Yes, [SPOILER] Has Left The Arrow Cast

In case her departure with Roy at the end of this week’s episode of Arrow, “The Thanatos Guild,” didn’t make it clear, Willa Holland has left the cast of Arrow, which means our jokes about “the Thea plan” of showing up once every four weeks has come to an end.

An original creation for Arrow, giving Oliver Queen a younger sister grounded the character a lot, especially in the early seasons. Thea started the series as a spoiled brat but evolved and came into her own as a character, helped by the strength of her scenes with folks like Stephen Amell. The Oliver-Thea family bond humanized Oliver, especially in a time when he did not yet have Diggle and Felicity to rely on as a confidant.

Fans began to notice Thea would appear less and less as of Season 5; the character spent a good portion of Season 6 in a coma.

Speaking to TV Line, Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim stressed that this has been planned for a while, as were the breaks in which we wouldn’t see Willa Holland on the show.

“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 explained. “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.”

“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,” he continued.

In the TV Line interview, Guggenheim did admit it was “painful” to lose that powerful familial relationship on the show, though they did know that Oliver would be gaining a wife and a son before Thea said goodbye.

Of the characters introduced in the Arrow pilot, only four now remain as series regulars on the show: Stephen Amell (of course), David Ramsey (John Diggle), Paul Blackthorne (Quentin Lance), and Katie Cassidy (Laurel Lance), with Cassidy missing a significant part of Season 5 after the death of Earth-1 Laurel. Emily Bett Rickards didn’t show up until Episode 3, and became a series regular with Season 2. Colin Donnell’s Tommy passed away in the Season 1 finale and Susanna Thompson (Moira) said goodbye near the end of Season 2.