So just like parts One and Two of Season 1, these will have SPOILERS!
Black Canary
Played by Caity Lotz
Although the comics have more often than not been muddied by retcons and writer mistakes, the accepted history of Black Canary was that the identity was passed from a Golden Age Dinah Drake to her daughter, Dinah Laurel Lance. Arrow viewers just assumed that daughter would be Laurel Lance (who lost her first name Dinah for some reason), but Black Canary showed up early in season 2 as her sister Sara, with an actress switch from the first season. She miraculously survived the sinking of Robert Queen’s boat only to be saved by pirates. She would eventually cross paths with Ollie during his “lost years” coming out the other end as a Ra’s al Ghul trained assassin and newly minted masked vigilante. She was even equipped with the famed Canary Cry, which instead of a superpower was a handheld device that emitted sonic waves. The legacy aspect might be kept in tact though sister to sister.
The Queen
Played by Summer Glau
The Queen of the comics was a diamond miner who propelled herself to fortune first to prove her love to Robert Queen and then to prove herself the true heir of Queen Industries. She bought the controlling stock of QI after the brutal Star City bombing that forced Ollie to lose focus of his business. On the TV show, she is very similar. She has swooped in to try and control Queen Consolidated bringing it back to what it once was after the Undertaking destroyed much of Starling City and the QC’s reputation. She lacks the eccentricity and the mask but managed to keep the comic character’s Siberian roots, if only just peripherally.
Brother Blood
Played by Kevin Alejandro
Brother Blood was a priest from the fictional nation, Zandia, who killed a priest 700 years ago for Christ’s prayer shawl. The shawl slowed Blood’s aging, but the dying priest cursed him to be killed by his heir every 100 years. That family tradition has continued into the modern day where every 100 years the current Brother Blood is killed by his son. He founded the Church of Blood made up of fanatical religious zealots. On the TV show, Blood is a city official growing an underground cult-like army using a special super soldier serum that traces back to Ollie’s lost years.
Bethany Snow
Played by Keri Adams
Bethany Snow used to be a TV reporter who would make slanderous reports about the Teen Titans, but since the new 52 reboot, she has been a part of the Channel 52 news team, a comic-style newsletter at the end of each DC issue used to promote other titles. She can be seen on Arrow talking about either the Moira Queen trial or the Particle Accelerator in Central City (apparently that’s all the news worth talking about).
Bronze Tiger
Played by Michael Jai White
In the comics, Bronze Tiger is one of the best martial artists in the DC universe and has been allied with the League of Assassins and the Suicide Squad, as well as Richard Dragon and O-Sensei (Obi-Wans to many characters in DC). He could usually be seen with a tiger mask that would put him in a trance to be used for less honorable reasons. Unfortunately, in the show, he was basically just hired muscle with poor man’s Wolverine claws for Chyna White, but with the Suicide Squad on-coming in the second half of season 2 expect him to return
Dollmaker
Played by Michael Ecklund
This Dollmaker was a New 52 creation. He was a serial killer who would create “dolls” out of the skin and limbs of his victims. He has a traumatic past with a cannibal father and serves as one of Jim Gordon’s past failures. The Dollmaker of the show wasn’t making stitched up rag dolls from his victim’s skin, but rather he pumped them full of a “polymer” that made them look like porcelain dolls. He also had to bone to pick with Quentin Lance, just like the comic version did with Jim Gordon.
Sin
Played by Bex Taylor-Klaus
Sin was a very young Asian girl being trained to replace Lady Shiva in case of her death before she was saved by Black Canary and brought back to America where she was raised as Dinah and Ollie’s adoptive daughter. The TV version is older, taller, and whiter. She was a street urchin who fell in with Sarah Lance’s vigilante as her eyes and ears on the street much in the same way Roy has with Ollie’s vigilante.
Jean Loring
Played by Teryl Rothery
In the comics, Jean Loring was the wife of Ray Palmer (aka The Atom). In the now infamous Identity Crisis, Jean had a mental breakdown which led to the death of a few masked heroes loved ones. She would later become the new Eclipso and seduce a hostless Spectre into taking out all the magic heroes in the DC Universe. The TV series simply reaches back to her first inception as a lawyer. Here, she defends Moira Queen’s role in The Undertaking from last season.
Professor Ivo
Played by Dylan Neal
As a child, Ivo developed a crippling fear of death which led to an obsessive quest for immortality. This led him to cybernetics to preserve life creating such robots as Amazo, Red Tornado, and Tomorrow Woman. In the TV series, he has employed a gang of pirates to help him find a super soldier serum on Ollie’s island. It seems to be a similar obsession as his comic counterpart. Also, the boat he shares with the pirates is named “Amazo.”
The Butcher
Played by Ron Selmour
Before the new 52, he was a Rambo looking Native American. In the new 52, he is a member of the Axe Tribe, a branch of The Outsiders, The Outsiders being this big organization of warriors with branches based on totem weapons. In the TV series, he is not an axe wielding warrior or Rambo badass. He’s not even Native American. He is a black member of the Amazo crew. Apparently, he was credited as The Butcher although I don’t recall anyone referring to him as such. Here’s hoping it was just a not so clever nickname rather than a nod to what could be a really cool character (he hasn’t yet to be developed in the new 52).
Amanda Waller
Played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson
Before the new 52, Amanda Waller was an overweight middle-aged fierce woman who was in charge of America’s biggest spy secrets and help form the Suicide Squad. In the new 52, she is many of those things as well as combat ready with super model good looks. I was kidding myself if I thought they would go with the classic version on The CW, the home of pretty people with super powered problems. Just like Bronze Tiger though she is very underused but should come back in a big way once the Suicide Squad returns.
KGBeast
Played by David Nykel
In the comics, he was a poor man’s Bane trained by a secret cell of the KGB (think Russian CIA) and cybernetically enhanced to be a super assassin. His alter ego, Anatoli Knyazev, can be seen in the show as a high ranking member of the Russian mafia who made friends with Ollie during his lost years. You can see him early in season 2 as a prisoner on Amazo and later Ollie calls in a favor from him for Diggle.
Solomon Grundy
Played by Graham Shields
Cyrus Gold has been a few different things. One origin says he was a wealthy merchant. Another said he was a pedophile. Either way, he was murdered by a mob and disposed of in Slaughter Swamp. That same swamp would bring him back to life as a hulking zombie. Every time he died, he would return to the swamp and reemerge with varying levels of intelligence. He was named after the nursery rhyme by one of the first people who saw him because all he could say was “Born on a Monday.” That’s pretty supernatural for the likes of this show though. This time Grundy, or what he is called in the show, Brother Cyrus, was one of many test subjects of Brother Blood. He survived the injection of super soldier serum, donned a Voorhees like mask, and started doing Blood’s bidding, including kicking Ollie’s ass.
The Flash
Played by Grant Gustin
In the comics, The Flash is Barry Allen, a forensic scientist, who one night during a thunder storm was struck by lightning and dosed with chemicals at the same time granting him super speed. For all intents and purposes, he was the “first” Flash of the DC Universe (even though some timeline tampering would eventually fold in the Jay Garrick version). He is certainly the most popular. Here he is just a lowly forensic scientist intern with no super powers who has come to Starling City to investigate strange, possibly supernatural crimes searching for the “man in the tornado” that killed his mother.