The death of Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) was rather unexpected as being that of the person in the grave in Arrow.

The latest episode, 'Eleven-Fifty-Nine,' revealed that Laurel was the loved one in the grave. The character was killed off in a confrontation with Damien Darhk (Neal McDonnough). While many fans were obviously left shocked and stunned, some of them are also a bit outraged as Laurel was a very dear character.

In an interview with Variety, showrunner Marc Guggenheim, extensively justified their decision to kill off Laurel and also revealed that this will not be the last fans will see of the Black Canary:

"Obviously, "Arrow" is always a show that's evolving. It's always a show where every character, arguably except for the Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death, and when we 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 into next season, unfortunately would be Laurel. By the way, we knew that it would enrage a lot of people. We're not [blind] to the shipping, and we're not [blind] to the internet controversy ... But we've never made decisions on the show, creatively, because of the internet.

One of the things we knew people would think was, "In the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that's clearly making a choice about who's going to end up with who." And truth be told, we told the Laurel-Oliver romance story in Season 1 ... and we never really thought about going back to it. So, the shipping thing was not an element. It was not a factor for us. And we recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans. In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen, depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together, in various iterations. 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.

The Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many different interpretations, over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation. 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, and I totally respect that. It just made the most creative sense for us, going forward, despite the fact that we absolutely love Katie. Not getting a chance to work with Katie, day in and day out, is tempered by the fact that we now live in a universe where there's resurrection, parallel Earths, time travel and flashbacks. We have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the "Arrow"-verse family. In fact, you will see her on an episode of "The Flash", playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is reprising her role as Laurel in Earth-1 to be in "Vixen" Season 2. Death does not mean goodbye on any of these shows, but we've made a creative choice and we're sticking to it. We're recognizing that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fan base, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fan base, but the show has never been just about the comic book history, it's never been just about one or two different particular fan bases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we're telling overall."

The episode is set to air on April 6.

Watch the preview:

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Arrow, The cw, Television