Arrow: 10 Mistakes It Must Fix In Season 5
6. Death Needs To Be Meaningful
Following on from the strand of those big promises, comes that major development from Season 4: the death of Laurel Lance.
It's yet another example of death in the show not carrying the weight it ought to. This is something that really started last year, when they 'killed' Oliver, only to bring him back (of course they're not going to kill off the main character), then did the same with Thea, and then at the beginning of Season 4 brought back Sara Lance.
When the dead don't stay dead, it means dying doesn't carry the same impact. That's not even the big issue with Laurel though, because I do believe the showrunners when they say she won't be brought back (at least, not the modern day, Earth-1 version). The way they wrote Laurel's death meant that the character was pushed out before she was killed off (and had long been a problem character anyway), and then on her deathbed served to boost Olicity. After that, it had an impact on the remaining members, particularly Diggle, but it didn't feel massively earned, and all the talk of the Black Canary's legacy felt like something they were shoehorning in, rather than something we'd witnessed over the years and had actual proof of.
When you're killing off a main character, it needs to have a big impact, and Laurel's death sadly didn't.