Wait, Did Arrow Really Just Kill [Spoiler]?! Boss Reveals What's Next After That Shocking Death 

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Arrow Really Just Kill [Spoiler]?! Boss Reveals What\'s Next After That Shocking Death

by Sydney Bucksbaum Wed., Oct. 8, 2014 6:00 PM PDT

season three premiere yet (and we don\'t know why you\'re waiting!), stop what you\'re doing right now. Major spoilers ahead!

\'s Black Canary were absolutely gutted to watch as Sara was killed in the final moments of the season three premiere.

The butt-kicking blonde had just returned to Starling City to help Oliver battle a new version of Vertigo, but after they victoriously took out the new Count, a mysterious person (who Sara recognized!) shot her with three arrows, and she fell from the rooftop.

But wait, isn\'t Caity Lotz already confirmed to be in three episodes of season three?! Before you get your hopes up,

executive producer Marc Guggenheim reveals that yes, Sara really is dead (*sobs*), but she will be in more episodes this season...via 

"I wasn\'t lying! Totally true! You\'re going to see her in the next episode, and then you\'re going to see her in at least a third episode," Guggenheim says. "The truth is, we have stories that involve Caity Lotz and one of the beautiful parts of the show is we do flashbacks, and we still want to tell the story of what happened when Sara washed up on the shores of Lian Yu after the events of [episode] 223, the sinking of the Amazo and how she met Nyssa [a.k.a. Ra\'s al Ghul\'s daughter] and how she joined the League of Assassins. There\'s still a lot of story left to be told with Sara. We did make a contract with Caity for three episodes, so I wasn\'t lying and you certainly haven\'t seen the last of her."

writers didn\'t make this decision lightly.

"Any time we kill off a character from the show it\'s always incredibly hard," Guggenheim says. "We\'re not

It\'s really, really, really, really difficult. But as with Tommy\'s death, as with Moira\'s death, the story implications for this development are so far-reaching for the show and affect all of the characters. We always call it the terrible story math. It really kicks off a mystery that will drive us for at least the first half of the year, it will set Laurel on a trajectory she\'s never had before on the show, it will create all these other complications and dynamics that I can\'t talk about because it would spoil stuff, and it buys us a lot of story."

He continues, "It speaks to all the things that we wanted to do this year in terms of Laurel\'s character, in terms of Oliver\'s character, in terms of Felicity\'s character. It\'s always a hard thing to do but it is really the engine that\'s driving the whole third season."

, Sara\'s death is going to allow the show to explore how it affects everyone.

"When we killed off Tommy in [episode] 1.23, we went to a season finale end and a hiatus, so we never really dealt with the repercussions of his death," Guggenheim says. "In 2.21, after Moira\'s death, we sort of dealt with the repercussions of that by taking Oliver out of the show, essentially. This [next] episode is sort of the first time we\'ve actually really taken our time and really spent time with these characters in the wake of a major character\'s death. I think as a result, I wouldn\'t call it a departure episode but it\'s definitely an episode with a different spin to it, for sure."

Get ready for a rough few episodes, as everyone deals with Sara\'s death in different ways.

"Honestly, [episode] 3.02 is probably one of our most emotionally gut-wrenching episodes—as it needs to be, as it should be—because this character\'s death affects all of the characters on the show," Guggenheim says. "It\'s kind of brutal. I don\'t want to spoil it too much, but we chose the title \'Sara\' because it actually has a double meaning. There\'s the question of what should be done with Sara\'s body; there\'s the question of who do they tell. Do they tell Lance, for example, that his daughter died a second time? There\'s the emotional repercussions for everybody. It definitely has repercussions for Oliver and Felicity, and it has repercussions for Felicity and Ray Palmer, and obviously for Laurel."

fans, it\'s time to meet Ra\'s al Ghul!

Guggenheim reveals that Laurel is going to be at the center of the next episode as she mourns her sister, but another, major storyline is also going to develop: finding Sara\'s murderer.

"We\'re also going to turn to a suspect in the killing," Guggenheim says. "With us, you never know how soon things will get resolved or in what way they\'ll get resolved. 3.02, I have to say, is one of our best episodes. I\'m really, really happy with it because everything\'s sort of laid bare and it\'s all out there. Everyone\'s raw and naked. It was a really hard episode for the cast to shoot, particularly Emily [Bett Rickards], Stephen [Amell] and Katie Cassidy."

Plus, Guggenheim also applauds Lotz\'s work as a dead body in the next episode.

"Caity Lotz basically has to lie on a slab and not breathe, and actually does a very, very compelling job of being dead," Guggenheim says with a laugh, before getting serious again. "It\'s really, really powerful stuff. It\'s a hard episode to watch. If you\'re prone to tears or capable of crying during watching a TV show, you\'ll probably be crying."

However, there seems to be one silver lining to Sara\'s death. Even though new dad Diggle resigned from Team Arrow at the end of the premiere to stay safe for his daughter, that decision isn\'t permanent.

"It did mean that he\'s off the team but in episode 2, let\'s say the circumstances of Sarah\'s death change a lot of things for all of our characters," Guggenheim teases.

Despite one "explosive" date and sizzlin\' hot kiss, things seemed to cool on the Olicity front by the end of the premiere. But it can\'t be over before it really starts, right?!

"Their relationship—we\'ve always said it\'s going to have ups and downs and twists and turns," Guggenheim says. "It\'s hard for me to answer the question without spoiling too much, but I think Oliver and Felicity have a very emotional scene together in episode 2. This is not the last time we\'ll hear the words \'I love you\' in connection with Oliver and Felicity. But I never want to turn to the back of the book and read to everyone the last page because I think part of the fun or agony of watching these two people is, \'They\'re together!\' \'They\'re apart.\' \'They\'re together!\' \'They\'re apart.\' We\'ll see what the future holds for them."

And for those of you trying to figure out who really ended things with whom, Guggenheim clears up that question right away.

"They\'re both conflicted. And I think that\'s what makes their relationship so tortured—that they\'re both so conflicted about it," he says. "Our goal in writing that scene was to make it even-handed in terms of who\'s ending it. But there\'s a scene in episode 2 that\'s a follow-up and sort of a sequel to it and clarifies it a good deal more. It\'s also something we\'re going to be dealing with over the course of the season. The end of that hospital scene didn\'t just take Oliver and Felicity and put them back in a box. The repercussions of that scene and that storyline in episode 1, that\'s going to follow them over the course of season three. It\'s not over."

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Brandon Routh made his super (Get it? Super? Because he was Superman!...sorry, we\'ll stop now!) debut as Ray Palmer, and he made it no secret that he wants Oliver\'s company

"We were thinking, Who\'s a kind of character that we haven\'t seen on the show? And the one thing we haven\'t seen is someone who can play on Felicity\'s level in terms of the banter," Guggenheim says. "We always say we write her as if she came in from a different show. But the problem is she doesn\'t have anyone else to talk to like that. Low and behold, here\'s Ray Palmer. And I always joke that we basically came up with Felicity because we needed a character on the show who we were able to write. We\'ve got Oliver, super taciturn; Dig, man of few words. No one was talking on the show!"

Sounds like Ollie\'s new rival on the business and romantic fronts is here to stay because the writers love writing for him as much as they love writing for Felicity.

"Ray is a joy to write for because his banter with Felicity is a lot of fun," Guggenheim says. "Also, he\'s going to end up the new head of Queen Consolidated, and we know from past seasons that people in charge of Queen Consolidated aren\'t always the best people. I think Ray represents either an interesting departure or an interesting twist and I think what Ray is planning and up to with his whole Star City campaign and what he plans to do with the whole company will be one of those mysteries."

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Conspicuously missing from the season premiere was Oliver\'s sister, Thea, who is off with her newly-discovered biological father and villain Malcolm Merlyn doing who-knows-what.

"This was sort of a lesson we learned over season two, which is not to pack everyone into a given episode," Guggenheim says. "And as we were breaking this episode out, we sort of discovered, \'You know, it could be more interesting if Thea, who left town at the end of season two, wasn\'t around.\' It\'s part of the mystery of where she is. She\'s not in Starling City. That question will get answered in episode 2. You\'ll find out where Thea went at the end of season two and you\'ll also find out what exactly what was said in that limousine when their scene in season two\'s finale ended. The beginning of episode 3 is we pick up with Malcolm and Thea in that limo and you hear the conversation that you didn\'t get to hear at the end of season two."

Detective-turned-Captain Lance was popping pills all throughout the premiere, but this isn\'t a new addiction storyline for the recovering alcoholic.

"Those are his medication that he\'s taking for his heart condition," Guggenheim explains. "It\'s in connection with a little heart monitor thing he has going on. It\'s really just our outward manifestation of the fact that he has a medical issue that\'s plaguing him for the course of the season."

And because of that medical condition, Lance is going to be struggling with the fact that he can\'t go out into the field anymore.

"One of the things I\'m excited about this season and the theme of identity is that it\'s something that affects everybody," Guggenheim says. "And one of the things he\'s struggling with is, \'If I\'m not out in the field, am I still a cop? And if I\'m not a cop, what am I?\' He will be sort of struggling with his new responsibilities but obviously, Sara\'s death will give him a whole mess of other things to struggle with. One of the things his job is going to do is place him in the center of city-wide crises in a way that\'s never been done before. He\'s got a couple of scenes in 3.05 with the new mayor of Starling City, so he\'s moving up the chain and it\'s requiring him to rely on some different judgmental skills and maybe some new political skills as well."

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