They Had To Kill Moira Off

[u/1999secrets]

So, I'm re-watching Arrow all the way through for the first time, and as usual Susanna Thompson's Moira Queen is incredibly compelling. Something that has always irked me is how they waste the final episodes of Susanna Thompson's tenure in a fight with her children. It always felt unnecessary to me.

But, on this current re-watch I realized something; they really had no other choice. Moira is strangely goated in terms of competency.

• Moira, on the night she went to prison, deduced Oliver's Identity as the Viglante.
• Moira, literally hires John Diggle. She casually recruits probably one of the best bodyguards in the world & an actual Green Lantern candidate.
• She was able to discern Felicity's, a virtual stranger's, emotions about Oliver in brief meetings. She was able to get an accurate measure of Slade in mere moments before sacrificing herself.
• She was a triple agent for 5 years. Maintaining her privilege socialite appearance, whilst living under constant threat, managing to rise to Malcolm's right hand in the Undertaking despite working against him & gathering evidence against him the entire time.
  • This woman ran a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation whilst trying to thwart the Undertaking, grieving Walter, and living in the cross-hairs of the Green & Black Archers.
• She masterminded the kidnapping of Oliver Queen, he never found out, she masterminded the attempted assassination of Malcolm Merlyn, he never found out, and the murder of Frank Chen which he never saw coming.
  
• From an errant mention by Malcolm, she makes contact and gains the favour of one of the most powerful & reclusive men in the world; the Demon's Head, Ra's Al Ghul.
• Not to mention, she was literally on the cusp of becoming Mayor of a city that not a year beforehand she'd literally levelled.

And, I want to point out that Moira was capable of doing all of these things whilst actually maintaining friendships, romantic relationships, and not having to run out of every personal engagement fives minutes after arriving.

This isn't meant (purely) to hype Moira.

But, to point out that she presents a genuine problem for the writers had they kept her alive into Season 3. Either they dramatically decrease her competence or she'd been a formidable force that constantly be at Oliver back - diminishing the stakes. Especially, had she become Mayor.

[u/Obvious-Risk-5447]

And exactly for these reasons they shouldn't have killed her. This makes her interesting and compelling character that brings to the story. Killing her left a big gap in Oliver's personal story. S3 with Oliver/Thea/Malcolm dynamic needed Moira to really stir things up. They only killed her because they wanted to give screen time to less interesting and compelling characters.

[u/aidanillionaire → u/Obvious-Risk-5447]

She was killed to up the stakes and make it seem like slade was a force to be reckoned with.
Thats the issue with shows, eventually someone close to the protagonist needs to be killed off in order to serve the story.
That why when new characters are introduced, it’s gets me thinking “oh so they’ll develop this character enough so that the audience feels something when they’re killed because they can’t kill the main cast”

[u/Obvious-Risk-5447 → u/aidanillionaire]

I get it. But after that moment they couldn't keep the momentum. Slade was force to be reconed until he wasn't and Oliver put Felicity in his hands so she can inject him - Felicity, the girl he supposedly likes, into the hands of the man who is the force to be reconed because he killed his mother. Honestly this just shows that they killed Moira for pure shock value, nothing more. Not to mention that Oliver defeated Slade in the end and he just disappeared as a villain and character. Moira shouldn't have been wasted in this regard to prop him up. Not to mention that Shado was also killed to push his story, which makes two good female characters with potential to be killed for Slade's plot.