Arrow alum Katie Cassidy is speaking up about being written off of the hit DC series roughly a decade after it happened.
The fourth season of Arrow featured a season-long mystery involving a gravestone heavily implied to belong to one of the current main characters on the Arrowverse show. In the season’s eighteenth episode, “Eleven-Fifty-Nine,” Cassidy’s Laurel Lance/Black Canary was fatally stabbed by season big bad Damien Darhk, revealing that the gravestone belonged to her.
During a recent appearance on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast (via Deadline), Cassidy reflected on being fired from Arrow. “I had to eat some humble pie when they killed me off that show. It was really hard,” she recalled, going on to mention that she was “sad” and “sort of in shock” when she learned that Black Canary was being killed off.
“I was angry at first,” Cassidy said. “And I was emotional because I was sad, and I was angry because I was so happy.” As for why Black Canary was chosen as the one to fill the grave, the actor has her theories, telling Rosenbaum, “I think it was a couple of things. I have theories. I think it was political. It’s a lot.”
However, Cassidy made sure not to go quietly into the night, recalling what she told Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim and executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg on the phone call where she learned she was being fired: “I feel like I’ve always been given the short end of the stick and I have to go.”
How did Katie Cassidy return to Arrow?
As fans of Arrow know, Cassidy would return as a special guest star in Arrow Season 5 before returning as a series regular for the final three seasons. Her unexpected Arrow return came as a result of being brought onto The Flash as the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance, who initially operated as the supervillain Black Siren.
“I was like, ‘Yes!’” Cassidy recalled telling Guggenheim when they offered her the guest role on The Flash, which paved the way for her return on Arrow. “I had the support of the fans because that Flash episode I went on . . . ratings, I guess, were great and . . . unfortunately, I guess after they killed me, I guess their ratings went down a little. I’m not sure.”
Guggenheim also admitted to Cassidy that they “may have made a mistake” by killing off Black Canary. Looking back on her Arrow run five years after it went off the air in 2020, Cassidy is able to admit that Black Canary’s death “took every other series regular and . . . sends these other characters spiraling in different directions and reacting. It’s storytelling, and I don’t take it personally.”
All eight seasons of Arrow are currently streaming on Netflix.
