Arrow EP: The Next Few Episodes Are "Devastating"

Warning: Spoilers ahead for tonight's episode of Arrow, titled "Eleven-Fifty-Nine."

Following an early screening of tonight's episode of Arrow earlier this week, executive producer Wendy Mericle said that the aftermath of Laurel Lance's death, starting with the next episode "Canary Cry," will be "devastating," and that the impact on the team will be long-lasting.

"I think you can you know in terms of our process for making the decision, you can kind of judge the impact by how important that character was to the universe we've created," Mericle told reporters. "And there's no question that it is, it is going to be shocking, and it was you know, it was a shocking thing for us to kind of process and to write the aftermath. We really wanted to make sure that we did it in a way that was very kind of honorable and that gave us space to honor all the characters' various reactions to it, and I will say that the episodes that we have written in the aftermath, they're devastating and they're meant to be, and that's what we wanted."

There's plenty of blame to go around for what happened, of course; Oliver, Quentin Lance, and especially John Diggle played fairly direct roles in putting Laurel in harm's way this week. And that's going to be part of what drives the story forward from this point on.

"We wanted to explore that and to really have everybody feel the impact of this loss because it is significant and we do feel like it is a game changer," she added. "And a very sad way in that we're losing a beloved character, but also in the sense of it's going to, unfortunately big moves like this will open up new storytelling avenues and will force our characters to rethink their decisions and to rethink their objectives."

Arrow heads into a brief hiatus after tonight's shocker, and will be back with a new episode in a few weeks. The series airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

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