Marc Guggenheim Reflects On Laurel’s Death & His Least Favorite Arrow Season

Part 2 of the Showrunner Whisperer‘s interview with Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim is now posted, and among the topics in Part 2 that were discussed included fan reactions and changed plans…. they also spoke about the season of Arrow that Guggenheim was least fond of.

“With Arrow, we had a lot of angry fans. With Legends [of Tomorrow], we never did. So it’s interesting,” Guggenheim said of the fan reactions, especially on Twitter. More specifically, he spoke about the death of Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) in Season 4.

“The death of Laurel, honestly, it wasn’t my call,” Guggenheim told the podcast, revealing the one thing that might have changed their minds, in retrospect.

“The thing that would have changed Laurel’s fate honestly wasn’t going to be Twitter. What would have changed it was if we had known that we were going to go for four more years. Had we known that the show was only reaching its midpoint, I thought think Laurel would have been killed off. But at the time, we always saw the show as a five-year show. It didn’t really occur to us that it was going to go beyond that. So I think that — if we’re talking about hindsight being 20/20 — I think that’s a greater factor,” he continued.

“I don’t believe in shows changing course to satisfy a vocal set of fans,” Marc assured. “Part of that is the way I watch television. I approach all of my writing as a fan first, but I’m the kind of fan where yeah, do they do things on shows that I don’t like as a fan? Sure, all the time, but it never occurred to me to have input in the process. It never occurred to me that Showrunner X or Showrunner Y should listen to what I have to say. I’m just a member of the audience. Television is not an interactive being, and I know there’s a lot of fans who hate to hear it. I totally get that, but it’s just not. I don’t think that that produces great art, frankly. That’s my probably controversial opinion,” he said.

Marc revealed that the fourth season is likely his least favorite season of Arrow. “I will say in terms of things we wish we could have done differently, there’s a lot of stuff in Season 4… Season 4 is probably my least favorite of all the seasons, in large part because there were things that, in hindsight, just didn’t work, and things we shouldn’t have necessarily tried,” he said. “I think there are some incredibly strong episodes in Season 4 – don’t get me wrong. There are some episodes that I think are really great episodes of Arrow. But overall, as a season, I think the idea to try a lighter tone… it wasn’t true to the show. We were going for a lighter tone because in the first three seasons it was so dark. And bear in mind, a lighter tone for Arrow is very different from a lighter tone for most shows. We still ended the midseason finale with Oliver and Felicity being attacked, and Felicity being paralyzed. I do wish we had approached that whole storyline very differently. We always plan every season out [of Arrow], but I think the best seasons are the ones where we give ourselves the freedom to alter course. Not based on Twitter, but really, just based on how the story is playing out. There were things in Season 4 that we had specifically planned for at specific moments in time. I just think we stuck to the game plan too rigidly in a lot of places. So, if I could go back and re-do things, I certainly would. I will say I love the season finale of Season 4. We wanted to do an epic battle with a lot of extras, that felt like the end of The Dark Knight Rises, and I feel like we succeeded in that. There’s a lot of groundwork that’s done to introduce The Atom and Ray Palmer; that, I think, worked extremely well. Like I said, there are individual episodes that I liked; the finale, again, being a good example. But when you do 8 seasons of television, not every season’s going to be perfect,” he admitted.

You can watch the Showrunner Whisperer interview below.