Warning: MAJOR spoilers for Arrow season 4, episode 18 ahead

-

Fans of DC Comics have noticed by now that a great age of shows, like Arrow and The Flash, are turning in some great television on the CW Network. Arrow is knee-deep in its fourth season, with just five more episodes to go, and the drama is heating up with the death of a key character at the hands of the powerful and evil foe, Damien Darhk.

In Wednesday’s episode, titled “Eleven-Fifty-Nine”, fans learned the heart breaking answer to the pressing question that the show has been teasing for some time now, whether its John Diggle (David Ramsey), Thea Queen (Willa Holland) or Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) that is destined to die.

During a press screening of the episode this week, ComicBook.com reports that showrunner Marc Guggenheim made an effort to explain why Laurel was chosen for the grave this season.

Guggenheim went on to explain their own take on the Green Arrow mythos:

“Obviously Arrow is always a show that’s evolving, it’s always a show where you know, every character arguably except for the Arrow is fair game, and you know we started off this year with the promise of a death, and when we sort of worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that you know, the thing that will give us the most pop going into the end of the season and into next season unfortunately would be Laurel, and we knew by the way, we knew that it would enrage a lot of people.”

“…we’ve always you know, made know bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos and you know, the Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations and blackened areas, and had so many different interpretations over the years that we never felt you know beholden to one particular interpretation, and this is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people up and down my Twitter feed who do not like it. Totally respect that.”

Arrow at least prepared viewers for this eventual death by showing us the grave and Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) looking morose earlier on in the season and took us on a flashback journey to learn the identity of the fallen hero. The effects of this shocking death certainly makes the show buzzworthy and will get the fans engaged in the aftermath, but in the case of Arrow, one must wonder how long-term the plan for the character truly is. In a series that prides itself on elements like the Lazarus pit and time travel, its hard to imagine that Laurel will stay dead for all that long. After all, her sister Sara returned to the series after a short time, only to be propelled to the spinoff series, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Oliver and Thea have both “died” temporarily in the interests of creating a shocking moment, but both are still alive and well in the show.

Then again, the death of Oliver’s friend Tommy Merlyn in season 1 has so far proven to be pretty permanent, so perhaps Laurel really is gone for good.

Arrow will return to the CW Network with “Canary Cry” on Wednesday, April 27, 2016.

Source: ComicBook.com