'Arrow': Is Black Siren A Villain Deep Down?

After being written out in Season 4, Katie Cassidy returned to Arrow this season to play a much more dangerous version of the Laurel Lance fans knew and loved. Black Siren is a leather-clad meta-human with a penchant for destruction, and she’s always aligned herself with the wrong side of right.

At the end of Season 5, she proved her loyalties lay with evil when she teamed up with Prometheus. With her first reappearance in Season 6, she didn’t hesitate to let the team know she isn’t back in Star City to play nice.

Presumably, she will remain a constant thorn in Oliver Queen's side this season. In spite of that, Oliver still sees something inside of her — or so says Arrow star Stephen Amell in an interview with TV Line:

"Oliver is, ironically, the most hopeful one despite the fact that she allied herself with Adrian Chase — who had offered to break her out of prison, so I understand where she’s coming from. But the fact is he’s sort of hopeful, 'If there’s a bit of Laurel in there, I want to find it.' He’s more empathetic to the struggles for [Quentin] Lance, you know, and anyone that has a history with Laurel. He knows that [Black Siren] is not a good person necessarily, but he hopeful that there’s something in there."

Oliver isn't ready to give up on the Laurel Lance he used to know despite the damage she has caused and the people she has hurt. Even though this one is from a different Earth, she has all of Laurel's memories. To Oliver, that makes her worth saving — even if she feels "nothing" for him, Amell says.

But don't expect a redemption arc right away. The producers brought Katie Cassidy back to play the part of the Black Canary’s menacing doppelganger, and redeeming her too soon would negate the effects of her return. Besides that, Katie Cassidy says it's too much fun playing a villain:

"She's damaged goods, I think, deep down, and I think she's gone through a lot. She has a really dark past. A lot of these characters like Oliver and her father, they look like characters in her world . It's interesting now having her on Earth 1 and having her playing that out and seeing where she's going to go. But she's certainly fun. It's really fun to play a villain, I have to say that."

The damage from Black Siren's past has obviously shaped her, and overcoming pain and trauma can take a long time, a lot longer than one season. If anyone should know that, it's Oliver Queen, so he's going to have to be patient with her, especially after the most recent episode which proved Black Siren isn’t opposed to killing at all. In a matter of one episode, she killed three people at the behest of Cayden James, the hacker-turned-villain of the season.

It’s clear that if there is an ounce of the Earth-1 Laurel Lance inside of Black Siren, she’s buried deep, so deep that even Oliver might not be able to find it. There is, however, another individual who could find the light within her if she is redeemable — Quentin Lance. After all, this Laurel is the evil version of his daughter, and in his darkest hours, his friends didn’t give up on him. Perhaps he will be the one to dig beneath the surface to find the heart beneath the black leather.

However the Black Siren’s storyline plays out, there’s little doubt that Oliver will try to make peace with the woman who looks like his ex-girlfriend — even if she's declaring war on him.

[Sources: TVLine]