Warning: This article has spoilers from this week’s ARROW
Who is in the grave has been this season’s biggest mystery on ARROW. We first found out a major character was going to die at some point this season in the very first episode back in October. Just when we thought things were going to work out and Oliver and Felicity were going to live happily ever after, fighting crime in Star City side by side, the show punched us in the stomach with a flashforward scene, where Oliver was standing over a grave with Barry, vowing to kill whoever was responsible for that particular death.
Cue the internet exploding about it. Who could possibly be in the grave? Whose death would affect Oliver so much? And why was Barry there? The fans hit social media with countless possibilities and we soon had a list of possible candidates for the grave, with Felicity leading that list for a while. After all, she is the one person Oliver loves the most in the entire world, so it was either her or Thea – the two most important people in his life.
The fact that the mid-season finale ended with Felicity shot and bleeding out in the back of a car did not put the odds in her favor. So we entered the long hiatus for the holidays and a lot of fans were counting Felicity as the person in the grave as a done deal. However, when the mid-season premiere aired, we were treated to another flashforward, and this time we saw Felicity alive and well, even though she and Oliver seemed to be estranged. So we knew something bad was going to happen between them, but we knew Felicity wasn’t the one in the grave. The discussion was then reopened, with Captain Lance, Laurel and Donna Smoak as the front runners.
Fast forward to tonight’s episode.
Laurel is offered a job as the D.A. with Dahrk’s wife, after she wins the mayoral race. She is very tempted to accept it, even after Captain Lance tells her not to. She decides to go on one last mission, before she accepts the promotion, especially after Oliver was so supportive of her taking the job as District Attorney, saying she could do so much good in the light of day.
So they go try to take on Dahrk in the middle of the chaos he created in prison, and that’s where everything goes wrong. After an intense fighting sequence, Dahrk has everyone immobilized, and just out of spite, he pierces Laurel in the stomach with an arrow.
And the Black Canary falls.
We’ll have a full recap with our thoughts on this death in the morning.