For fans of the log running CW/DC series Arrow, the recent episode titled “The Thanatos Guild” was definitely bittersweet for many reasons. One of those reasons just so happens to be the return of Roy Harper, as played by Colton Haynes, which gave fans a short respite before what came at the end. Thea Queen, AKA Speedy, left the city along with Roy and Nyssa al Ghul to find the Lazarus Pits, which was a nice way for the original series regular, Willa Holland, to make a graceful exit after appearing on the show for all six seasons. Executive producer, Marc Guggenheim, spoke recently in an interview regarding the veteran actor’s departure:
”By the end of Season 4, Willa had expressed a desire to reduce her episodic commitment to the show and that was sort of done in sort of conjunction with an indication that it was likely that she wouldn’t want to renew her contract past Season 6,” Guggenheim said. “So, we’ve kind of known for a while that this was in the offing. We revisited it with Willa at the beginning of Season 6, and she indicated that she hadn’t changed her mind, that she was still interested in moving on.”
Guggenheim went on to say that he and the Arrow production team worked with Holland on her exit from the show:
“We talked about some requests she had for us in terms of how her episodes would be utilized and grouped, and at what point in the season she would be written out, and we accommodated her on all those fronts because, look, at the end of the day we love Willa and we love working with her. She’s done right by us and so we wanted to do right by her.”
As for the future of the show, it will be interesting to see how the character of Oliver Queen moves forward with his son as his sole biological family member connected to the present story arc. As the character of Thea Queen and the actress playing it exits the show, it will definitely leave a huge hole that will not be filled anytime soon.
Check out Arrow every Thursday at 9:00 pm EST on The CW.
