Thea Queen, played by Willa Holland, is one of Arrow's more interesting characters, with a journey that's seen her discover she's actually the daughter of John Barrowman's Malcolm Merlyn, get resurrected by the Lazarus Pit and become the heroine Speedy.
But she's been conspicuously absent for a chunk of the latest season, which has caused a fair bit of confusion among fans.
At a press screening of tonight's (February 15) episode, co-showrunner Marc Guggenheim explained it all (via TVLine):
"Everyone's like, 'Where's Thea? Where's Thea?'" he said. "Willa's (contracted for) 14 out of 23 episodes this year.
"She's not in all 23. That's not her contract. We've had to write around that."
Guggenheim also talked about fellow cast member Katie Cassidy, who hasn't signed a contract to return as Laurel.
"We have an idea for how to see (Katie) again," he added, "but we haven't made a deal with her.
"She's not a series regular anymore, so we have to make a contract with her, and she's got to be available. We haven't had those conversations. But… we know exactly what we do want to do."
While on the "complicated" subject of contracts and actors, Guggenheim said "We try to make the process invisible in terms of our storytelling.
"There are just human realities and contractual realities that not only tie our hands, but tie the hands of everyone running a show these days - unless you're Game of Thrones and you can just literally afford to, like, hold people for an entire year for ungodly sums of money."
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small.
A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe's main interest is in video gaming. Although particularly a PlayStation gamer, he plays across Xbox, Nintendo and PC/Steam Deck, and likes to keep tabs on many games he's not got the time to play.
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