Arrow Cast Talk Big Death
Spoilers For Arrow Ahead!
On last nights Arrow, a major character was killed in the form of Laurel Lance, aka Black Canary. It was a death that shocked many, and left just as many curious as to why an established character in DC Comics, one that would eventually marry Green Arrow in the comics, would get the death rather than one of the added characters of the show.
IGN got to speak with Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim and the cast about the death, and got detail as to why Laurel was chosen:
“Every character, except for the Arrow, is fair game, and 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 the thing that will give us the most pop going into the end of the season and going into next season unfortunately would be Laurel,” Guggenheim said.
And Katie Cassidy, who plays Lance, was ok with the decision:
“From a creative standpoint, I think that the writers and I always said that since Season 2 up until now, Laurel has had truly an amazing journey and they’ve written so well for me and I’ve had such an incredible arc. It made sense to me creatively that Laurel’s story has come to an end on Arrow,” Cassidy said. “I think the shock value is good. It gives you such a jolt and it’s such a turn in the story that it gives [the writers] so much more to do and places to go with it, otherwise I feel like shows can get stale.”
As for the why, and why they decided to kill a major comics character, the answer is tied into the root of the show itself:
“We recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans. In the comics Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen are, depending on which version of the character you like, in a romance together in various iterations, and that to some people is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that, but at the same time we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos,” Guggenheim said.