Sacrificial Lion/Quotes

"But you think, "OK, what can I do that's going to really put some teeth back into this show, in terms of these dangerous situations that we put our characters in?" And you can only write them in and out of corners so many times before the audience just stops caring about the situation.

But if you kill off a main character like we're doing, then you have that threat throughout the season."

—Derek Haas, showrunner of Chicago Fire, discussing a major character's death in the season 8 premiere

"We’ve kind of figured the audience is expecting that Oliver would die in the climax in the fifth hour, so if we went in the exact opposite direction and killed him off at the end of hour one we accomplish two things: hopefully we do surprise the audience, that’s absolutely the intention, but we also really establish the stakes, that going into the next four hours, ‘Wow, if Oliver Queen can die, then no one is safe.’”

—Marc Guggenheim, Arrowverse showrunner, on the surprise death in Part One of the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover