Thea Might Become a Familiar DC Villain on 'Arrow'

Arrow did something new when they first introduced Oliver Queen's family: they gave him a little sister, Thea Queen. Not that it was unheard of to introduce new characters into an already well established franchise, it was just odd, especially because Oliver gave his sister the nickname, "Speedy." Could she one day grow up and actually take on the persona of Speedy, Green Arrow's younger sidekick? As we enter into Arrow Season 3, it seems less and less possible for trouble making, Vertigo-taking, Roy Harper-dating Thea. However, things are changing in Starling City, and Thea is definitely no exception. She's been on a mysterious island for the past five months and when she returns, she's probably going to be a little bit different — and possibly evil. Thea could very well become an Arrow villain, and the show might have already laid the ground work for one DC Comics villain: Cheshire.

Actually, there's a whole realm of different characters from the comics that have some possibilities for Miss Queen, but we're not going to talk about them right now. We're only going to talk about the one that makes the most sense for Thea, Cheshire. In the Green Arrow comics, Cheshire doesn't learn of her true parentage until much later on in life, just like Thea. Cheshire has a child with Roy Harper, aka Arsenal, aka Thea's former flame. Also, Cheshire is a master at martial arts and acrobatics. In an interview with Comicbook.com, Willa Holland admitted that the team behind Arrow wants her to "bulk up. Limber up as well. They’re emphasizing a LOT on being limber. So, I’m like, 'Okay,' and they’re not telling me why."

If that's not enough fuel to add flame to the speculation fire, Holland then continued by stating, "I’m also doing wrestling and boxing. Haven’t started the wrestling yet, but my personal trainer does do wrestling and he was told that he had to — he actually just got a phone asking to teach me ‘take-down wrestling moves,’" Interesting, Arrow. We saw a little bit of this fightin' spirit at the end of Episode 2, "Sara." It wasn't simple self defense fighting, but rather oh my god Thea is that you? fighting. And I doubt that Thea's long lost dad Malcolm Merlyn will influence her to use her fighting skills for good. So whatever Thea is learning, there's no way she's going to use it to join up with Oliver and company.

Thea could easily be introduced as Cheshire without anyone batting an eyelash, because Arrow is slowly setting us up for a complete Thea transformation. We know she's still hurt from what happened at the end of last season, so she's clearly not learning these fighting techniques to play nice. She's got a little streak of darkness in her right now, and it's slowly going to start coming out. Also, Cheshire has a little bit of history with Deathstroke, and I still don't think we've seen the last of him. Even though Thea might really hate Slade Wilson right now — since just recently kidnapped her and killed her mother in front of her own eyes— that doesn't mean that later on down the road she won't change her opinion about him. I mean, we're already in the process of changing our minds about Thea as the likelihood of her becoming bad only increases.

Images: Cate Cameron/The CW; felicityholysmoak/Tumblr