“The dilemma that we presented to our own selves was that we spoiled our own story,” Marc Guggenheim, who is showrunning the “Crisis” crossover, told reporters last week, following a screening of the first episode. “If Oliver dying isn’t the surprise, what is the surprise? The timing of him dying.”“We kind of figured the audience was expecting Oliver to die in the climax, in the fifth hour. If we went in the exact opposite direction, and killed him off at the end of hour one, we accomplished two things: Hopefully, we do surprise the audience, that’s absolutely the intention, but we also really establish the stakes.”

Guggenheim argued that, if the first hour can kill off the flagship CW hero, “then no one is safe.”

Beth Schwartz, “Arrow” showrunner, added that giving him an early death allowed them to give the other “Arrowverse” characters like The Flash and Supergirl a justifiable amount of time grieve. “It sets up really interesting stories and conflicts between all these characters,” she said. All these leads of these different shows, who have different ways of reacting to this tragedy, and [we] get to see them all grieve together.”