Warning: The following feature contains SPOILERS for Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Sara Lance delivered one of the most powerful speeches in the Arrowverse event Crisis on Infinite Earths, musing that with the passing of Oliver Queen, she’d lost her final connection to her life before becoming leader of the Legends of Tomorrow and how the Legends had become her family. As amazing as Caity Lotz’s performance was, there was one problem with her speech - Sara’s mother, Dinah Drake Lance, was still alive and well.

Dinah Drake Lance (Alex Kingston) was introduced into the Arrowverse in Arrow, season 1, episode 16, “Dead To Rights.” A professor of history at Central City University, it was revealed that Dinah had left her husband, police detective Quentin Lance, after the two grew more distant following the apparent death of their youngest daughter, Sara, who was presumed lost at sea. Dinah became estranged from Quentin and her eldest daughter, Laurel, for several years, due to their refusal to join her in exploring rumors that a woman resembling Sara had been seen traveling the world. Dinah’s faith was born out when Sara returned to Star City during Arrow’s second season, revealing that she had been taken in by the League of Assassins and trained as a killer.

Despite this, Sara was welcomed back into the family, though any hope that Dinah and Quentin might reconcile and remarry was quickly cut down. Dinah only appeared two more times on Arrow after its second season. She was in Arrow’s season 3 mid-season finale, “The Climb,” where Laurel revealed that Sara had truly died and informed her mother that she intended to go after her killers. Dinah’s final appearance came in the season 4 Arrow episode “Canary Cry,” where she was at Quentin’s side at Laurel’s funeral, yet seemed stunned when Oliver Queen revealed that Laurel had been the Black Canary and died protecting Star City.

Sara’s apparently forgetting her mother’s existence in “Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part 5” continued a pattern that ran through Arrow’s final seasons. When Laurel’s doppelgänger Black Siren began impersonating her in the Arrow season 6 episode “Doppelganger,” there was no indication that Quentin had ever contacted his ex-wife to explain why their eldest daughter was now seemingly alive and claiming to have been held captive for two years or that he was trying to redeem her evil twin. Dinah Lance was also curiously absent from Black Siren’s background, which was built around the idea that she went bad because her father died when she was 13.

There’s some irony that as The CW has gone out of their way to try and improve the representation and portrayal of women in superhero shows, they’ve also accidentally encouraged the cliché of the absent mother figure in heroic fantasy. While Laurel and Sara could hardly be likened to Disney princesses, their portrayal on Arrow was almost entirely focused on their relationships with their father. This was particularly odd in Sara’s case, as it was said that she and Dinah were particularly close during Arrow’s first season. What makes it even worse is that Dinah’s absence could have been easily explained with a throwaway line about Quentin and Sara not wanting to burden her now that she had rebuilt her own life or her falling victim to one of the many metahuman-related crimes in Central City.

Another vexing point for Arrowverse fans is that Alex Kingston was apparently eager to play Dinah Lance in a more active capacity. There was talk at one point that Kingston might play a Black Canary from elsewhere in the Arrowverse, and Kingston quipped at one convention appearance that her only concern with tackling the role was that John Barrowman would kill her for getting to wear fishnets on Arrow before him. Still, it might not be too late for mother and daughter to reconcile on Legends of Tomorrow, with Dinah joining the crew of the Waverider. The comedy potential of Sara’s mother and girlfriend having to share space is too rich not to be explored, and it wouldn’t be the first time Kingston played a time-traveling professor.

More: Every Change To Legends of Tomorrow After Crisis On Infinite Earths