Arrow executive producer Andrew Kreisberg discusses the major twist from last night’s episode, “Seeing Red.” Major spoilers ahead.
Arrow season 2, episode 20, “Seeing Red” ended with a shocker, as Moira Queen, after revealing to Oliver that she knew he was the Arrow, sacrificed herself when Slade took her and Thea captive to force Oliver to choose between their lives.
The death of the Queen matriarch is bound to have repercussions through the rest of season 2 and beyond. And we’ll see that immediately in next week’s episode, “City of Blood,” Kreisberg tells EW.
“The next episode opens with Moira’s funeral and Oliver is missing,” he previews. “Her death has a profound impact on everyone in the series. It’s certainly what’s going to drive Oliver in these last three episodes and it’s going to drive Thea, not only in these last three episodes but also into series 3.”
But beyond serving as motivation for Oliver and Thea, Moira’s death was the culmination of her character arc. “It was, ‘If Moira wins the mayorship and if she makes up with her kids, what is she? What is Moira without a giant secret?’” Kreisberg says. “And if they all forgive her and then there’s some other giant secret, for us, it felt like we were becoming a giant soap opera.”
He adds, “It really just felt like, in a way, she could die a hero’s death and also die this person who was conflicted. Because even as she’s saying, ‘Hey, we have to tell the truth,’ we’re seeing that she’s kept this other horrible secret. You literally can’t change her.”
Moira’s funeral will also serve as a farewell to actress Susanna Thompson, who Kreisberg describes as “one of our big [casting] gets early on that really signaled to the audience and to reviewers that this wasn’t your average CW show.”
“And like with Colin Donnell,” whose character, Tommy, died in the season 1 finale, “these last few episodes were her pinnacle. This is as good as anything that’s on television,” he adds, “and unfortunately, because of the kind of show it is, probably won’t be recognized as such.”
As for the other bombshell in the episode — that Moira has known that Oliver was the Arrow since the Undertaking — Kreisberg says the writers “had always talked about the idea that Moira knew that Oliver was the Arrow.”
One such moment of revelation came in the season 1 finale where Oliver confronts Moira about the Undertaking, and Kresiberg describes him in that scene as being “not Oliver Queen, he’s the Arrow.” With that in mind, Kreisberg jokes, “She’d be borderline low IQ if she wasn’t like, ‘Wait a minute….’”
Kreisberg adds, “But we always liked that she had never told him and everything sort of felt like it came together in this one episode.”
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET on The CW.
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