasy, History, Horror, Sci-fi and Adventure.
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