YMMV / Arrow S 4 E 18 Eleven Fifty Nine

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Laurel by this point honestly didn't even qualify as a full on scrappy anymore for a large part of the fanbase. However, she still wasn't exactly the most beloved character on the show, but she died without any of her family being present, and did make great strides in her vigilante work.
• Broken Base: The fan base is split between those who like that Laurel is gone so that there can be less focus on her and those who hate The CW for killing off the last character with a direct comic counterpart on Team Arrow (not to mention the comic wife of Green Arrow). This case of Franchise Original Sin has led a sizable amount of the fan base in the latter camp to quit the show altogether, along with the creation of the hashtag "#NoLaurelNoArrow". People in the second camp also point out that Laurel has been largerly Out of Focus compared to Oliver, Felicity, Diggle, and Thea, and that after reviving her sister she hardly took up any unnecessary screentime at all, and that it smacks heavily of Death of the Hypotenuse getting in the way of Olicity shipping.
• Franchise Original Sin: The episode is seen by many as the culmination of the show's on-going Seasonal Rot since Season 3 - killing off the only heroic character after Oliver who has a direct comics counterpart - Dinah Laurel Lance, the Black Canary. This is made worse by the fact that in most of comic canon, Dinah Laurel Lance and Oliver Queen are at least a couple, and in the pre-Flashpoint timeline, they were actually married, erasing the possibility of that portion of the comics being shown.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Back when Season 3 opened with killing off Sara, this drew a lot of ire in the fandom, with many claiming they had "killed the wrong sister". By this point Laurel had been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap for many, and the reaction against her death is perhaps even more vocal than the reactions to Sara's death.
• He Really Can Act: The male cast members gave a very strong performance in this episode, David Ramsey and Neal McDonough especially. Katie Cassidy also gets to show how far she's come since Season 1.
• He's Just Hiding: Given that Laurel whispered something to Oliver before she succumbed to her wounds, theories that she's just Faking the Dead and Oliver is her Secret-Keeper began to surface (Word of God denies it, though they lied before). Also adding fuel to the fire is that the show runners have openly admitted that they started making the season with no idea who was going to be in the grave, leaving the possibility that they could end up deciding it wasn't anyone. But then there's the major argument against this theory, that it would be unforgivably cruel for them to keep the secret from the rest of the team, especially Quentin.
• Moral Event Horizon: It's needless to say that Darhk and Merlyn crossed the line a long time ago, but Andy crosses it in this episode, as it is revealed that everything he did for Team Arrow was nothing but trickery in order to lay them down to Darhk's feet.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: As detailed in Franchise Original Sin above, the outcome of the episode received huge backlash on from majority of the fans of the source material and even the comics writers, enough to take a toll in the show's ratings immediately after the following episode (which features Laurel's funeral).
• Tear Jerker: Laurel's death.
• The Woobie:
  • The Lance family suffered yet another tragedy.
  • Thea lost the closest thing she had for an older sister. And her biological father had a hand in it.
  • Diggle completely loses his brother to the dark side, and his honorary/surrogate sister to death. What's even more sadder was the former had a hand with what happened to the latter, and Word of God says Diggle blames himself for it.

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