‘Arrow’ season 4, episode 18: Katie Cassidy speaks out on big Laurel Lance story

Are you still reeling from tonight’s episode of “Arrow“? It would certainly make sense for you if you were feeling that way, given that “Eleven-Fifty-Nine” brought out one of the biggest character deaths that we have seen on any show this year: The end of Laurel Lance. She was around for almost 90 episodes of the series, and had a wide array of powerful / super-significant moments as a result of that.

The moment that it first started to appear as though we were going to see the end of Laurel on the show tonight, one of the big questions was rather simple: Why? Was Katie Cassidy interested in leaving the show or something? As it turns out, not at all. Speaking to reporters (via TVLine) earlier this week, she made it clear that she learned during filming “Broken Hearts” that this would be her time to go. She also explained that one of her final scenes really did turn out to be incredibly emotional for her:

“That scene when I’m in the hospital and I say goodbye [and] I say to the team, ‘I never wanted this. I was thinking of giving up the Black Canary. I can do it,’ it was so real shooting it, because it was my saying goodbye to the team and all of us. So it definitely wasn’t difficult for me to get to that emotional point.” As “hard” as it was to deal with the overwhelming feelings in that exchange, I felt like that was good. It was genuine, and it was real.”

The one bit of relief that we have here is that this is not the last time Cassidy will be appearing on the CW franchise. After all, she is set to turn up as Black Siren in an upcoming episode of “The Flash,” and will lend her voice to “Vixen.”

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