Arrow Star Willa Holland Returning In Recurring Role For Final Season

Arrow is getting ready to head into its final season, but before fans have to say goodbye to the show they’ll first being saying hello again to a fan favorite in season 8. That would be Willa Holland, who will be reprising her role as Oliver’s sister Thea in season. The good news is that not only is she set to appear, but according to TV Line she will be a recurring character during Arrow’s 10 episode final season, which will delight fans who were sad to see her go in season 6. We’re not sure how she will fit into the overall plot of season 8, which also links up with the CW crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths, but fans will be happy to see how it all plays out.

Arrow showrunner Beth Schwartz couldn’t be happier to have Holland back in the fold for Arrow’s big sendoff, saying “We are thrilled to have Willa back in our final season.” The last time we saw Holland in the role was in season 6, where we saw her depart with Roy Harper to shut down Lazarus Pits around the world. Since then we learned that they had split up, and hopefully, we’ll get more details about how they’ve been since when she comes back in season 8.

Previously Marc Guggenheim spoke about her request to be written out of the show and how they approached it.

“At the end of season 4, Willa had come to us and basically said that she would like some more time for herself, and would like to reduce her role on the show,” Guggenheim told EW. And we did, we reduced the commitment that she was making to us in season 5, and carried that over in season 6. Season 6 is the end of her contract, and going into season 6, with all of us knowing it was the end of her contract, Willa expressed the desire to move on, not re-up. She expressed a desire to be written out at a certain time in the season, which is around episode 16, so we accommodated her on that front as well. Look, we love Willa, we love working with Willa, we love the character of Thea, we particularly have always loved Thea’s relationship with Oliver. That relationship is one of the things that we deviated from the comic book early on. It was one of the very first major creative decisions we made in terms of adapting the Green Arrow comic for live action television. So it’s always been an incredibly important, critical part of the show for us.”

Are you excited to see Holland back on Arrow? Let us know in the comments!