Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim discusses the heart-wrenching twist that closed out the season 3 finale.
Warning: Do not read any further if you have not seen the Arrow season 3 premiere, “The Calm.” Major spoilers ahead.
At the end of the Arrow season 3 premiere, Sara Lance was confronted by a mysterious figure before being shot with three black arrows and falling several stories off a roof.
And yes, despite our insistent denials, Sara is dead. So why did such a beloved character have to die?
Character journeys
“We just sort of started off talking about what’s the season about,” Guggenheim explains. After discussing what each character’s journey would be for the upcoming season, the writers “had this notion of sort of starting off the year in the way we typically end the year.”
He adds, “It was hard. Every time we kill off a character on the show, it’s always incredibly hard. We’re not Game of Thrones, we’re not Sons of Anarchy. Its really, really difficult. Especially because, we’re very lucky, and I really mean this — our cast and our guest cast are always wonderful people. … Caity Lotz completely fit into that family. It’s always hard to kill off someone who you just really enjoy working with and you really love writing for and seeing on the screen.”
Guggenheim continues: “As with Tommy’s death, as with Moria’s death, the story implications for this development are so far reaching for the show and affect all of the characters. It really kicks off a mystery that will drive us for at least the first half of the year. It will set Laurel on a trajectory she’s never had before on the show.”
Like taking over her sister’s mantle as the Black Canary?
Beyond Laurel, though, Sara’s death “buys us a lot of story. It speaks to all of the things that we wanted to do this year in terms of Laurel’s character, in terms of Oliver’s character, in terms of Felicity’s character. It’s always a hard thing to do but it’s really the ending that is driving the whole third season.”
Sara will be back
However, Guggenheim notes, this will not be the last time we see Sara. Lotz has been contracted for at least three episodes this season.
“One of the beautiful parts on the show is we do flashbacks and we still want to tell the story of what happened when Sara washed up on the shores of Lian Yu after the events of [episode] 223, the sinking of the Amazo, and how she met Nyssa and how she joined the League of Assassins,” Guggenheim says.
“There’s still a lot of story left to be told with Sara.”
‘Sara’
As for next week’s episode, Guggenheim calls it “gut-wrenching.” He adds that the episode’s title, “Sara,” has a double meaning. “And it’s harsh,” he previews.
Moreover, the characters deal with “the question of what should be done with Sara’s body. There’s the question of who do they tell? Do they tell Lance, for example, that his daughter died a second time? There’s the emotional repercussions for everybody, but it definitely has repercussions for Oliver and Felicity and it has repercussions for Felicity and Ray Palmer. And obviously for Laurel. Laurel’s very much at the center of that episode.”
With all that going on, “Everyone’s raw and naked. It was a really hard episode for the cast to shoot, particularly Emily [Bett Rickards], Stephen [Amell] and Katie [Cassidy] — and Caity Lotz, who basically has to lie on a slab and not breathe and actually does a very, very compelling job of being dead. It’s really, really powerful stuff. It’s a hard episode to watch.”
Nyssa
Another character who will be affected by Sara’s death is Nyssa al Ghul (Katrina Law). We’re not saying Lazaru Pit, but…
Guggenheim previews that Law will be in episode 4, when she finds out Sara is dead. “We love Katrina and we love the character of Nyssa. I actually feel like with Sara’s death, Nyssa becomes so much more important because I feel like one thing Sara did was provide us a cool, ass-kicking female character on the show and Nyssa definitely fits that bill quite well.”
The mystery
As for who did it, “We’re going to turn to a suspect in the killing” in next week’s episode, Guggenheim teases. However, with Arrow, “you never know how soon things will get resolved or in what way they’ll get resolved.”
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET on The CW.
Source: IGN
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