Sara Lance

"Laurel's gonna kill me. Oh, she's so gonna kill me."

- Sara to Oliver Queen

Sara Lance (born December 25, 1987) is the daughter of Quentin and Dinah Lance, the younger sister of Laurel Lance, and the former girlfriend fling and a good friend of Oliver Queen.

Sara was presumed dead when the Queen's Gambit went down in 2007, which her father did not forgive Oliver for at first. However, sometime between 2008 and 2013, Sara trained as a part of the League of Assassins and learned to fight. She left the organization and returned to Starling City under the vigilante moniker The Canary, and stayed to protect her sister, Laurel, before she was forced to leave due to the League following her.

Earlier life
During her high school years, Sara was bullied by some of her classmates because she was stealing one of her classmate's boyfriends. The often occurrences of her getting bullied caused behavior issues from Sara, and her grades to drop. This led to her father teaching her and Laurel how to defend themselves.

Voyage on the Queen's Gambit
In late 2007, despite her mother's wishes, Sara went on the Queen's Gambit with Oliver Queen. During their sail at sea, the ship was sabotaged and sank, along with Sara. Her remains were never recovered so her family buried a empty casket, after being declared legally dead.

A year later she appeared on the Amazo, where she is seen standing in front of Oliver. It was implied before he saw her that she was going to torture him.

Season 2
In "City of Heroes", As Roy Harper was fighting a group of men who'd been harassing a woman, the Canary swooped in and fought off the attackers before they could beat Roy. Roy expressed shock by her sudden entrance, before she quickly left.

In "Broken Dolls", When The Arrow was cornered by the Police led by her sister Laurel, she came in and used a sonic device to distract the policemen and break the windows, they used the chaos to quickly escape the scene. Sometime later, when Roy was lured in to her hideout by her friend Sin, she knocked him out with her staff. She asked why he was looking for her, but was interrupted by a message on Roy's phone. She took a look at it and let him go, before climbing up poles and exiting the building via the roof. That evening, after Barton Mathis kidnapped her sister and her father, she ran away from The Arrow, she helped stop him, though he released a bunch of metal poles from above, knocking her down. The Arrow successfully subdued him, though The Canary ultimately killed him.

When returning at the tower, she found herself confronted by a hooded man (wearing clothing identical to that of Malcolm Merlyn). The intruder told her Ra's al Ghul wanted her to return. She declined and tried to persuade him to tell he could not find her. The man then threatened her with a knife. She quickly killed him with his own knife.

In "Crucible", Felicity notices a pattern in the Canary's appearance, this leads to Oliver catching her to learn her identity. Oliver unmasks her and is shocked to discover that she is Sara. Oliver then reveals to John and Felicity that he thought she drowned on the Queen's Gambit, but met her a year after being shipwrecked, however he thought she had died since he last saw her. She goes back to her hideout and shares a meal with Sin, in which she reveals to her about running into Oliver and then how her dad is a cop and her sister is a lawyer. She follows Oliver to Verdant where she asks if Oliver told her dad and sister about her, but he says he didn't. They converse about her hiding when Quentin arrives asking for Oliver's help about Laurel, Sara overhears the conversation about Laurel's depression.

When Sin is injured by The Mayor, she and Oliver team up and takes on The Mayor and his cronies. Both work hand in hand together even both using each others weapons. Sara is about to kill the Mayor but Oliver convinces her not to. She spares him and lets him go. She is then seen watching Sin as she wakes up who has company from Roy and Thea. As she is leaving, she encounters Oliver, The two leave together. At the end of the episode, in a flash back, Oliver and Sara encounter each other on the ship.

In "League of Assassins", She is shown to be staying with Oliver at his mansion. However, they are attacked by Al-Owal, a member of the League of Assassins. Oliver and Sara successfully fight him off, and later she reveals to Oliver and his team that she was once part of the League and now they are on the hunt to bring her back to their leader, Ra's Al Ghul. Oliver and Sara then hunt down Al-Owal, narrowly escaping with their lives. Fearing retaliation against Sara, Oliver decides to protect the whole Lance family, but Sara decides that it was time to reveal herself to her father. She then tells her father everything, bringing him up to her hideout where they are attacked by Al-Owal and his two companions. Oliver arrives and along with Quentin and Sara, defeat the assassins. Sara kills Al-Owal and leaves one to run to Ra's to tell him that her family is off limits. She then leaves Starling City, trying to draw the League away from her family, but not before making her father promise not to tell Laurel that she is alive. Meanwhile in a flashback, the scene from Pilot is re-seen from Sara's eyes. After the Queen's Gambit sinks, Sara was left stranded until she was picked up by the crew of the Amazo. She is then taken prisoner, but is released by Dr. Anthony Ivo who takes her in. Further ahead in the flashback, she meets a confused Oliver, but kicks him stating that prisoners do not speak and walks away.

In "Keep Your Enemies Closer" it was revealed that she helped Oliver slightly whilst he was a prisoner on the Amazo. However, that was soon realised to be a ruse to see if Slade and Shado were still alive on Lian Yu.

In "State v. Queen", She went with Oliver Dr. Anthony Ivo and the crew of the Amazo onto the island to the plane, and watched as Ivo ordered his men to attack Slade and Shado after Oliver screamed for them to run.

Sometime later, Shado and Slade ambush the crew at arrow and gun point and demanded Oliver back, when Anthony released him, Oliver punched the Captain in the face and grabbed Sara and ran away with his friends.

The hōzen Oliver found had coordinates on it which was revealed to house the location of the submarine Anthony discovered with the cure to save all of man kind, after Sara revealed this to them, Oliver asked if it could cure Slade.

In "Three Ghosts" while on the island, Ivo threatens Oliver to pick who is to die, Shado or Sara which if Oliver doesn't decide in 30 seconds, Ivo would kill both. Ivo eventually kills Shado and Slade Wilson awakes and saves Oliver and Sara.

Personality
Sara is a person who "just couldn't stay out of trouble". She made unwise, often selfish decisions, such as pursuing a boy with a girlfriend while in high school, provoking physical attacks from his girlfriend and her friends in retaliation. She apparently got in a fair bit of trouble as a teenager, including one incidence of shoplifting, that her father made go away. She also had an affair with her sister's boyfriend Oliver, suggesting that loyalty to her sister meant nothing to her. This led to her presumed death, when the Queen's Gambit went down.

Abilities

 * Peak of human physical condition: In "League of Assassins", Sara is shown to be strong enough to break Al-Owal's neck in a matter of seconds.
 * Skilled hand-to-hand combatant/Martial artist: In "City of Heroes", Sara is shown to be a skilled hand-to-hand combatant and martial artist when she took down three armed thugs simultaneously. In "Broken Dolls", she was also able to kill Barton Mathis by impaling a baton in his chest.


 * Trained stick fighter: In "City of Heroes", Sara carries a pair of expandable batons that combines into a bo-staff, and she is possibly trained in some form of stick fighting.
 * Skilled archer: In "Crucible", Sara is shown to be a skilled archer, she was able to use Oliver's customized Oneida Kestrel Compoundbow, combined with one of his customized hunting arrows, shooting it with great accuracy, in the shoulder of one of The Mayor's goons.
 * Free running/Acrobatics/Stealth: Sara has shown herself capable of scaling buildings and running from rooftop to rooftop easily. She displayed impressive acrobatics while entering and leaving buildings. She is also able to quickly enter and leave without being seen.
 * Multilingualism: Based on what has been currently shown, Sara is capable of speaking English, Chinese, and Arabic fluently.
 * Skilled tactician: In "Crucible", Sara carefully plans on how to take down her opponents.

Equipment

 * The Canary costume: Sara wears a black leather costume (pants instead of fishnet stockings) while fighting crime as The Canary.
 * Expandable baton: As The Canary, she uses a pair of expandable batons to fight. They are able to combine into a bo-staff.
 * Sonic device: A handheld non-lethal Sonic weapon used to disable large groups of people. It overwhelms the hearing of everyone in the immediate vicinity, and is also capable of shattering glass.

Appearances
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Season 2

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Comics
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 * Arrow #12 (dream/hallucination)
 * Arrow #14
 * Arrow #26 (mentioned)

Trivia

 * Whenever The Canary leaves an area (i.e. jumps away from a ledge), a canary cry can be heard in the music.
 * In the third episode of the second season,, it was revealed that she was trained by Ra's al Ghul, as part of the League of Assassins.
 * During her time with the League, she was told to "choose a new name". She chose "الطيور الصفراء", which is Arabic for canary ("yellow bird"), reminiscent of the canary Quentin got her when she was ten.
 * In, during her fight with Al-Owal, she tells him "You should be mindful of your surroundings". This is an exact quote used by Ra's al Ghul in the film, Batman Begins.
 * Sara Lance is the eighth person to discover Oliver Queen's secret identity, The Arrow. Though this was only directly revealed to her in, she had long suspected that Oliver was the green-hooded Starling City vigilante that she had been hearing about in the past year.
 * During the first season, Sara was portrayed by Jacqueline MacInnes Wood. However, Sara was recast as Caity Lotz for the second season, who re-filmed scenes originally filmed with Wood in the first season's.
 * When Caity Lotz auditioned, she was under the impression that she was auditioning for a character named Lisa.