(Spoilers for Arrow Seasons 5 and 6 ahead)
Longtime Arrow star, Willa Holland, has now permanently left the series. In Arrow’s latest episode, titled The Thanatos Guild, Thea Queen (Willa Holland) was targeted by a group of rogue League of Assassins due to her connection with her father, Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman). The rogue group planned to find a mysterious box that Merlyn left behind before his apparent death in Arrow’s season five finale. After defeating this new league, the team discovered that the box contained a map revealing the locations of three secret Lazarus Pits. Thea, along with Roy Harper (Colton Haynes) and Nyssa Al Ghul (Katrina Law), then set out to destroy these Pits in an attempt to right her father’s wrongs.
This was a permanent exit for Holland and her character according to Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim. Here is an excerpt from an interview Guggenheim had with TV Line, regarding Holland’s exit:
“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. 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.”
From the quote above it appears that Holland has actually wanted to be written out of the series since Arrow season four and this was the strong sendoff Guggenheim wanted for a character that has been a mainstay of the show since day one.
What do you think about Thea’s (and possibly Roy’s) exit from the series? Let us know in the comments and be sure to follow us here at The Nerd Stash for the best coverage in news, reviews, and anything else Nerd Culture has to offer.